Too often people believe they are using their minds intelligently while in fact they are just using circular thinking. Their conditioning and the insecurity that is ego, keeps them from breaking free to really see life as it is. A person can be very capable in his work, his art, etc., and still be blind when it comes to thinking beyond their conditioning.
So many people can do wonderful things with their minds in creative ways and yet be lost in religious beliefs such as that there is a hell and a devil. All reason goes out the door when it comes to their religious beliefs. When I hear most religious people talking about being open-minded and thinking things over, I know they are not doing what they think. They are only allowing their thinking to go along certain lines of acceptable patterns and beliefs, which is circular thinking.
Or they may not be religious but are lost in the belief that their race is superior to another, or their species is more important than the life of another. There are countless ways this insanity expresses itself.
People are always saying how important it is to step out of your box, your conditioned view of life, but few seem to do it. Circular thinkers may well believe they are stepping out of their boxes, but it is still within the limits of old thought.
It takes more to truly step out of this way of thinking. In fact, one has to step out of thinking completely to reach certain insights. This is where intuition comes in. Intuition does not seem to be practiced often in the world today. It requires a different way of seeing than most have experienced to any degree.
I have been very fortunate to have always been very intuitive. Perhaps it was the fact that I am dyslexic and had to find other ways of understanding what I was seeing than the normal ones. One friend pointed out that research has shown that street people develop a deeper sense of intuition to keep alive. They have to sense things before they happen to be prepared to take action. I was a juvenile delinquent and I did develop an intuitive sense of when I was about to be in trouble, where to stay away from, and who could be trusted.
The way my mind, excuse the dualistic terms, works is: I will get a certain gut feeling about something and know there is something to discover. I won't go directly at it, but just let it stay there as a feeling. I could be reading something, or speaking with a friend about something and this otherness is felt within my solar plexus and I know to follow it. It may not come into view for some time, but it stays there in an almost subconscious way. Then when it is ripe, a powerful insight will explode into the mind and I See! Normally, one insight opens new doors to others along the same line. Some sound insane at first until I go deeper and come to understand the full meaning of it. This is a fearless process in that I don't care where it goes, or what old ideas have to die for it to be born. I don't let any previous ideas stand in the way of what is opening.
It takes that kind of openness to break out of the circular thinking that the ego mind is so accustomed to. We have to let go of the old. Yet, for me at this time in my life, there is no old thinking. Every time I sit down to write or to speak with someone, it is new. I don't know where it is going to go and I don't care. I have learned that to fully use our wisdom we have to constantly die to the old and then wisdom does the speaking. The mind of memory is shocked sometimes when things are said that are not in the memory banks; they just appear out of Life Itself, fully developed and clear.
So watch the way your mind works. If you see you are only thinking within the limits of your conditioning, then that is the first step to freedom. Seeing that is the way you are thinking will open new possibilities of how to use your mind. And, trust your intuition. It is wisdom speaking directly to the surface mind. Let it flow and free you from going in circles
