Intellect and Spirit

 People rarely associate intellect with spirit, and yet, reading M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and Beyond, I reflect on how the intellect connects with spirit. Peck writes:

 "[O]ne of the most crucial skills of critical thinking is that of deciding what is essential to think or learn about, and what is nonessential. And we must acknowledge the gaps in our own knowledge, rather than feel compelled to let pride, fear, or laziness lure us into assuming the role of know-it-all" (p.35)

Peck, for me, seems to point to the spiritual role that intellect, thinking and intelligence can play in shaping a more complete picture of life. Through thinking (and a proper, complete use of thought), one can open up to new possibilities, avoid what Peck refers to as the "simplicism" of easy answers and pat stereotyped responses, and be open to completely new ways of looking at previous or familiar things. I think the key is that Peck identifies the "obstacles" that prevent thinking: habit for one, followed by a sense of "familiarity" which promotes intellectual laziness, and, perhaps most importantly, the fear of the pain and discomfort that come with thinking itself. Unless a person is truly open to the difficulties and thorniness of what a thinking life has to offer, there is a danger that one will drift into the easy mode of formulaic, technical reasoning and logic.

Of course, while Peck celebrates the spiritual roles of thinking for oneself, he refers also to the potential dangers of over-attaching to one particular way of reasoning, such as trying to reduce thinking to a set of rules or abstractions. It's safe to say that a "reasonable" perspective on thinking might include "non-thinking" elements such as body and emotions.

What is perhaps more to the point is that thinking is a kind of "attitude", not a formula. When I am truly open to new ideas and am making this effort to bracket all my previous judgments (and thus not be drawn into the past), I am entertaining a space for new or unfamiliar sensations, thoughts and experiences. This nearly always feels uncomfortable, and it can be challenging to trust that the tensions and paradoxes of new thinking are not "bad" things at all, but can be amazing ways of discovering new possibilities. This is quite opposite to cognitive dissonance, a tendency one has to reduce the tension between contradictory states of thinking or feeling by trying to make the thoughts somehow similar or connected in any way possible.

It also occurred to me walking home from work today, that thinking requires a kind of caring attitude: if I am not somehow caring for the simple things of my life, there would simply be no motivation to think at all. What would there be to think about? When I am in touch with the basic elements of my being in the world, I am no longer drawn into artificial kinds of categories such as "popular", "talented", etc. and this gives me the space to actually befriend all the parts of my thinking and feeling. Without that honest look at what I truly want to think, thinking itself can easily become stilted, as though it were a kind of homework assignment.

Peck, M. Scott. (1997). The Road Less Travelled & Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. New York: Simon & Shuster