BEYOND THE SHELL

CHAPTER THREE: THE UNTASTY MEDICINE

No structure that has been established is easy to bring down. Humanity has been trapped in dysfunction of the logical mind for long and will most likely resist being transformed or even fail to see the need for the transformation. People do assume that their nature is normal and there is no need to change it. No one can identify something normal unless he has seen one beforehand. If a person is used to the abnormal, the normal will look strange. If a person is used to a three-legged goat, the four-legged one will appear abnormal. Since people are used to being led by the logical mind, they take it to be the normal and the right way of living. Any teaching that challenges this order of things is dismissed as irrational and impractical.

Spirituality seeks to free man from the defective mind through certain teachings, but these teachings are normally strange and unappealing to the logical mind. Human beings have no place for that which is strange. In their own words, better a devil you know than an angel you do not know." This inertia has prevented many from attaining transformation which is the only hope for humanity.

It is impossible for a person to transform himself; transformation is an act of grace. A person can however eliminate the blocks that could hinder transformation. If a person is sick, he may not be able to heal himself but he can without doubt create conditions necessary for healing to occur by for instance feeding well and taking medication. To become free of the dysfunctional mind, spiritual exercise is required

Spiritual exercise like physical exercise is strenuous. Spiritual exercise goes against our way of doing things, what we value and our interests. It is not uncommon for people to feel that spiritual teachings are there to take their very lives away from them. This is expected. Jesus Himself said, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" Spiritual exercise is no fun, it involves doing things in a way the logical mind finds completely irrational, it feels like a person has completely given up his life. For a person to attain salvation he has to resist what logic says and do some hard things he does not feel like doing. The intelligence that leads humanity out of dysfunction is greater than logic and it goes without saying that logic has no ability to judge this higher intelligence.

A smaller intelligence cannot understand a higher intelligence. At one time two leopards broke out of the Aberdare's Forest and were wandering in the close-by villages at night attacking sheep and goats. The villages, to protect their animals, resulted into moving their flock inside their houses every night where the leopards would not get in. I once wondered what the goats would have said if asked to comment on the actions of their owners.

"This man does not know what he is doing. Now if we were out there in the field we would still be grazing and there would be enough room for us to play. On top of denying us our freedom, he will have to clean this house after we mess it up. This man must be a fool." The cleverest of the goats would have complained.

The goats not knowing that there is danger outside would have declared man as insensitive and unwise. Similarly, logic judges God in that manner. God is all knowing, but logic is not, so logic has no business pretending that it knows what God should do or questioning His guidance to humanity.

In the book of Isaiah God says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways. For as heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." It is obvious then if one is going to follow God he must do so out of faith not because the logical analysis of spiritual teachings suggests he should.

How does the logical mind manage to run man every minute of his life? It does so by first creating illusionary needs for man and then seeking ways of fulfilling the virtual needs. To the mind possessed man these needs feel real and the solutions the mind offers looks flawless. Jesus teachings and other spiritual teachings come to tell human beings to ignore these virtual needs no matter how authentic they feel. By eliminating the illusions, one gives chance for the revelation of the truth. The main needs created by the logical mind include: the need to worry, the need to stand out and the need to create, oppose and resist enemies.