Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Conscious and Unconscious”

29 Nov 2008
1 Comment

The Relationship between Conscious and Unconscious and the Next Stage of My Journey

Finally, I’m finishing Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. I feel like i’ve been on an epic journey.

I’m changed materially by what I have read. This blog probably evidences this in as good a way as any. As such, completing the book marks a shift in my needs and wants for this blog (and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever particularly pandered to anything other than this in JST)

‘….an image of the mind as ‘the theatre of consciousness’, a brightly illuminated stage on which the action of mental life takes place; or perhaps as a well-lit office in which sits an intelligent manager, coolly weighing evidence, making decisions, solving problems and issuing orders. In this executive den, human intelligence, consciousness and identity come together: they are, in effect, one and the same thing. ‘I’ am the manager. ‘I’ work in the light. I have access to all the files that comprise my ‘intelligence’.

What I cannot see, or see into, either does not exist, or is mere ‘matter’, the dumb substance of the body that can do nothing of any interest on its own. It may manage certain menial operations like digestion, respiration and circulation without supervision; but to do anything clever it has to wait for instructions from head office.

This image continues to animate and channel our sense of our own psychology, of our potentials and resources…..

……and it is wrong in every respect’

– Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind (emphasis added)

Posted in Change, Conscious and Unconscious, Knowledge Management, Learning and tagged , , ,
22 Nov 2008

An Important Jigsaw Piece in My View of Life

Padlock by Victures

Padlock by Victures

The only advantage of being sick over the last weeks has been my continuing revelations from Claxton’s Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. I’m nearly at the end and confident that I’ll be starting it again. Seminal.

So my reading really slowed down when I got to the chapter on ‘The Point of Consciousness’:

‘the intriguing possibility that areas of the brain might be getting on with their business at an unconscious level, without bothering to wait for consciousness to develop. A pool of neural activation may split into two, one part resonating with the self, and thus subserving the emergence of conscious awareness, while the other carries on with further processing such as planning a response’

‘These results indicate clearly that it is the conscious brain which decides what to do, and when; and that what we experience as intention is merely a post hoc confirmation of what has already been set in motion. Consciousness receives a kind of corollary ‘despatch note’, and then presents this as if it were the original order’

Had me in familiar territory already. Part of the reason for this blog’s existence was to understand a bit better what the other-than-conscious did. Not to necessarily ascribe meaning to it. As I noted in my first post in May, I firmly believe: ‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more’ (Waiting for Godot, Beckett)

Read more…

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Mindfulness, Psychology and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
26 Oct 2008

See /Do /Tag for Happiness in the Moment

So I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. I’m pretty certain that I haven’t because it feels like it contradicts a lot of the things I’m constantly striving to achieve: focus, planning, constancy.

First, an attempt to define something. I’ve referred in previous posts to the feelings of resistance to task completion. Particularly those tasks that are either poorly defined, difficult, overly time consuming, unknown/new etc. I personally feel this resistance in the middle chest/ upper gut as a kind of heaviness.

I have posted on a number of occasions about my attempts to overcome this. Normally the approaches/ techniques I have explored have in most ways been medium/ longer term in the sense that they involve planning/ mental approaches/ chunking down the steps for the task completion etc.

What I have begun to explore more recently is whether there is a certain category of resistance that this approach does not work for. Let’s call it ‘in the flow’ resistance.

There appear to be certain thoughts, tasks or actions, usually relatively minor in nature, that my other-than-conscious throws to the surface of consciousness for my attention. Often I can immediately tag these for later action in a task list. These thoughts(actions) behave like most other non-planned-for creativity: as soon as they’re captured in a trusted system they go away from my mind, and don’t weigh on my chest to be handled.

However, there are certain actions that appear to sit there on my chest and refuse to budge. They create this ‘in the flow’ resistance. It feels like someone else has made a decision that, regardless what else I was consciously planning – or, indeed, regardless of what my initial conscious response is to the action raised – this is the thing I should do. Right here, right now.

The interesting things are:
1. If I don’t do them immediately, the resistance that I can sometimes get (as described above) is felt – often very intensely – even though it is not something I had consciously raised
2. If I do take the action, it feels as though I get disproportionate reward. As though I didn’t realize how important it was to me internally until it was done
3. The actions are very often things (for me) which relate to commitments. To myself and others. As though my other-than-conscious is reminding, but refusing to go ‘on to snooze’

Posted in Action Orientation, Conscious and Unconscious, Focus, Happiness, Psychology, Stress and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →