#rational mind

over-analysing and rationalizing own feelings in such a way that they don't have to be felt (avoidance)

and thus not being able to differentiate between the real initial feelings and the cognitively altered ones

“Churchianity,” by its very definition, needs to speak with absolutes and certainties. It feels its job is to make absolute truth claims and feels very fragile when it cannot. Then, we followers think we must be certain about things we are not really certain of at all (which is the beginning of the loss of faith)! This is a similar predicament that politicians experience, needing to project an image of self-assurance and confidence, even though we all know they’re faking it just like the rest of us. As Marcus Borg (1942-2015) and others suggest in The Emerging Christian Way, absolute correctness is the largely impossible task institutional Christianity has taken upon itself. [1] Organized religion is now crumbling beneath this impossible and false goal, it seems to me."

“We can only meet God in the present moment…We choose whether or not to live in the present moment…We can only make decisions in the present moment.  We can only enjoy sights and sounds in the present moment.  We can only love or hate, sing or cry, in the present moment.  Of all the possible points in time, only the present moment is available for repentance.

The present moment may appear to be tiny in duration - so much so that the human minds thinks it hardly exists at all - but in depth it is beyond infinite.  Actually, it has no shape or form.  That’s one of the problems.  There is nothing to measure here, and that really infuriates the mind since measurement is what the mind is good at.  In some senses the present moment is of almost no duration.  In other ways, it is eternal life.  Whichever we choose, it is nevertheless the only space within which we can operate.  It’s odd that we don’t spend more time in the present moment than we do.   Unfortunately, the mind blocks the availability of the present moment whenever it has a chance to do so.

The mind, the rational mind, cannot trust the present moment since it cannot control it.  Of course, we are rational beings and we need our rational mind, the forehead, the cerebral cortex.  But, regarding the present moment, the mind is almost always at enmity with it.  The mind cannot control the present moment, the time during which things arise, so the mind pretends that it does not exist.  This causes a person…to wait for the mind to absorb an event, which by then has become an event in the past, before he or she is allowed to experience it.  One of the important functions of prayer is to bring us into, and to assist us to remain in, the present moment.”

~Archimandrite Meletios Webber