MY BRAIN IS FRIED. I've come to South Carolina from New Mexico to be with my sick mother, who's in a nursing home. I am exhausted from moving from place to place: from guest room to retreat center to housesit to campground. I don't know where to go next, and I can't make a rational decision. I'm standing at a gas station, pumping gas into a vehicle that's been driving around in circles for months.
I close my eyes. I ask the universe for a sign. When I open them, I am staring at the sunset orange wall of the little station. It boasts a large mural of a desert-dwelling bird never seen in this part of the world. A roadrunner, racing westward.
Thank you, universe. It's time to go home.
While researching this article, I searched a used book Chinese wisdom. Instead, I found another book, abandoned on the arm of the chair I happened to sit down in: How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I'm used to this. I wasn't surprised. I bought it.
Lehrer is known for his expertise in neuroscience, but his book includes an exhortation for us to understand that decisions should not be made through logic alone. He states:
"If it weren't for our emotions, reason wouldn't exist at all. Not only are these dichotomies (of logic versus intuition) false, they're destructive. There is no universal solution to the problem of decision-making. The real world is just too complex. As a result, natural selection endowed us with a brain that is enthusiastically pluralist."
Here, I enthusiastically share some traditional, time-tested tools that can help you make choices when logic fails.
SYNCHRONICITY
Carl Jung defined synchronicity as "circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." It is a psychologically meaningful link between an internal event, such as a thought, image, or dream, and one or more external events occurring simultaneously.
This story is from the November/December 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the November/December 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.