Here recently I’ve felt conflict between my mind and my heart.

I believe that the things I feel in my heart, in my gut, in the deep places of who I am–those are the truths.

That said, my conditioning to religious systematics seems to rear its ugly head quite a bit more often than I’d like.

Here’s the cycle I tend to be trapped in:

• I feel a truth in my gut/heart–and it’s normally a very simple, yet transforming realization
• I think on that feeling
• I rationalize and analyze it in my intellect
• I make it very complicated
• In my attempt to basically make it a theology, I lose the very thing that changed me
• I feel empty, dogmatic, and religious once again

What a vicious cycle indeed.

Why am I unsatisfied with BEING? Why must I always try to “do, do, do”. Sometimes that even means trying to “learn, learn, learn” or “realize, realize, realize”.

I seem to be in endless pursuit of the next best thing…and I don’t want to be any longer.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
~Leonardo Da Vinci

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”
~Albert Einstein

Photo is “Freed Heart, Understanding Mind”, by Dale Wicks
It is accompanied by this poem:

The shell no longer does confine
when hearts embrace higher design
Connecting intimately with eternal one
found in the room of midnight sun
No style of speech is found, but praise
A song of peace, the soul does raise
The bars swing open to his temporal dwell
for he sees in this midst, that all is well
A glory that shall never fade
unlike the things that man has made
Deserving of the deepest affection
for it is the key to love’s perfection.

I’ve realized in the past few days that I’m far from decompressed from the religious dogmatism that, up until a couple of years ago, dominated my paradigm.

I find within my psyche a falsely inherent desire to construct firm and definite stances on various topics and ideas of which I can eloquently and cleverly explain (and convince one of) my personal views.

Rather than seeing a place in which I am discovering new ideas or aspects of “true reality” and meditating on such things in the deep recesses of my spirit, I subcouciously feel that this position is somehow less valuable than one in which I have come to a solid understanding of a new idea.

Ironically, the less valuable of the two is probably the instance in which I come to the aforementioned understanding, as such will inevitably result in, yet again, closed-minded dogmatism.

A dangerous cycle to be sure.

Where would you rather be? Would you rather have a set of firm ideas, understandings, and beliefs, or would you rather be in the place of discovery and exploration of new ideas? Perhaps a combination of the two better suits your fancy?

More on what I’ve been thinking on later…

Technorati Tags: Jeffrey Davis, dogmatism, spirituality

I love the times I stoke up my pipe and sit down to write in my journal. I do this far too infrequently.

For some reason, putting pen to paper to work out my thoughts stimulates a strangely streamlined train of thought. Anybody else have that going on?

Anyway, tonight I moseyed on over to my favorite Starbucks in the world (which happens to be near my home) to just spend some alone time diving into a book I’ve been reading (that’s really starting to get good) and to muse about whatever came to mind in my journal.

*Forgive me, the following are rather rough thoughts on a new concept I came upon tonight.*

As I wrote, I stumbled upon a strange thought. I realized that up until now, I’ve more or less held the view that everyone is on their own spiritual journey and we choose to intersect journeys with those whom we surround ourselves with. In so doing, we can encourage, guide, and aid in each other’s own pilgrimages.

“However”, I thought to myself (or actually, my pen wrote without my conscious thought), “this doesn’t seem quite true; aren’t we really more merging our journeys with the journeys of those we love? Might they be more than mere intersections?”

Why might that be important?

Let me illustrate. I continue on in my own adventure daily, as my wife moves daily on her own journey as well. Sometimes we seem to currently be exploring the same path, sometimes we don’t (which I believe is healthy, by the way). If our journeys merely intersect at common cross roads, then such times of difference cannot be beneficial to our relationship.

However, if our journeys are interlocked (or merged, if you will) they form a conjoined adventure of greater grandeur…but not in the way that interstates merge with each other (which I’m sure makes no sense at all)?

Practically, what does that look like? How do you explain it? How does it change the paradigm?

Hell if I know, to be frank; but I feel like there is something there…lurking down deep below.

(Does anyone else but me feel as if they have no choice to explore when they get that feeling that a great treasure awaits if you would only spend the time to search it out?)

As I said above, these are just preliminary musings on the subject as they occurred to me this evening, so I apologize if they are hard to follow at this point.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear (err, see) and glean wisdom from them…