Head or Heart?

"Head or Heart? Should I follow my Logic or Love?," a friend of mine asked me.

After a couple of days connecting with this question,  I came to an answer.

Use logic when it will improve or help your personal life[1]. Use heart when the phrase "for better or worse till death do us part"[2] is an actuality. When heart and logic are unharmonious, choose intuition and the sensation of joyful-happiness. Joyful-Happiness is Intuition's indicator. Do not confuse selfish-happiness or love with joy.

It is my intention and hope that this advice may help someone. If this advice is flawed, please share from your understandings.

May Peace be upon us all.

________________________________________

[1] Right-Hand Path: Do not infringe upon the Free Will of others.

[2] Service To Others: This phrase reflects upon the concepts of acceptance, empathy, caring, helping, dedication, dependability, trust, sacrifice, and faithfulness. This applies to family relationships, intimate relationships, friendships with people, plant, or animal life, and all other relationships. Friend, family, loved one... are you willing to accept them without want for change or control... to put them before yourself and stick it out until the end?

No. You need to "listen" to both but you have to use logic to make good decisions. Letting your backbrain and the chemicals that cause emotions make your choices is virtually guaranteed to lead to bad ends. You listen to your "heart" to find out what you need to be happy -- but you use your head to achieve those goals. If your non-thinking mind demands something that you know would be bad for you, you have to either tell it "No, you can't have that" or you have to make peace with the negative consequences. I'm not saying it's easy (if it were I wouldn't be a smoker or have my waistline) but it _is_ the best approach to try.

The OP almost had it right. Logic is rarely going to lead you to the right place, simply because you can never have all the information needed to make that decision the absolutely correct one. What you *can* do is to know yourself, open yourself to your Self, and once you have done that you will know *via the heart* what is right. It will be self-evident. Even when you stop to ponder, you will already know the answer and will find that your pondering was either brief reflection, hesitation because you don't have strength for that particular solution at that moment, or, god help you, questioning yourself. When you truly know, love, and trust your inner knowledge that is held within the heart, you always make the absolute right choice. You may not like where it takes you now and then, but there is a lesson there and it is always germane to the big picture in your life.

One important thing that people really have to understand - and very quickly too I suggest - is that "bad" experiences are lessons, they are not to be avoided. They are necessary. You will not grow without making plenty of mistakes in life. Make them. You are entitled to each and every one of them. Make the most of them. Laugh *with* them. Dare to fail. You don't know the beauty and joy of making mistakes with gusto until you let loose and do it. I don't mean do deliberately stupid stuff, obviously. But lose your ego sometimes. Then lose it some more. Ego is ugly, as you will find when you find yourself.

reply to post by CosmicEgg




No, that's fundamentally and obviously incorrect. While I certainly can't disprove that humans can obtain information from non-traditional means (I suspect that they can in fact), it's pretty trivial to prove that our emotions and preconceptions are easily misled and flawed. Your inner-self "knows" that the earth is flat and the sun goes around it. Your inner-self "knows" that people who don't look like your family are not as trustworthy as people who do. Your inner-self "knows" that everything bad that happens to you, happens for a reason.

No, you need to always remember that the body within which your mind is encoded is the body of an ape, with a set of perceptions and short-cuts that are appropriate to the context of surviving on an african savanna. And that's ok; it's why we have great eyes, decent ears, and an instinct for socializing. But it's also why it's really easy for the older parts of your mind (your emotions, your instincts, and all the preconscious BS that happens before rational analysis) to fool you if aren't paying close attention.

In other words, hearts are stupid. That's why we have heads.

Logic or love ?

If you were in a life or death situation with your mother, your spouse and your child, and you could save only one.
Who would you save ?

The logical answer is: your mother. Because you can always remarry and have more children, but you only get one mother.
What if you hate your mother ?
What if your mother has a week to live ?

