How do you perceive your thoughts? I went hiking the other day with a huge group of friends. We ended up splitting up into groups and I went off with my older brother and a friend. Being forced to go hiking trips since we were young, we had grown used to the beauty of nature that was surrounding us. Instead of continuing on we ended up climbing up this rock and I ended up talking about how I perceived my own thoughts. It was a decently long discussion so I’m drawing it instead.
While I have no basis for this being true, it is just my own opinion on the matter. When I sit and stare off into space, I can’t tell what I’m thinking. In order for me to tell It's almost as if I have to think about my actions and how they show what i’m thinking. For instance, I’m talking to this girl, and even though I tell myself I only want to be friends, I can tell that I’m lying to myself. Not in the moment when I say it, but by the fact that I get slightly agitated when she doesn’t text back. Even though, my closest friends and I barely text and when we do, we’re pretty absent minded about it. In order to understand that I like her, and that I don’t want to be just friends and that I do have feelings for her, I can only understand this through a roundabout way. I believe that most people are like picture 1, and I’m like picture 2. I don't quite know how to visual how I think about things, but I think its close enough.
Do you feel that you identify more with either picture? If not draw your own picture!
Normal people are over rated, you sir have a beautiful mind. That is why your line from Conscious to Subconscious is more complex, because you actually use your brain. Thinking Consciously on a subconscious level, what a beautiful mind.
I can totally relate to this. For our metalworking assignment in shop class, we had to make dumbbells, and I had trouble getting the handlebar to stay straight. Here's what we were supposed to make versus what I ended up making:
I am not aware of any connection between my conscious and subconscious.
Imagine a box. This box generates thoughts. It encompasses stimulus, responses, etc. Some thoughts go to one circle, which is the circle of the conscious. Other thoughts go to the other circle - the circle of the subconscious.
There is no road between the two circles. Just a box, which connects to both circles. Sometimes, however, one piece of stimulus can send thoughts to both circles. These thoughts can be similar, different, and close to identical.
I think the reality is that most people are 2, but perceive others as 1. Everything looks like its straight forward when its external, but internally you're always focused on the obstacles you end up wandering through as an individual. It's fairly common with how people see their own success as having to go through a lot of hoops but think its a straight path for others.
On June 26 2015 14:42 Barrin wrote: I actually do alright on auto-pilot; my intuition is beastly. I would draw my sub-conscious circle much larger than my conscious circle.
Sounds like me. I just make shit up and it's right, and even I don't know how. I just assume the smarter me must be feeding me answers.
Thank you for your OP, and do pardon me if I interject with a little "bearded cigar" enlightening info. Most "pros" describe / debate over how the mind's functioning program is closer to a "three man job" than what you described, .. what is "your" mind and how it functions. This dates to a "specific" social semantic setting and we would definitely have to add the social pressure now as a given fourth (picture it as very binary in Sigmund time and it being a hydra headed monster today) that has outrageously ravaged and immersed most of the more accessible parts described.
The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this the preconscious. The preconscious mind is the part of the mind that represents ordinary memory. While we are not consciously aware of this information at any given time, we can retrieve it and pull it into consciousness when needed. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.
Our mind is the whole machine at work, very close to what a computer is when you ask it to do something. Picture this: and then imagine that it is ever expanding outwardly and intrinsically internally, like a living city with skyscrappers sticking out and constant renovation / transmutation (that is, for active "brainy" people) because smaller and smaller ants are breeding (macro and micro expansion).
The unconscious is the base and root.
It is sort of like the "mind palaces" in sherlock holmes tv show, except it is "build" "parallel" to what we consciously build (or have access to) this in an "unknown "unique way to all test subjects. this is not strictly speaking "us" (we have no control whatsoever and no more than a skewed basic overview or basic insight over/into it), it is more like a bi product, a self trained/motivated motherly superseding womb that will always win over other the more "conscious" / active parts of our mind.
This unconscious has all the raw material (starts its self construction with mostly genetic material and "adds in" all that can be (stuff accessible elsewhere or not), remnants of past instincts and then favors more and more exterior stimuli as the person comes of age, while exacerbating / crystallizing the earlier "buried" material).
This is not your "outside of plato's cavern's," not a place you can/could visit (other than in your dreams), it is an all in one in which more accessible parts of our psyche bathe into "partially", erecting towers of conscious constructions. These being rooted in the unconscious with ever changing / complexifing highways processing material all around in this "global" environment).
We are who we are! Historical and genetic material are just as vital, intricate axioms to start understanding anything "mind" related ; but ultimately they are useless for this discussion. The only given / requirement is that the mind is active and stimulated from "exterior sources" (hopefully as many different "sources" as possible).
Then we come to the alexandre knot, the vinegar in the pickle. We are conscious beings. this is an axiom. You, dearest reader, are not a figment of my imagination (however aggressively flourishing my imagination is, granted)! and I am humbly not a figment of yours.
But on the flip side we know we are not conscious of everything, we know we make weird connections, we know we lie to ourselves, we know there is always something further to discover / understand.
So a balance between what is and what seems is law, like for instance the way we lie to ourselves thinking our face and body is perfectly the same/opposed or invert on both sides, while that is never the case.
Aside: all this leaves imagination on the sideline. I happen to think that is the whole shangri la.
The conscious mind of/for dummies (no pun or offense meant (I am one of the dummies), just using 21st century vernacular to seem hip and edgy, sorry):
As plato puts it bluntly, the light of wisdom will permanently blind you. For example, a highly functional sociopath (sherlock holmes for instance) might thrive in society "more" because of things it does not wishes to face rather than all the more "active" undertakings/past experiences? Whatever happened to the third holmes' brother? is that the riddle that explains sherlock's "genius/power? We are what we are as much from what we didn't experience as what we did experience, it is all the same.
#be right back, drawing in progress#
TLDR: the mind is a maze that you make for yourself in which you trap other people.
On June 26 2015 07:46 Chairman Ray wrote: I can totally relate to this. For our metalworking assignment in shop class, we had to make dumbbells, and I had trouble getting the handlebar to stay straight. Here's what we were supposed to make versus what I ended up making:
#How I view my brain (intro and outro of the song clearly illustrates it).
So:
the crowd (chanting Zeb rock") represents "other people" (dead or alive), the "come on" represents my mammal instincts to survive (socially or otherwise), recognizable individuals singing would be my better half, my kids, anyone close to me.
The conscious being a containment chamber. Complex, intricately constructed and generally an impressive feat of engineering and design. Used to constrain the sub-conscious into working at the problem you want to solve in a predictable way that can provide consistent results. Constantly needs to be maintained and improved.
The sub-concious being the plasma. Incredibly powerful, a primordial force of nature. But chaotic and difficult to direct to a constructive end without guidance from the conscious mind. Difficult to model, and dangerous without the conscious to bring order to the chaos.
i don't think it's about connecting directly with your subconscious but rather identifying your own patterns of behavior and how they are dissonant with your conscious self-image and thought processes. that's why therapy and counseling can be so helpful. sometimes all you need to improve on yourself is the ability to perceive yourself from an outside perspective
i usually think of life as steering a ship. consciousness is a wildly complicated thing to try to understand, and i don't think anyone will ever really be the master of their own behavior. all you can do is find the most efficient ways to guide yourself by identifying destructive thoughts and taking an active stance against them. it's impossible to neatly define the line between "who we are" and "what we do," but you can do your best to stack your consciousness in your own favor
On June 29 2015 07:51 brickrd wrote: .. i usually think of life as steering a ship... you can do your best to stack your consciousness in your own favor
If we are lucky (we= all living things), then the subconscious is the same for all of us and we only lack the will or strenght to achieve its pure interconnectivity to a vast majority and stack it in favor of everyone/thing. If we are not, then we should make it happen.