Limiting Aspects of the Rational Mind
Barriers: Blocks and Filters
Our rational minds grow extremely powerful from our physical world experiences and our responses to them. Think about the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years where we interact with the world around us. We experience, we react and we remember. Once we have explored certain ideas we move on to new lessons, new experiences. How we react to these is dependent in part on how we reacted to other similar experiences in the past or experiences with similar elements and our memory of them. Of course, it is also dependent on mitigating elements in our programming and our nature. During our early years, this leads us to develop preconceptions, beliefs and the like as our young and highly inexperienced mind attempts to interpret our experiences. Truth, per say, does not factor into this equation, the only thing that matters is how we see the world from our perspective.
We have a rational mind that develops from our experiences. Out of the myriad of information, across the many levels of awareness we perceive, we begin to build the house that is our rational mind. The first years of experiences go into the development of the rational mind itself, much like wood, lumber and other materials go into the making of a home (this analogy is one we will use again). Our rational mind develops, through our experiences, to be able to form a basis of interaction and in time, communication with the world around us.
While our experiences continue to shape our rational mind, and to a certain extent our memories, it changes at a far slower rate as we live our lives. Though significant development of the house itself happens early in life, renovations are always possible. We are all capable of making renovations to our rational mind; however, one should consider assistance when core beliefs or highly charged emotional issues are involved. The rational mind effectively encompasses our entire awareness by capturing our attention and focusing it without. We do not even notice this mind developing as it does not exist until it has sufficient experiences to start connecting the dots, so to speak. We enjoy it, as we learn to focus on the physical world around us it helps us to connect to it.
While we delve more fully into the physical aspects of our existence, our rational mind grows more complex and takes an increasingly strong hold on our awareness. We use it to move around, to interact and assimilate experiences. We do not realize how much control we turn over to our rational mind as it develops before we have the knowledge to understand and influence its development. Inevitably, we allow it to make decisions for us without the barest thought.
Once the house, our rational mind, has a foundation and much of the structure is firmly in place, how we respond to situations, what experiences we attract and so forth are a result of how the “house” was constructed. This is why our experiences can create flaws in our mind, such as blocks against certain experiences and various other kinds of barriers and filters. We may even be aware of some of the blocks and filters and that they affect our lives. We create blocks when we have strong reactions to or fears from experiences, ones that result in contradictions, conflicts, adverse future outcomes or a reality the mind cannot resolve or chooses not to deal with. These choices are not arbitrary; they are the result of our experiences.
Blocks can form against a memory, an event, a particular physical object or even a concept. The rational mind cannot ignore reality even when it cannot understand or comprehend it, though it can isolate it from our conscious mind. There are countless ways to accomplish this through blocking memories or awareness of things or concepts. Some of the ways the rational mind accomplishes include burying memories, creating false virtual thoughts including memories, thoughts that block the true memory or by strengthening false or opposing arguments against a concept or memories. Remember, experiences program our rational mind, and our interpretations are not always accurate so the mind has had flaws from its beginning.
Our young minds do not yet understand how to interpret experiences in a balanced, "rational" way, yet despite this lack of knowledge, the developing rational mind continues to interpret experiences. Understanding how the rational mind deals with and integrates new experiences is beneficial as it plays a significant role in how it develops.
When we encounter a new experience, our mind strives to connect it to previous experiences, to be able to interpret and deal with it. The mind uses the thought forms and reaction sets from previous experiences to interpret and respond to new ones. We will get into thought forms in upcoming essays and a reaction set is a collection of reactions to our experiences that that share some type of commonality. This commonality could be based on the situation, an attribute, a concept or some combination of the three. It is the nature of thoughts to connect synergistically. Our mind affects the nature of the thought and determines our awareness of it. Our rational mind processes all information prior to determining of what we are consciously aware. This is why our minds can almost immediately blank out all memory of horrific experiences.
The mind seeks to have no gaps, to be complete and consistent within its own terms of reference. When we have a new experience, the mind interprets it based on our previous experiences. When no previous experiences exists, it uses its imagination to create a virtual construct to fill in gap connecting related thoughts based on commonalities even when the connectivity to the experience is very tenuous. If these connection are strong enough or the emotions manifested by the thought the new thought will be sustained. This is how we come to believe in things that simply are not the case, as the mind can create commonality that seem to defy logically reasoning and appear to be based on unrelated thoughts.
There are countless ways that commonalities between thoughts create links between them or create virtual thoughts. Examples would be similarities in emotional responses, context, concepts and physical elements such as colour, shape, and smell of objects. An object is anything with a physical element, hence even a person is an object. Subsequent experiences can modify our thinking about earlier experiences, however we do not always know if what we think is the case actually is what is occurring. As a result, a great many virtual thoughts that remain within our rational mind. Nor can we be sure whether our thoughts, ideas or memories are real or imaginary as virtual thoughts can seem real to us even when they are simply creations of our own minds. The experiences we have had, our feelings and the energies around us at the time contribute to how our rational mind interprets them. Again, the truth or validity of our thoughts has no direct bearing on how our rational mind interprets experiences.
The result of the way our rational mind works is inconsistency. We have touched on blocks, how they create obstacles to our awareness, and how we can become blocked from exposing ourselves to, or reacting with strong emotions to situations that resemble painful past experiences. In reality, we are not generally aware of our initial reaction to our surroundings as our rational mind must experience and react to it first. The rational mind integrates new experiences into our awareness and what we perceive is the result of this integration. We generally do not notice this level of blocks, and when we do, we typically rationalize them away.
A good example of how our mind handles new experiences is in how people tend to rely on first impressions of people, often mistakenly believing that first impressions are accurate, and then holding onto these first impressions as if this were so. When we first meet someone, the mind seeks to categorize them. In order to interpret the new person it searches for commonalities with previous experiences and links these to the new person. We do this for perfectly natural and innocent reasons as well. Now, if the person is wearing certain clothes, the mind will associate them with others who have worn similar clothes thereby affecting your thoughts about the new person. It factors in other commonalities such as the situation, location, their overall appearance, gender, race, culture, age and so forth. Now, if we are agitated at the time and our senses are on alert for potential issues, some factors will become more important, and others less so. It does not mean that the factor is more important, only that at the time our mind tells us it is. Our initial thoughts seem real to us and they will remain in place unless we recognize this and make the conscious choice to modify them, or future experiences has us changing them.
How we view that person in the future then becomes a matter of not just how they act, but is subject to how we perceived them in the first encounter, and the strength of the quality in us that led to the perception. If we are very fearful of a person or thing that exhibits certain qualities to us, we are fearful of anyone or anything that exhibits them regardless of whether they actually possess them or not. The same would apply to the case where we believe in the goodness of someone because of our perception of them. We would likely continue to believe in their goodness even when they are not acting in such a fashion.
Based on what we have learned to need or want, we work to become comfortable with our surroundings and within our interpretation of reality. We usually do not achieve this comfort, though most continually seek it. We perceive new ideas through the lens of previous experiences. This natural impediment that can be a challenge, especially if, through those same experiences, we also have developed a distrust of new ideas or any aspect of what is new touches sensitive areas that are already blocked, filtered or heavy bound with our emotions. This is why keeping an open mind, in the purest form, is so difficult.
With age, we rely more and more on our rational minds and our dependence on it grows. In a way, it hardens through experiences that reinforce existing thought patterns, feelings and beliefs; to use the previous analogy, the structure of the house becomes more rigid. Unfortunately, all our early experiences become part of the rational mind program. They form the architecture of our mental house, rickety though it may be. This means that even our core beliefs and constructs can be very biased. Certain topics and ideas are safe; others evoke strong responses in us. The old phrase of one “being in a rut” should conjure up an appropriate image.
Now, how many of us ever ask ourselves how we choose what thoughts we have, what we like and dislike? Is it random or due to some form of logical progression? We mentioned blocks earlier, a block is a barrier; other barriers develop within the mind as well. A barrier is a mental construct that restrict energy flow, and our thoughts are energy. Hence, our rational mind can also filter, screen, restrict or redirect energy. All of these mechanisms are part of the program itself. We generally think no more of our rational mind, than we do about how our mind tells our limbs to move. We notice aspects of our surroundings that we react either positively or negatively to and may not notice the rest at all. Aspects include certain colours, the look or appearance, textures, movements, smells, types of people and so on. These preferences are primarily the result of how our rational mind develops from our experiences.
Consider that in every moment we experience colours, shapes, context, smells, situations and such. We have feelings and thoughts about every aspect of the experience, about elements of it relate to each other and our history with them. All of these thoughts shape our rational mind, doing so during every moment of every day. Consider the enormity of the information we take in moment after moment and it is obvious why our rational mind must do some screening and filtering. Despite the enormity of the rational mind, the years of reinforced patterns, actions and reactions, it is not completely rigid. It changes through our life experiences. What we should do is spend more time turning our attention within ourselves, on what we are thinking and feeling in the moment and to exploring our reactions. Instead, we focus on the external, on the outside world; this will not help us change. Only through deep self-examination can we start to become aware of what we do not know now, and begin the process of reclaiming control of our rational minds.