We are all human and subject to error. We don't always have all the facts and information, even when we think we do. Even using both logic and love together to make a decision may not give you the right answer.
Others may not agree that your decision is right or even fair.
So using logic and love may help to make a decision, the real question is, What decision can you live with ?
The odds are 50/50 no matter how you make you choice, Just flip a coin.

reply to post by Sahabi


the issue is what u dont accept that objective and subjective must b separated totally in ur mind and eyes and moves and realities

objective is to head

subjective is to heart

this is the initial fact as true, then it get mixed a bit for what there cant b but one truth conception

when truth is freedom, then subjective truth is u alone as free that is why u can allow a bit of fanciful freedom by listening to ur heart

objective truth is what u could conceive being the biggest freedom intelligence reason that include everything and anything u see in being constantly free, it is a very serious equation that need principally from u the most neutral possible position of urself while staying true in giving to al right including urself as constant fact

objective and subjective realities must always b separated in conscious minds, what is mixed then out which make one mind right, is what intelligence superiority justify u as free pandositive subjective constant sense out of all
and where ur heart or what u really love justify all constant right sense of all perceived

so what is mixed is to one truth conception, where the heart mean objective existence being true
and where the head mean subjective existence being true, where u recognize being u really out of objective realisation being absolutely right

love is to nothing but nothing is evil to truth, it is delicate equation to deal with

nothing is right only when there is nothing but u, when truth is freedom then there is u alone as free right so relatively nothing too

which also show how it is important to isolate u from all in ur mind totally

truth is freedom, then logically there cant b one freedom perspective, there is always u as free and objective all that through abstraction could be conceived to one freedom all

by isolating u from all right then a conception joining both freedom u and objective else absolutely is possible for truth conception where u could realize urself objectively accordingly as being true one definitely, the reality result of what join u as free sense back and objective free sense the most real, in truth conception as being one true present

love is to nothing bc love as ur heart represent mostly so exclusively u as free out of all totally ur unik entity in absolute terms as constant positive free independant one

nothing is evil to truth bc love is to living

the more u r little so almost nothing since only one individual out sense, the more u r receptive to b through others biggers free sense, so the more u could b living

that is how it is important to isolate what is most true about being u only really out, so ur sense of living through others wont b opposed to truth sense as nothing to

nothing is evil to truth, bc nothing sense wont recognize the truth u must b true to respect objective truth, while what is nothing will always perceived positive objective as a source of free appealing wills

also the best frame in mind, is when one reach to equate truth with objectivity and freedom with subjectivity

this is only after realizing objective perspective being constantly free and subjective sense being constantly true

what is constantly free is true and what is constantly true is free

it is better to consider objective as truth bc truth is very complex out of most superiority intelligence freedom
as it is better to consider subjective as freedom reference bc subjectively u can b just the free sense at its best

Originally posted by Sahabi
"Head or Heart? Should I follow my Logic or Love?," a friend of mine asked me.

After a couple of days connecting with this question,  I came to an answer.

Use logic when it will improve or help your personal life[1]. Use heart when the phrase "for better or worse till death do us part"[2] is an actuality. When heart and logic are unharmonious, choose intuition and the sensation of joyful-happiness. Joyful-Happiness is Intuition's indicator. Do not confuse selfish-happiness or love with joy.

It is my intention and hope that this advice may help someone. If this advice is flawed, please share from your understandings.

May Peace be upon us all.

________________________________________

[1] Right-Hand Path: Do not infringe upon the Free Will of others.

[2] Service To Others: This phrase reflects upon the concepts of acceptance, empathy, caring, helping, dedication, dependability, trust, sacrifice, and faithfulness. This applies to family relationships, intimate relationships, friendships with people, plant, or animal life, and all other relationships. Friend, family, loved one... are you willing to accept them without want for change or control... to put them before yourself and stick it out until the end?

