For some reason this word came into my head. I looked up animal imprinting, and this is the first thing that came up: http://www.sparknotes.com/biology/animalbehavior/learning/section3.rhtml
The gist is that certain things at very early ages can more or less get plugged into what we might term the “machine code” of our biological system, such that they are hard to undo (or impossible, if we accept the current state of knowledge as final.)
We are spiritual animals. We are part machine, part pure freedom. It seems to me our task, at this stage of our spiritual via biological evolution, is figuring out fully how the machine part of us works, so that we can CHOOSE to alter ourselves, or perhaps, allow energies we summon to guide us, and do the work necessary so we can follow more closely.