During its development, or programming, our rational mind uses our interpretation of experiences as its personal truth, and its personal truths are ours. We mentioned that this programming method, while necessary, also creates barriers that make it difficult even to perceive that we are not our rational minds. Fortunately, the paradox in the question “can I ever know what I do not know if I do not know that I do not know it?” does not apply. The rational mind is a construct of our consciousness closely coupled with our physical self. However, we have a higher awareness or mind that is not so bound. Our higher mind uses the rational mind to express itself in a particular life, at the physical level. Unfortunately, as mentioned, within a few years of life our primary focus becomes the physical world. As the years progress we come to see ourselves only through our rational minds view, that being the perspective of “I think therefore I am”.
So how does one go about learning how to retake control of our lives from our rational mind? To start with, one must recognize or acknowledge that one lacks control, and have the desire to change that fact. This is the impetus necessary to take active control. In order to explore ways we can change this we will look back on our early years and examine the honesty of children.
It is a common understanding that children will tend to say what they feel. This is because children are not as encumbered by the constructs of a strong rational mind, the blocks and filters adults have developed, and the awareness that the rational mind has yet to restrict.
Ask a child a question and they will tell you their most honest answer, unless they have already learned to be afraid of their honesty or to gain advantage through deceit. This is the how and why of our loss of natural honesty over time. We fear hurting someone’s feelings even when there was no such intent, we learn to be afraid of angering people, or negative consequences when we are honest about what we perceive. Part of the reason we lose our honesty is it does not take long to forget about a lie, or our reasons and feelings around it and then the next sequence of events in life are upon us. We are not even aware of what we programmed into our minds, a new block or filter, and simply carry on our activities without knowing why.
While degrees of awareness vary, all children come in seeing what adults no longer see as they have built up blocks to them. Parents, trying to help their children survive and prosper, teach them to “use their heads”, to “get real”, even to quit making things up such as supposedly imaginary friends (though some really are only in a child’s imagination). Parents mean well; however, most are unaware of the consequences of their efforts.
Children also learn through the actions of others, by the lies they hear and experience. They can often feel the truth of what they hear and know when someone is not being truthful even though they may not know what the truth is. Their minds try to interpret the situation, and over time learn that there are reasons why people lie. For the child it is a contradiction when a trusted person lies. They are trusted so they tell the truth, yet the child senses the lie. It causes confusion, misinterpretation and distrust of intuition and more damaging programming takes place. The results of which, among other things, is a blocking out of aspects of what they perceive and misinterpretation of the experience.
Adults distrust going on feelings or on impulse alone (except for certain kinds) without a good reason to do otherwise, and most have no idea why this is so. They do not understand the nature of their mistrust and confuse intuition with feelings or impulses. Feelings or impulses are programmed responses, sometimes the product of blocks or filters, where as intuition is not. Intuition comes through untouched by the rational mind. This can occur spontaneously for a variety of reasons; one may have the gift or one that must train their mind to allow it. The reality is that when we have a feeling or intuition that something is true, errors are not likely. True intuition is rarely wrong. Of course, the difficulty is in trying to tell the difference between an impulse and an intuition after so many years of having blocked most intuition out.
So as we have seen, our programming comes complete with filters, blocks and other barriers that affects how we relate to what we perceive, and can prevent us from going in a certain direction, in achieving our goals. Our minds filter out information all the time, this is natural and important.
Our senses take in a huge amount of stimuli all the time, even when we are asleep. Our rational mind also creates filters to prevent information overload. This allows us to make decisions quickly without irrelevant information getting in the way. This is why an untrained witness misses so many details about an event. When you are looking for milk in the refrigerator, you ignore all containers that could not contain milk, or when you are looking for a place to sit in a room we perceive other aspects but do not paid attention to them unless they are relevant to us at the time. When we look at a collection of objects, we pay attention to certain things and not others. This is not chance, it is the result of programmed filters that we have developed in our rational mind. Our minds use these filters to keep what it deems unimportant, irrelevant or problematic from our conscious awareness. This is how our experiences shape our view, and this is why if the same people view the same event they all describe it differently.
We each notice what is important to us, or what our experiences have trained our rational mind to deem important. The obviously consequence is that we see events from a biased, highly subjective viewpoint, the more blocks and filters you have, the further from “reality” your view becomes. Unfortunately, we can rarely explain why we notice what we notice or why we feel the way we do about certain things.