There is no blanket answer to this but what the OP says about following your joy, yeah I agree with that. That is an indicator of intuition that can speed ahead of logic. If you play both options out in your mind and the gut gets messed up or tied up in knots that is a bad sign usually. Or its just fear --you gotta determine which.

reply to post by LunaKat


joy is the most appealing will so easily got from projections then always subjective then nothing to truth then evil to truth always

at least u should have the conscious to know that where u r a joyful sense u owe to all to step back right from all

i found it weird how religious people are convinced that all is to b happy, when all god scripture is exclusively about hard dry labors and torturous ways on cross till death for saving own souls from hell

Originally posted by absolutely
reply to post by LunaKat

 

joy is the most appealing will so easily got from projections then always subjective then nothing to truth then evil to truth always

at least u should have the conscious to know that where u r a joyful sense u owe to all to step back right from all

i found it weird how religious people are convinced that all is to b happy, when all god scripture is exclusively about hard dry labors and torturous ways on cross till death for saving own souls from hell

Sorry I'm having a really hard time with your sentence structure. I didn't say anything about religion.

I am tri-polar

Faithful...I beleive there is an answer or solution available to any situation
Logical... I have been given senses and reason to help discern the world around me
Emotional...I recognize my feelings a feedback mechanism to help me make decisions

I think hope and faith get misconstrued as an emotion. I think they have emotional aspects, but aren't emotions in and of themselves. Why they seem like emotions is because of the strength they posess.

If I can only be one or two of these at anytime, I feel unbalanced, though generally I think the faithful view has been the most beneficial to my life.

reply to post by Stunspot


That is apparently why you cannot see the truth, why you have to ask such a question in the first place. You still work under the misconception that the head knows anything at all. It does not. It cannot ever have all the information it needs to make a correct assessment of much of anything, except maybe crossing the street at an opportune moment. The brain is the seat of switches and flags. The heart is the seat of knowledge and wisdom.

You will learn eventually. This one takes time.

reply to post by CosmicEgg


it is u that mean clearly to reject the value of objective things being objects constancy only bc they truly exist

ur brain has a value objectively that ur heart is not but pointing u out of all in positive term end, the fact that u do not care for what is not ur value say that u do never mean values at all
all what u mean is to b positive and surely through living forms that are constantly fed by powerful else sources

Originally posted by Stunspot
reply to post by CosmicEgg

 

No, that's fundamentally and obviously incorrect. While I certainly can't disprove that humans can obtain information from non-traditional means (I suspect that they can in fact), it's pretty trivial to prove that our emotions and preconceptions are easily misled and flawed. Your inner-self "knows" that the earth is flat and the sun goes around it. Your inner-self "knows" that people who don't look like your family are not as trustworthy as people who do. Your inner-self "knows" that everything bad that happens to you, happens for a reason.

No, you need to always remember that the body within which your mind is encoded is the body of an ape, with a set of perceptions and short-cuts that are appropriate to the context of surviving on an african savanna. And that's ok; it's why we have great eyes, decent ears, and an instinct for socializing. But it's also why it's really easy for the older parts of your mind (your emotions, your instincts, and all the preconscious BS that happens before rational analysis) to fool you if aren't paying close attention.

In other words, hearts are stupid. That's why we have heads.

Good post. I'd only add that the heart pumps blood to the only sub-assembly within the whole that actually does any pondering at all - the brain. And that this is the only thing that the heart can do.

"Head versus Heart" is only a metaphor for the human being's capacity for dispassionate versus impassioned reaction to externally presented opportunity or conflict. Our culture is deeply in love with impassioned responses, and it's easy to see why. Books, movies, music, political rhetoric, and the wildly skewed versions of our own history roil with tales of impassioned people emerging heroically victorious against the calculated evils that they confronted. Les Miserables, and all that soppy slop. The truth - regardless of the event under examination - isn't anything at all like the official narratives, but that gooey impassioned heroic stuff is what makes us weak in the knees.

Hell, look at how tragic this GOP primary disaster is being, as the base wanders in an almost comedic quest for the "one", using their "hearts" to find the Great Right Hope that will lead them out of the desert that their last "heart choice" led the entire party into. You want to see Heart-over-Head thinking? Go check out the GOP primary sideshow for a few weeks, and do some easy research in how it's been going since it all started some months ago. It's got half of the party wanting to wring the necks of the other half over the craziness that's been on full display. Obama may not be popular with most folks right now, but half of the GOP is terrified of the presidential field their being presented with. And that field was chosen and/or approved by the "hearts" of the GOP conservative base. To every independent observer - and to most sober-minded conservative observers - these impassioned conservative "hearts" are on their way to literally shredding their own political movement. So much for "heart over head" wisdom.

