One day, years ago, in a training of one of my many energy healing certification classes, my instructor said the human mind has the ability to fragment itself in different processes.

Up until that point, it felt fairly easy to understand and verify in my own life path. What I was not expecting was what she said next:

Not only our different mental processes do not harmonize with each other, but they often annul or numb one another in our psyches.

And that's one of the main reasons why many of us lead such confusing, recurrently unhappy lives.

Because our different mental processes are disconnected, and disproportional in our capacity to use them harmonizing and allowing them to co-exist in a healthy way can be a huge accomplishment that puts our general well-being and personal fulfillment on a whole different level.

What blows my mind the most is that Thinking, Believing and Knowing can be very different processes that are not necessarily connected to each other.

So how can they work together?

If they're not always orchestrated as Nature intended, how can we reorganize this magnificent structure we call our minds?

If Thinking, Believing and Knowing fight against each other in our minds, it's not a one-cause factor, but one of the causes is culture.

Our contemporary western culture has a lot to do with how confused we've become.

So let's understand them one by one and unravel the confusion so we can be happy and free :-)

Let's talk about Thinking first.

Thinking has to do with problem-solving. It's about bringing solutions. In Thinking, we tend to use more of the left side of the brain which is usually more logical, compared to the right side which tends to be more creative. The brain is a lot more complex than the two hemispheres, but let's use this image now for the sake of clarity. 

When we talk about Thinking, the most important factor is our logical processing - connecting means to ends and connecting intentions, means and results with linear thinking. We need this mechanical process to assert ourselves in the world - to understand and make sense of it. But

Thinking is not enough.

It's a necessary process, but it's never sufficient to just think. Our culture really encourages us to think all the time and not to feel as much, though. So when we think in interaction with our feelings, it's a whole different ballgame - not only do our consciousness and awareness expand, but most importantly,

our whole lives become more meaningful.

Thinking is necessary to make us adults and more mature. It makes us more responsible. But it needs to walk hand-in-hand with more expanded aspects of our psyches, which leads us to understand the process of Believing. 

Believing brings meaning and purpose to life. It is a very nurturing state if we believe in wonderful things. And it can be very detrimental to our lives if we believe in horrible things.

Belief is much more subjective field. It relies a lot more on the right side of the brain, and it's very connected to our creative processes.

Most importantly, Believing may or may not be aligned with Thinking, which is the reason why

a skeptical mind is a healthy mind.

A skeptical mind thinks with logic, requires evidence, and can be ultimately understood as healthy self-protection. Being a skeptic is different from being a cynic because cynicism ultimately denies everything and in its pure form lead us to nihilism.

Being skeptical is healthy because it's a balanced attitude that questions things with logical thinking while giving the benefit of the doubt, and it allows us to digest information so we can make good choices in life. Contrarily, cynicism denies everything with a sophisticated thought process that does not allow us to believe much - ultimately not believing anything. 

Cynicism is not healthy because it doesn't allow us to have a purpose in life. It doesn't allow meaning. On the other extreme,

Believing without Thinking can become fanatical.

When this happens, we don't question anything. We don't give the benefit of the doubt, and we deny logical thinking. It's important to have conviction after you've gone through a "digestive process of the mind". So ideally, we believe after we think, but Thinking doesn't happen on its own. For life to have meaning, we need to believe something that transcends logical thinking, which leads us to Knowing.

If Thinking is more related to the logical aspect of our brain, and Believing to the creative, subjective part, Knowing comes from the Heart.

This is where I get really psyched in this conversation. Though Thinking and Believing are predominantly brain processes, they're prone to subjectivity. Knowing, on the other hand, comes from the Heart, and oddly enough, it objective. The Heart is the part of ourselves in which we can most securely rely on to connect to objective reality, which ultimately is, as Don Miguel Ruiz would say, Love & Truth. 

The Heart knows the truth. We can Think without being aligned to the Truth. We can Believe without being aligned with the Truth. But when we know in our Hearts, we are aligned with the Truth.

So ultimately, the most wonderful energies, and to be honest, the only real energies in the world are Truth and Love.

Love without Truth is blind. Truth without Love is harsh. But when they walk hand-in-hand, we know with our Hearts, and we feel. 

We have healthy convictions and we engage our thoughts in connecting our convictions with reality - so we won't be fanatical.

With all this in your heart, I now invite you to create a triad with Thinking, Believing and Knowing. Think of a triangle or a pyramid. Thinking, believing, and knowing, living from the Heart and using your brain in both its objective and subjective aspects aligned with your Heart.

This will lead us in our Sacred Path.

What do you think and feel about this?

Let us know in the Comments Area here, and send this to your friends and loved ones so they can also benefit from this knowledge!

Thanks for joining us! 

See you soon!

With love,

Paola.