The neuroscientist David Eagleman described the brain as a team of rivals. Perhaps there are clues to the integration that we seek found in this metaphor he borrowed from Doris Kerns Goodwin's book about Lincoln's cabinet called A Team of Rivals. Maybe even some insight about what it means to have the mind of Christ.
The different parts of our brain each have their own agenda, sound familiar? Pleasure cravings, reasoned responses mixed up with vanity and concerns about long term implications, all these thoughts can be triggered by a single stimuli. While there are issues of nurture that go into how this conversation takes place, there is something essentially human about this experience, this is how we were created.
Another way to think about this is "collaboration by difference." It appears that we were meant to entertain or welcome the different agendas that we find in ourselves and our community. There is a creative tension found in this conversation. Sure it's messy and slow, but it's also creative and respectful. Sounds like the way God works with us.
For most of us this collaboration is going to start off sounding like an argument. Because we're so quick to judge and dismiss we are not very good listeners, to ourselves or others. Usually we elect a bully to preside over our brain's
cabinet of rivals. We give the job to a part of ourselves that is decisive and self assured. The result is that the input from our bodies and much of our creative, playful self is shut down at every meeting, so that eventually these more contemplative parts of our mind just stop coming to the meetings or begin to simply rubber stamp the President's agenda rather then get bullied.
Having the mind of Christ might sound like a respectful
conversation between differing agendas with the final result of joyful agreement. Like the Trinity, perhaps.
The different parts of our brain each have their own agenda, sound familiar? Pleasure cravings, reasoned responses mixed up with vanity and concerns about long term implications, all these thoughts can be triggered by a single stimuli. While there are issues of nurture that go into how this conversation takes place, there is something essentially human about this experience, this is how we were created.
Another way to think about this is "collaboration by difference." It appears that we were meant to entertain or welcome the different agendas that we find in ourselves and our community. There is a creative tension found in this conversation. Sure it's messy and slow, but it's also creative and respectful. Sounds like the way God works with us.
For most of us this collaboration is going to start off sounding like an argument. Because we're so quick to judge and dismiss we are not very good listeners, to ourselves or others. Usually we elect a bully to preside over our brain's
cabinet of rivals. We give the job to a part of ourselves that is decisive and self assured. The result is that the input from our bodies and much of our creative, playful self is shut down at every meeting, so that eventually these more contemplative parts of our mind just stop coming to the meetings or begin to simply rubber stamp the President's agenda rather then get bullied.
Having the mind of Christ might sound like a respectful
conversation between differing agendas with the final result of joyful agreement. Like the Trinity, perhaps.