Blocks and filters are examples of barriers, which are thought patterns that act as inhibitors. Some barriers we face are natural, and a result of the lack of experience or awareness in certain areas. Such barriers are common, and like a strong block can steer people into certain occupations even into certain types of relationships.
The rational mind is as full of wonders as mysteries; our filters, barriers and blocks are all part of it. Learning how these influence our thoughts and actions, in short our lives, goes a long way towards helping us get to know ourselves. We must learn to become more the masters of our thoughts rather than a victim of them. Using ones intellect and imagination to examine our mental blocks is key to removing them and changing ourselves.
There are many ways to deal with our mental blocks and filters, though they all boil down to becoming more aware in the moment. We accomplish this by changing how we related to the world around us through paying conscious attention in the now. Try to notice things you did not notice before, try to break up your routine and notice how you feel when you do. We also must accept that our thoughts may be inaccurate, incomplete or inconsistent. We should be looking within ourselves and question what we believe, ask ourselves why we believe something and we need to start spending less time rushing between events and live more in the moment. Contemplation and meditation on these will reveal a great deal.
Our tendency to be critical about what we perceive, rather than simply observe and notice, is also a factor. When we start paying attention in the now we begin to notice our reactions to experiences with greater clarity, we can examine and work through our reactions. Our minds block various things out as a protection mechanism, to make things easier and so forth. Blocks are like walls, they isolate us; fortunately, we can get ourselves out of from behind them.
Concepts and beliefs
Concepts and beliefs in themselves are not barriers per say; however, they can act as such preventing us from expressing ourselves fully by limiting alternatives or making it very difficult to redirect ourselves in new ways. Beliefs create a sphere within which we remain and which denies or excludes ideas, thoughts or things that do not fit within it (this varies in degrees depending on the belief and the person). Concepts such as “I am a loser” or “what can happen next”, or “I do not deserve better” do not always lie at the surface where they are visible. They are more like an octopus with tentacles that reach into the corners of our rational minds affecting a wide range of aspects of our lives.
We inherit many of our beliefs and concepts from our family, culture and early experiences that provide a strong impetus to support them. We learn from what we hear and what we do not. There are group consciousness’s associated with religious, cultural, intellectual, moral and racial beliefs. Each can affect us in different ways depending on a myriad of other thoughts we may have. For example, if our religion tells us to follow certain principles and is in conflict with other thoughts we have developed there is great potential for conflict within ourselves.
One barrier that is not obvious is a consequence of the nature of our existence, and our minds focus on the physical realities of life. We build our rational minds on the foundation of our own logic, that which comes out of our reactions to experiences. For instance, the mind does not need to prove a premise as true, it only has to believe it to be true. As a result, we rely almost entirely on interpretation of what we perceive through our physical senses and the mind becomes deeply rooted in the concepts of linear time and 3-dimensional space. This view of reality can be a very real barrier when one tries to develop their spiritual side.
The spiritual view of a conscious universe runs somewhat contrary to the space-time view where our minds cling to the idea of “things”. Everything is energy, and perception. Luckily, our higher awareness is not so dependent or limited, it can transcend time, perceives energy not things, and is unaffected by space or distance. The rational mind gets tired after a day’s work as we access it primarily through our brain, and our brains get tired. These restrictions do not apply to our higher awareness as it is not a result of our physicality.
What we have been discussing hopefully leads to the understanding that the rational mind must be properly prepared not just to function well, but also to allow access to our higher awareness. These are lessons not fostered in most cultures, particularly those rooted in western philosophies, religions or cultures.
There is no way to avoid concepts and beliefs. They are a part of us, and are not in themselves negative. We must examine the consequences of them on an individual basis to determine if this is the case. Even ones that hinder us can be useful at times, protecting us from influences we may not be ready to handle at the time. We should examine ourselves to see if we hold beliefs that contradict one another, and either find a way to reconcile or change them.
A good example of this would be someone who has the belief that the Bible is the literal word of God, and a belief that life on Earth evolved over millions of years. This type of belief conflict can create issues that cannot be resolved without reconciling or changing one’s beliefs. Of course, you can live with this conflict; however, there may be consequences such as a crisis of faith as a result. I just want you to be aware of concepts and beliefs, that they too are thoughts, and part of our rational mind. They are very significant aspects of it and hence have a great deal of influence over us.
Rational Mind Blocks and Filters
© 2009 Allan Beveridge
Last updated May 10, 2020