THINKING SPIRITUAL

The human mind is capable of extraordinary mental skills including sensory perception, conceptualizing, language comprehension and generation, quantitative computations, deductive analysis, inductive generalizations, adaptation, problem solving, scientific and technical knowledge, holistic synthesis, evaluation, judgment, and wisdom. This chapter will focus on the mental skills involved in the practical art of gentle living.
We have discussed how understanding our feelings and emotions can tell us much about what is going on in our consciousness and life. Yet we also need to be careful not to let our feelings distort rational thinking. To understand ourselves and the world clearly we need to see things as they are. In using the various forms of logic and intuition we can detect and be aware of how feelings and motives may affect our thought processes. The mind is an excellent tool for understanding concepts and various logical relationships, but that tool can also be used to find reasons for or rationalize conclusions we may have jumped toward without objective and adequate thought. Using reason correctly helps us to organize what we learn by perceptions and concepts into useful knowledge. When decisions are needed, we can apply our values in mature judgments with the wisdom of the divine principles.