Your Logical Mind is a Trap

The Computing Machine in Our Minds

Our logical mind is just a part, one part, of our mortal human brain. It has certain specific functions — for example, it receives impulses from other parts of our brain, and then it performs certain actions in a certain way, based on those impulses. All it's capable of doing is performing certain types of thinking. This "thinking" happens as the biological processes operating in this part of our brain decide which thought impulses get precedence over others. We call this "logic". It's based on particular rules, which this part of our brain uses to decide whether things are "logical" (those things which obey its rules), or not.

This is one part of our brain. And our brain is just one part of our being. And our being is just one very, very small part of the universe.

However in modern society, this logical part of our brain is deified (that is, it's treated as if it's a god). Human logical thinking is seen as infallible — as the supreme judge of what can be correct and true, and what cannot be. We take the results we get from a narrow set of rules as processed by a very small (compared to all the universe) calculating machine. And then we assume those results apply to all of reality. As if these highly specific (and highly limited) rules of the logical part of our brain can determine with complete authority whether something can possibly exist, or not, and be true, or not.

Into the Trap

Our human capacity for logical thought is meant to be a useful natural process, which helps us to make decisions and to function in life. However, when it becomes overrated and overused, a situation develops which is so extremely limiting, and so difficult to get out of, as to actually constitute a trap.

And this is not a small issue — most people in modern Western society are caught inside this trap.

Once you're inside this trap, the trap itself (i.e. the logical part of your mind) defines the rules by which anything can be true and correct, or not. It even defines which things can possibly exist and be real, and which can not. This means that anything which might exist, but lies outside the trap, is forever off-limits. By the definition of what you use to determine if something can be true (i.e. your logical mind), anything which lies outside this very narrow set of rules does not even exist.

The hardest trap to deliberately escape from is the type where you don't even know that you're trapped. Because there can be no deliberate attempt to escape if there is no knowledge that you're inside a trap in the first place. This is the state of most of the citizens of modern Western society today.

Finding the Way Out

Once you're inside this kind of trap, almost the only way you can ever escape is unintentionally. This is because your "intention" itself, i.e. what you decide based on your logical thinking, is entirely encased within the trap.

One way this can happen is when something highly unusual just comes along in someone's life: Either it happens to them personally, or perhaps it happens to someone they know well enough to trust. Something which breaks their existing set of rules about what is logically possible. This happens when people have various types of spiritual experiences that cannot be explained by "normal" means. It's not something that happens to everyone. Especially in modern Western high-tech society — interestingly, once you go outside our own society and look at other counties and cultures, these kinds of experiences are much more common. This is even true within Christianity itself. Many people have commented that miracles happen more often in non-Western countries.

Many Christians have also asked me why miracles and signs and wonders are so prevalent in China, but not so evident in the West.

However not everyone gets the luxury of having such an experience, at least not one that's dramatic enough to cause a significant shift in their view of life. In fact, these kinds of things happen all the time (like small "coincidences"), but they are usually unnoticed, and/or assigned to random chance, or some other explanation which fits in with one's existing logical world view.

But what if nothing like that happens to you? What if you don't witness any miracles, or experience anything which absolutely definitely can't be explained by normal means — what then?

Escape!

In that case, only way to deliberately escape from such a trap is to deliberately consider (and allow for) the possibility that there can be things outside the trap — that is, outside the realms of what you're used to thinking of as logically possible. This point right here is the key to this whole thing. You have to consciously, deliberately, and logically allow for the possibility of things that you previously thought (and perhaps still currently think) are logically impossible. And probably also physically and/or "scientifically" impossible.

Even to do this, you have to be told (or learn somehow) that it's possible and useful to do this. The web page that you're reading right now is telling you that it is both very possible and very useful. If you'd never come across (or discovered somehow) anything explaining that you can do this, and that it's a good idea (so you can get out of the trap that you're otherwise permanently stuck in), it would seem like a silly thing to do. An "illogical" thing to do, by definition. Almost an insane thing to do, since we often equate sanity and logic as if they are the same thing.

Which is of course completely backwards — people who are literally insane think that they're frogs, or something. In other words, they have a massive overconfidence in what their own minds tell them is true and real, and what isn't. The only way to break out of a mind trap like that is to deliberately allow for, and look into, things that you currently (and "logically") believe are impossible.

If you can do this, you've just taken your first big step into a much larger world...

See also: The Two Types of Science, What is Christianity About?