We are responsible for what we choose to think, do, and become as human beings. Blindly following ones emotions and/or visceral inclinations is a choice, not a deference to the guidance of divine providence. That kind of magical thinking put Custer right into the the battle @ Little Big Horn, surrounded by thousands of NA warriors who probably couldn't believe that anyone in command of anything could be so stupid. We celebrate visceral certainty when it works, but we don't compare the disproportionately low number of specific instances when that kind of "heart" response works in real life against the overwhelming number of instances when it doesn't work, or even when it directly causes a complete disaster to unfold.

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't bother trying to teach people how to think? Maybe I should just start taking advantage of how vulnerable most people really are when confronted with the prospect of have "magic" occur in their lives? I'd bet that there's some serious money a person could make from driving people's hearts with a very shrewed and dispassionate "head". Like in politics, where it is the standard operating protocol. Or in war, where it's the psychological basis for getting otherwise intelligent and mentally fit men to give their lives for their country, even after it's become obvious to literally everyone else that the dying isn't protecting the nation they love at all.

Believing that the "heart knows" is a death trap. Period.

There seems to be some misunderstanding about what is heart and head mean. You can say it's about passion or dispassion, but that's not really it. Logic that's bound up in ego is every bit as misguided as what you call passion. It is indeed passion! That's how we get so much science wrong. It's all about ego.

Likewise, when you speak of heart you assume that this is blind passion. Not at all. The application of pure love to any question will immediately illuminate the truth, whether that truth is liked or not. It can even seem cold and callous, but in fact it is anything but that. You are all missing the point because you have a flawed view of heart vs head. Until you have found yourselves, you will not comprehend these "definitions", for want of a better word.

Take time to learn now. Drop your ego at the door.

reply to post by CosmicEgg


you are wrong, heart is always u truth is noone, truth is objective existence superiority realms as the exclusive existing fact, u r too far to admit what is true from what u r too used to take truth for granted as living from its results
but sorry when truth is there cant b but it

Originally posted by absolutely
reply to post by CosmicEgg

 

you are wrong, heart is always u truth is noone, truth is objective existence superiority realms as the exclusive existing fact, u r too far to admit what is true from what u r too used to take truth for granted as living from its results
but sorry when truth is there cant b but it

Sorry but can I have that in plain English please? Punctuation, full words, functional grammar...you know the thing. The text, as it is, is illegible.

reply to post by CosmicEgg


on the contrary it is ur sentences that are not illegible since you are the one that is obviously running for ideas elections while u were rejected by all the posters here including me, im only one rejection among many to ur pretenses

I'm going to assume that you're posting here in response to my post, since you're addressing points I brought up.

Originally posted by CosmicEgg
There seems to be some misunderstanding about what is heart and head mean. You can say it's about passion or dispassion, but that's not really it. Logic that's bound up in ego is every bit as misguided as what you call passion. It is indeed passion! That's how we get so much science wrong. It's all about ego.

Most people who've dedicated their entire lives to a single issue (exactly the kind of people such scientists are) are impassioned in their thinking when confronted with challenges to what has become the basis of their entire effort to date. These kinds of people may talk logic, or may have applied logic in some sense or other at times, but when any human being devotes his/her life to a very narrow area of expertise (which is the way of literally all scientists, physicists, and especially those crippled by the letters PhD nailed onto the ends of their names) the impact on their capacity for disinterested observation is devastating.

Just like Evangelicals that will invent scenarios where Adam and Eve are riding dinosaurs when finally forced to accept the fact that dinosaurs did - in fact - exist, any such extremely devoted human being will go to extraordinary lengths to fight for the life of their most cherished assertions. We're seeing it now in the field of Theoretical Physics. All kinds of foolishness being declared in order to somehow allow the particle itself to be the unit base of material existence, when all the most recent breakthrough indications suggest otherwise. Just like Baptists running a Creation Museum, these "scientists" are throwing all kinds of crap against the wall to see if any of it will distract the mob from how badly their core beliefs are faring under the scrutiny of cutting edge technology. After all, a college degree (regardless of how intense the curriculum) doesn't strip a human being of its subjective - and very human - nature. No one ever overcomes being human.

