We live automatic lives. Battered to a fro by emotions, controlled by hormones, driven by environment, schedule, and ritual, our lives are simply mathematical functions. Modern science speaks volumes about the truly conscious decisions we make. As proof: we watch lights on a screen that represents our mind light up momentarily and burn out. That’s thinking, they tell us. Listening to immaculate well-spoken men and women harp on “grace” and “freedom”, our responses are canned and conversation predictable because we’ve heard it all before.

In a collegiate time where growth is expected and change a paradoxical constant, the most glaring insights we can produce are reiterations of a sermon ages ago recovered. The lasting effect of which can measured in minutes. Unfortunately, we’ve walked this road before. And as humans with brains well wired, the majority of our lives are spent rerunning the same stimuli on the same cognitive networks with the same output like a reliable solar calculator in space.

We consider ourselves bastions of morality, seekers of truth, yet our heads deceive us. Efficiency (or laziness) forces our brain to subconsciously delegate our actions to mere neuronal functions, and our freedom slips through the gaps. We cannot compensate for what we don’t know, and the very section of us that allows for complex decisions stays asleep, silently unaware. It tires easily, and needn’t be woken. So we lean on our prejudices and stick to our memes.

In the rare moments where the prefrontal cortex is forced to intervene, that screen becomes witness to a firestorm of activity. Recalling past experiences, weaving tapestries of thought, and tying in all that reason can muster requires a tremendous expenditure of energy. But it’s worth it. It’s beautiful. Because we CHOSE. We were there, not merely in form. I don’t know how freedom can be found in anything less. And transformation necessitates a self to change.

Renewing your mind is not a process of scorching into your head an idea through sheer repetition. Being “fed” is not a poor choice because it inhibits us from “feeding”, it is detrimental because it dulls our senses to even the most heavy spiritual truths. Our religion has been reduced to toting a book on a weekly drive, our biggest “God moments” are when we cry out to Him we do not know because our lives are so filled with “spirituality” yet our spirits dry of all that might be spelled that way.

Wilderness experiences, those magical sections of 40 days, never included music or reading or even a speaker. What is required is temporarily closing off the short circuits that insulate us from our God and life. To continually pray needs us to turn off the machine that babbles with repetition despite the promises it offers and become part of our interaction with God, not independent of it.