Korpo
On justification
by
, 1st January 2012 at 10:46 AM (65799 Views)
If you ever want to know what is the most dangerous tendency of the human mind, my vote goes to justification. You could alternatively call it rationalization, the ability to create a story in your mind that justifies your behaviour.
Yet has there ever been a bad guy not feeling justified?
The impulses from the soul can be straightforward. Emotional impulses, a feeling of dread or squeasiness, something from your guts telling you that something is not right. Justification coats this over, ignores this and marches on regardless. This is the process that separates us from our souls. We learn to ignore the impulses from the soul.
Justification roots in our beliefs about the world, and our beliefs are mental phenomena. We then construct stories reflecting our beliefs guiding our actions, and in this way our entire course of action is mostly led by the thinking mind. Rationalization is essentially an argument of self and soul where you tell yourself why something is so good (according to your beliefs) that you should do it. The opposite of this process would be to listen inside and notice how you feel about it.
Watching for emerging stories in your mind can be a useful tool for identifying such rationalization in its earlier stages. See for example when you construct a story how somebody else is so bad as a preparation for taking one action or another. How many people have told themselves "Everybody does it." or "If I don't do it, somebody else will."? But the way of the soul is often the road less-travelled.
Justification and rationalization come in many guises, too many to listen them here. What can be done? In my opinion the light of awareness is needed here. The unravelling of these knots begins when you become aware of telling yourself a story. Look at it. Realize the lucidity of the moment, that you have woken from the mind asleep to itself to awareness of the contents of the thinking mind, and use this awareness to see what is there. You might find justification and rationalization at work. And in seeing them for what they are you start to undo them.