Reason, Reality, and Love

I found myself wondering about the notion of 'challenging thoughts' that I hear about in the context of CBT. I was thinking that if I am challenging a thought I am presumably offering a better alternative way of thinking. It's not some willy-nilly challenge, but a challenge to be more reasonable, reality based, and loving.

 

These three terms, reason, reality, and love, seem to form an important triad. 

Reason is the basis by which human beings make their way in the world. All action is 'reasonable' in the sense that all action is done for reasons. When we say that an action seems 'reasonable' or 'rational' we really mean that there are good and intelligible reasons for doing it. When we call someone 'unreasonable' or 'irrational' we really mean they are acting for bad reasons, or reasons that we cannot perceive or understand. 

Good reasons generally are reasons that are in touch with 'reality'. This certainly means the reality of how things are laid out in the physical world: i.e. it is reasonable to not jump off a cliff, because that cliff is really there, and I will really die. But acting in accordance with reality also means acting in relation to 'real' imperatives that we can experience in our bodily felt-sense of our situations. I am describing a process that is both thinking and feeling, in which we are able to make contact with our sense of what is right or true for ourselves in that moment. 'No, I do not want to take that job after all' or 'Yes, I do need to move.' This does not mean we will not be ambivalent or conflicted over our feelings. But it means that we are not infinitely malleable, capable of imposing on ourselves whatever form we please. We need to learn to listen to ourselves, our bodies, and our sense of what is called for in a given situation. 

 

This is reality: the full bodied engagement with intelligible situations involving things and others unfolding in time. 

This way of being-in-reality is best facilitated through love. I can find many instances in 'wisdom traditions' regarding the relationship between seeing clearly and love. I can find evidence in music and art. I could think of MLK speaking of how love is the key to the higher reality, or, better yet, love is the higher reality.

But a case could also be made for the relationship between love and reality through polyvagal theory. We now understand that if a human being is feeling unsafe, they become activated in primordial ways that dis-attune them from the intricacies and nuances of reality. When we feel threatened reality becomes radically simple. This makes sense, because in moments of threat we are answering very simple questions: Do I need to run / kill / freeze / fawn right now? In these moments we are (neurologically and phenomenologically) less able to formulate words and distinguish voices, we re more inclined to interpret faces as hostile, and are generally stripped of our capacity for nuanced or careful engagement.

Love, compassion, care, these are of the essence of safety. And unless we feel safe, we are physiologically incapable of thinking clearly. Love is therefore a necessary part of thinking and feeling in ways that are reality-near.

I have said a single thing:

For life to move from crude reasons to real reasons requires the work of love and safety.