Many centuries ago there was a Greek philosopher who lived on
Aegean Sea and wanted to go to Carthage. He was a very well educated professor of logic, so he decided he should do very thing he taught his students. Hmmm….What was it?Have you ever heard you are what you think? Well, ok then, I'm a Cadillac. :>). Nah…that's not kind of thinking I talking about. What do you really think you are? Hmm…Just how organized and orderly are your thoughts? How straight is your thinking? How clean are your thoughts? Uh oh…now I've stopped teaching and gone to meddling. :>)
You see, there are certain mental patterns of thoughts that invade thinking of almost everyone, even most genius of people. Negative emotions, beliefs, passions, and habits all become entangled in these patterns.
Sometimes you discover habits you would really like to correct. Sometimes you are strongly tempted to do wrong. And, then like a bug caught in a spider web you start kicking and fighting to get free.
What is happening? Your conscious will has found itself in opposition with your imagination, or emotions. And you feel fangs of that black widow spider trying to suck blood out of you. The more you kick, tighter that web gets and deeper those fangs go.
Ok, hot shot, so what do I do?
Well, I'm glad you asked. Some people just give up and we all know what black widow does to bug that gives up, right?
The human analogy of that is a mental torture. Other people learn to use power of their subconscious mind and they get to eat spider. That sounds tasty, uh?
We know that a bug may not be able to keep from being trapped in a spider web. And, once he is caught, it's pretty much history for that bug. But, we humans have absolute control over spider webs (thought patterns) that entrap us.
Because, we don't have to be trapped by our thoughts and can free ourselves from any undesirable thought pattern. But, to free ourselves we must use reason, in other words our logic.
Ah!! But, here's rub.
We don't use reason alone. One of fallacies of our thinking is to assume we always use logic. Not so.
In reality every conscious decision is result of what we want to do. We make our own decisions.
When we are reasoning with our logic, we have ability to reach conclusions that are most favorable to strong inner urges of our subconscious mind. And this ability is present in everyone, even smartest of people.
I'm getting there…I didn't forget him…:>)
I know, you want to know about our professor? Well, remember he wanted to go to Carthage. So, he studied reasons he should go and reasons he should not go. What he discovered was this; that for every reason as to why he should go, he discovered as many reasons he should not go.
