The main reason we suffer from this illness of indecision, is that we’ve mistaken the purpose of heart and mind. The heart is like a compass, it’s purpose is to guide the direction our lives should take. Our heart takes a birds eye view on our life and says “this is where you’re at and this is the direction you need to go.”
Our mind on the other hand isn’t made for making purpose driven decisions. The nature of the mind is that it conceptualizes, organizes and compares information. It does this as best it can and says “here are the facts, here’s both sides of the story.”
If we compare our mind and heart to a courtroom, our mind would be the defendant and the plaintiff (both stories) and our heart would be justice or the judge (the right direction).
The reason we’re so troubled by this conflict of head vs heart is that the mind is not only playing the prosecutor and the defense, but has take over the role of the judge as well.
The mind should never be the judge. The minds job is to compare and contrast. To sort things out and say “this is what I’ve got, do what you want with it.”
But more often than not, our mind isn’t doing that. Our mind is making our choices. What’s worse, is even when we don’t need our mind to be at work, it’s still going. Comparing and contrasting everything. Brooding, mostly.
Have you ever noticed that even when it’s completely unnecessary to think about anything, your mind is still going? Have noticed that when this is happening, your mind is getting in the way of your experience? Just a few examples of this that come to mind for me are: watching TV, drink water or taking a shower. My mind really doesn’t need to be thinking while doing these things. There’s no point. At all.
-FOR YOU!