* Experience suggests that emotion leads and the intellect follows. (the fact?)

* Yet, Our mind thinks it is in charge! (the fiction?)

Consider this... Although our mind thinks is has free will, it is instead simply conforming to deep seated mood ? our emotional will so to speak, over which we have no control. This 'will', our emotion and mood, stimulates the mind to rationalize our emotional experience and mood into thoughts which it can then reflect upon. If emotion is high, we 'lug' the thoughts it evoked around with us. The problem with this is that these thoughts feed back into the emotions and a vicious circle ensues. If, like most other animals we had a much smaller brain we would be unable to do this and so our emotional turmoil would pass as soon as the stimulus that evoked it ceased.

Our mind can notice phenomenon as well. How it interprets and thinks about what it notices depends on what is at stake for us emotionally. The less our emotional stake in the observation, the more neutral ? 'objective' ? our observation will be. Of course if we have no emotional stake, interest wanes and we are less likely to notice the phenomenon in the first place. Kind of a conundrum, eh?

Belief ties into this process. The mind adopts the rational(ization) that agrees with its master, i.e., our emotion. Thus, for example, some of us are attracted to 'liberal' views while others are attracted to 'conservative' views. Each in accord with their emotional comfort zone.

One 'solution' to our mind caused problem is knowing what the mind is doing in its relationship with emotion / mood. This is not unlike know how a magician does his most impressive trick. Once we know how it works it can't captivate us as strongly. The illusion is broken, or at least weakened