Mind Control and the Completeness Obsession II
Network Neurons 2 by Gerard79
I wrote a few days ago about failing to trust my ability to be ‘other-than-consciously’ complete on issues. I asked whether I am consciously intervening, thinking that this is a ‘better’ position.
Well, I’m pleased to say that I’m not sat alone in a corner with my nagging voice. I’ve just been continuing to read Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind. Most excellent as always (I started with his book on Buddhism about fourteen years ago)
Two things married together while I was vacuuming earlier (a classic case of ‘loafing’ for creativity whilst also earning familial brownie-points….)
I’ve been having some really nice correspondence with Sandra Bavasso Roffo of Ugly Doggy – Creativity Bites Back! fame. Something she said in a comment to an earlier post has tied to the core of Guy’s opening arguments in Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind:
‘For example I do have a terrible, TERRIBLE memory. I read a lot and still I remember very little… consciously. But the info is kept somewhere, as we say “in the back of my head”. So a lot of times when I decide to “stop thinking” and I go for a shower or any other “non thinking activity” the solution I was looking for magically appears. But is not magic, it was my unconscious, that was still working on the problem, made its own connections with information stored there and solved the problem.’
In Guy’s opening arguments in Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind he argues that what he calls d-mode (for deliberation mode: the conscious intellect or ‘intelligence’) because of its very nature ‘treats perception as unproblematic’. It ‘assumes the way it sees the situation is the way it is’. Because the activity in d-mode is ‘predominantly that of gaining a mental grasp, or figuring out’ it inherently (often) builds in a lot of unnoticed holes when it has conceptualised a solution.
So, in summary, I need to stop worrying about missing something. As long as I give time, space and the right resources to both my hare brain and tortoise mind, whether I’m vacuuming or in the shower like Sandra, I’m better off trusting myself rather than fooling myself into believing a surplus of conscious intellectualising will help.
Just Seven Things 