Our brain is one of the most amazing gifts we have and at the same time one of the least understood. We all think but still most of us dont know how to think when solving different kinds of problems. Allthough we think on different ways, and we all do this, we sometimes use less efficient or simply wrong thinking patterns for solving our problems.
The big difference in thinking is between our rational and intuïtive thinking, first of all we should try to find the differences between them without falling in the pit traps of new age concepts. There is no superior thinking, only thinking wich is more appropriate for the moment, the kind of problem. We all think intuitively at all the time, it's clearly impossible to think about everything you do when you walk through the house or drive a car, ... we would loose our head if we would try, look at the movement of the leg in slow motion and you will be amazed by the flawless coördination which is happening everytime again. It's not only fysical where our intuition is calling the shots, also intellectual our intuition is busy at all the time, most obvious with processing new information coming from the senses, a proces that we cannot follow let alone steer. We use our ratio for the intellectual problems, if we have a problem we will try to fix the problem by looking at what caused the problem, trying to repair this flaw and hoping that the problem is fixed otherwise we have to think some more and try to fix an other possible cause. Aristotels found this scientific method consisting of 6 steps: describing as vage as possible the problem, describing potential hypotheses about what caused the problem, designing experiments to check all the hypotheses, then we predict the result, make our experiments, write down the the results and try to come to a conclusion for an answer of our problem. For mechanical problems which are not too complex and consist of individual seperate parts, our system works perfect. Although some of these mechanical problems are sometimes difficult to solve cause we make a mistake in the first step, we can never really observe the environment and the information with our ratio, we are not looking, we are searching for something and this is more or less circumscribed so it's based on some premises, we will observe selective which reinforces itself cause everything which fits wich our premises will jump in our perception and what doesnt seem to fit will disappear, so we will perceive what we believe allready.
The real problem starts with the complex, organic problems, where everything is interconnected and influencing one part has consequences for other parts. For this kind we will get stuck and get frustrated most of the time with our model, we will need a different moddel. Here our intuition comes to the rescue, like we saw before, our intuition is working at all the time, it's not resting or out of job when we are thinking with our ratio, it is still busy, only we dont know what it is doing, we can block it. Our intuition is making lots of different connections in different parts of our brain with completely different content and our ratio is more highlighting one area on max capacity, but still even when our ratio is operating at full power, our subconscious is still there, it's still making connections between different parts of our brain, but cannot catapult this information into our consciousnes. We need an open, relaxed mind-set for to be in touch with our subconscious, without being focused on finishing a job or finding the clou or answer asap, we need to feel involvement with what we are doing and have the unschakeble faith that we will find the answer, sooner or later. Involvement with what you are doing is expressed most clearly by enthousiasm, you want to do something good without fixatinig on how to do it or why, inner involvement leads to enthousiasm.
When we are in a patient, relax mood we feel in touch with our subconscious and will handle most activities in synchronisation with nature around us, have thoughtfull insights, funny answers in conversations, so one big happy world, why do we need our ratio then? The big advantage of our ratio is to find concepts, examine the implications, to put new found information and insights into words so that we can use this knowledge for similar occasions and can pas it on to people around us, it's only thanks to our ratio that we dont have to rediscover, with our intuition, how to make fire again in every generation. We can bring insights into words so that it becomes general knowledge, amazing, the strenght of our ratio is to put vague feelings, loosely connected insights into one connected, proven, logical concept. So we dont have to play with all the possibilities, we can find the solution for a similar problem very effective and very fast. The strength of our ratio, to bring insights into concepts by words, is also it's weakness. We dont think in words, we are reasoning, we are thinking in a fixed timeframe, we can think too fast or too slow so that words loose there meaning. With our ratio we are reasoning in a fixed time frame but with our intuition we can truly think much faster or slower, if you look at a picture, you can see much more in 3 seconds then you can explain in words in 3 minutes, so our subconscious is working fundamently different and our ratio is a nessesary ad-on to communicate our thoughts. The rules of reason and reasoning are not made for to think with them, they are made for the art of conversation, thanks to these logical premises we can articulate our thoughts on an efficient way and can we have a conversation in depth without unnessery discussions. Our rational thinking happens in words so we are reasoning and not thinking cause we are not thinking factual but with regard to facts. Our subcounscious thinking happens on different ways, we think visual, in sound, in movement and abstract, it's working at all the time and is in effect calling the shots. For our motoric skills we are completely dependend on our subconscious, thinking about what you are doing when you are doing it has a negative effect. Also our thinking depends completely on our subconscious, we cannot generate ideas in our conscious but our consciousness can determine which ideas are passed on. The state of our consciousness
determines how our brain is working, only in a relaxed, patient mood can there be a good trasmittion of ideas and insights from the subconscious to our conscious. In the same time can our consciousnes be a result of subconscious thoughts, it can pss on some information from the senses that we are not aware but influences our intentions for example, some smells wich give assosiations of good feelings and make you feel better and have more optimistic conscious thoughts.
i found a lot of these concepts explained brilliantly in the book "hare brain, tortoise mind by guy claxton", i can recommend this book since it is going much deeper into the content.
