Continuing my series on integration I want to look at two common, and often exclusive, approaches to life. I may not be using these terms precisely, but I will try to make clear what I mean.
By the intuitive I am referring to responding to life and life situations in a spontaneous, non-analytical way. This is when we make a judgment based on what we might call a sense rather than through a process of reason. At time what we call intuitive might be simply very quick reasoning, but other times it could be a feeling or some other personal, not easily explained understanding of something.
I would include as intuitive spiritual experiences such as well. Someone might claim (rightly or wrongly) that God is directing them. However this is experienced, it is occurring outside of analytical reason based on facts or other external and identifiable sources.
By the intellectual, I am referring to analytical reasoning. This would include to conclusion drawn by careful study, but also normal mental processes. This is when we think through something – whether over a long or short time - before we make a conclusion.
These two approaches are related to what I was discussing regarding the subjective and the objective. I hope I was able to show that in order to effectively know God's Truth, we need them to work together. Similarly with the intuitive and the intellectual.
What make these two approaches difficult to integrate is that people who tend to lean more one way than the other have trouble accepting the other approach as valid. The intuitive see things more from their hearts: the place of desire and emotion. While the intellectual does so from the mind: the place of ideas and reasoning. To the intuitive, the mind is cold and uncaring. To the intellectual, the heart is deceptive and sentimental.
Next time (after the next TorahBytes message) we will look why the two approaches need to work together.
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