THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCED THINKING Spirituality and materialism
Think of God as the body of the Universe. In our bodies, we have two nervous systems, one that unconsciously controls the processes in the body like breathing and heartbeat and perception (something we do with everything without thinking about it), digestion, elimination, and the immune system, etc...
The other is the sensory system. You experience the world and the sensory system sends messages to your brain. Your brain aggregates every sensation into what you experience as reality. Your brain constructs what you experience with your senses into a usable image and converts all that information into usable signals to help you survive, and it does it in an instant. and you use critical thinking to determine how you are going to react.
The universe operates by a set of laws, the laws of physics. God set up a situation where he did not have to micromanage the universe. Those laws are the parasympathetic Nervous System of the universe, the set of laws, those of physics that control all the processes of manifestation from the formation of stars and planets to the evolution of all life and humanity.
The body of God is everything, Everything is energy vibrating at a particular wavelength. All the energy in the universe is the body of God. God's will imposes order on all that is. Everything exists in relation to the will of God as it relates to the laws that guide manifestation that God built into the system. God is energy. Energy can transmit information like photons traveling through a fiber optic cable.
Now, let's talk about The abstract, the unconscious, the world of intuition and allegory, and the conscious, the world of the 5 senses. The unconscious mind, the world of the abstract, can accept something like a god and spirituality. The conscious world deals with the 5 senses and looks at the world as a materialistic consequence of the laws of physics would. Both natures exist in balance.
However, when one allows him/herself to view only the spiritual, one comes to believe all kinds of "woo woo" stuff without being able to filter it through the part of ourselves that need a materialist perspective to filter certain ideas out because they are not congruent with the need to survive. We can become so altruistic to the point we can harm ourselves by not taking care of ourselves, first - we put the importance of giving to others before taking care of ourselves.
That is why when a plane's oxygen masks drop you are instructed to put yours on first because you have to take care of yourself before you take care of others. That is why a Buddhist monk may go to a monastery, to extricate himself from a world where materialism is required for survival.
He can focus on developing the spiritual without the distractions of needing to earn money with a job, pay rent and bills, and raise a family Things that can distract us from spirituality. We need the ability to maintain balance. This would be an example of a divergent thinker. Piaget would refer to the two as "concert operational thinking" and "formal operational thinking.".
"Divergent thinking is a non-linear way of thinking that results in multiple solutions to a single problem. Some hallmarks of divergent thinking are creativity, collaboration, attention to detail, strategy, and open-mindedness."
After the monk's training progresses to a point he is allowed to leave the monastery and deal with the material world as needed using his spiritual training. Part of his training was to study the experiences of those who came before him. Those experiences teach him how to deal with the material world without getting out of balance.
When one rejects the spiritual, the abstract one loses the ability to accept abstract ideas that can be useful for "thinking outside the box". That is why in a corporate setting, a world where materialism prevails, or in some cases, the world of the atheist, or materialist scientist, need to create "brainstorming groups to help them solve problems. This is the world of the convergent thinker.
"Convergent thinking is a style of thought that attempts to consider all available information and arrive at the single best possible answer. Most of the thinking called for in schools is convergent, as schools require students to gather and remember information and make logical decisions and answers accordingly."
"To have true creativity —the most robust form of thinking—we must have both divergent and convergent thinking. Some people are more inclined toward divergent thinking, and others prefer convergent. This is a good thing, because, as I’ve said before, we need both."
We need both to stay in balance. that is why monks, when they are most trainable in their youth develop one without the other so when they experience the other they can learn to apply their abstract creative spirituality (a god is not required for spirituality as Buddhism does not, in general, worship Buddha as a God although there are sects that do. Nothing is universally one way or the other. Again, balance in the self, the inner world as well as balance in the outside world.
In other words, one needs both for optimal survival.
"A study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience found abstract thinking was tied to parts of the brain occupied with vision. Concrete thinking, on the other hand. activated parts of the brain that focus on actions taken to complete a goal."
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