In Defence of Thinking

Why do we not see the mind as spiritual?

Those that support the practice of meditation tend toward a skepticism of thoughts. The presupposition is that our mental faculties deceive us, distract us and take us farther from the truth of the heart. And yet, alternative medicine and integrative spirituality praise the body as some kind of angelic animal. When we talk about intuition, we valourize the heart and biological as a truer pathway, seeing our brains as something super-powerful but perhaps not on our side. Whether this is the Cartesian mind/body duality or the polarization of the scientific and the spiritual, the mind is spoken of as reserved for mechanistic work rather than integrative softness and growth.

This does not reflect my experience perhaps because I primarily process intuition through thoughts and ideas (claircognizance). I agree that many would benefit from ways of quieting the mind through meditation, movement and a reduction of stimulants, but this is not so as to reduce the impact of our thoughts but rather to accentuate their effectiveness.

Sometimes when I get overwhelmed by a buildup of ‘shoulds’ or ‘coulds’ and feel my list of unattended thoughts accumulate until they impose a hefty weight on my consciousness, I find it helpful to see my thinking as a kind of game. Listen for each new thought like a clue. Make thinking my focus. Not so as to police it, but to really pay attention.

I have been toying with the idea that we sometimes misrepresent the ADHD mechanism. When I…