Likewise, when you speak of heart you assume that this is blind passion. Not at all. The application of pure love to any question will immediately illuminate the truth, whether that truth is liked or not. It can even seem cold and callous, but in fact it is anything but that. You are all missing the point because you have a flawed view of heart vs head. Until you have found yourselves, you will not comprehend these "definitions", for want of a better word.

Nice try, but the phrases you use betray your emotion in your examination of my own capacity for disinterest in this matter. This forum is lousy with this version of non-defense from promoters of vague esoteric notions that can never be adequately defended, and mainly because they clash so profoundly with what we've all come to know as essential reality.

You are all missing the point because you have a flawed view of heart vs head. Until you have found yourselves, you will not comprehend these "definitions", for want of a better word.

I present very specific examples of my view in easy to examine scenarios (some being played out presently right on our TV sets from day to day) and yet you try to dismiss me as being ignorant of what you "know" by way of your heart, without a sliver of direct example. If my use of direct inference isn't allowable, then what criteria do you believe is valid? My heart versus your heart, and a deathcage match between our two hearts to see whose is more pure and....I don't know...whatever it is that you think makes your heart better and wiser than my head? Seriously? You think that's any way to examine a premise?

Give me something I can look at and compare/contrast with what I gave you in established versions of human judgment. If you can't, then consider why it is that you can't.

By the way you have no idea who I am, or what I may have learned that bases my view of this topic. I accept that you believe your view is right - maybe even the only version of right, who knows - but my thoughts on this subject aren't threatened by yours. Mine have nothing to do with what you may know or may have experienced in your corporeal life. My perspective isn't affected by what anyone else claims to know.

Take time to learn now. Drop your ego at the door.

Okay, this was the cheapest and most sophomoric part of your reply, so I thought I'd showcase it. Again, you have no idea who I am, or what I know. Not any idea. I don't know you, and I'd never declare you to be ego-driven or belligerently ignorant. What makes you flame like that? Is it insecurity? Is it a little ego bruising of your own? Why would you - after reading the specifics of my post - feel that you have the authority to tell me to "take the time to learn now" and "drop your ego at the door".

Think about it.

Wow. First, absolutely, I appreciate that my text is not illegible - therefore, legible - so please make yours make some sort of sense.

Second, NorEaster, I was addressing the thread, not you personally or specifically. But I must say that offering tv scenarios as direct evidence of anything is beyond silly. I do not watch tv or go to films so I really wouldn't know what might be "played out" there, nor is such tosh of any particular relevance here. We're discussing "head or heart", not your favorite soap opera. You do, however, write with a great deal of ego there in your text. You make a lot of sweeping statements as though they are gospel simply because you accept it as such.

Following one's heart is not pandering to highly subjective emotions. Following the heart can only be done after considerable meditation, purification, and deliberate self-knowledge. It doesn't just happen. It is far greater than simply weighing what one might read in print or see on some random screen. Things become very simple after such an endeavor. External validation is unnecessary. You still need that validation. You demand it. In that alone I know a great deal about you. Try to live one day without your ego. You will be amazed at what you learn.

Originally posted by CosmicEgg
Wow. First, absolutely, I appreciate that my text is not illegible - therefore, legible - so please make yours make some sort of sense.

jumping from a word abuse to give to urself credibility of being prove by itself the whole point of what your free will is to absolute fallacy, it explains ur free justifications use being all of lies, when lies are nothing to existence

only evil poweful life is what support free individual lies that know how to suit itself invention from its own living sense through

only liars pretend making anything and even sense, from what u must constantly invent the constancy of ur pretenses
honest people mister know what matter so respect whatever is objectively existing as they know too how they matter from being just present as existing facts too