UNDERSTANDING YOUR MIND
The workings of the mind are what should make everything 100% understandable to you. You and you alone can inhabit it 24/7/52. You and I will be in this relationship for our entire lives. If you can understand the inner workings of your mind and are able to explain them, then you have merited a Nobel Prize.
Different brain chemistry and neural networks connections can explain different personality traits, interests and abilities. Except for a deliberate alteration, you only have one normal brain chemical and one neural connection. We’ll focus on that one because you are a representative of the whole.
Each day you engage in a great deal of mental activity. The moment that you get up, your unconscious goes into high gear (your subconscious was working while you were asleep). These daily mental tidal gyrations can be interrelated. They include decisions and planning (from the chessboard, to the dinner plate); memory and recall; and sensory processing (taste. smell. sight. touch); as well as learning, regardless of whether it’s the news or local gossip.
The mind is limited in its ability to manage more than one thing at a time. It’s better to handle issues in a sequential fashion. It is impossible to concentrate on driving and simultaneously listen to a phone conversation on your cell phone. “MythBusters”Television show. There are many things that can be frustrating, such as trying to keep up with multiple tasks, whether it’s four or five.
A SUBSCIOUS MIND
Did you have a moment when a complicated thought leapt into your conscious, the self-aware, or self-conscious, mind? Why? It was your conscious or subconscious mind. It was probably your subconscious (unconscious mind) that brought it to the forefront. Your subconscious mind creates your thoughts for you in a split second before your conscious awareness. It almost seems predetermined.
The subconscious mind of your unconscious bubbles under the radar, without any conscious input from you. The result of what should have been random bubbling, like boiling water, is a chaos – a hodgepodge. Instead you get a planned and sequentially guided nebulous stuff that appears to pop through your grey matter’s “wormhole” which links your conscious mind with your subconscious. The nebulous information you are looking for cannot be drawn out by your conscious mind.
Your subconscious is able to keep you on track without any conscious input. It seems to work, despite my inept knowledge. If your subconscious thoughts wander off track, or you are distracted by something that isn’t relevant to your task at hand, you can force your consciousness back to where it belongs. Your subconscious can be disengaged, so you don’t need to.
Consider me curious if scientists, philosophers inventors writers etc. are really the best thinkers on earth. Their inspiration came largely from their subconscious, even though they weren’t actually conscious thinkers.
Your subconscious is what connects dots. You probably hear it a lot. “I’ll sleep on it”It is a smart idea to keep a pen and paper, or a Dictaphone near your bed. Many people have experienced the ability to solve a mental problem in dreams or find the answer ‘outside the box’ when they are preoccupied with other things. The only thing that matters is your ability to use the resources available within yourself. You’re unlikely to succeed if you try to think of a new creative idea. But, if your mind is in neutral, eureka!
Do you ever forget what you just remembered a few minutes ago and can’t recall it now? It will be there again when you least expect. It’s time to quickly write it down.
These are just a few examples of subconscious control.
Hypnosis is a technique that unlocks memories in our subconscious. There is no way to control your subconscious ability to remember. You can only do it in extreme cases. “gotta put my mind in neutral”to make the data more visible. Untrained, unprofessional or amateur hypnotists may implant false memories or manipulate the ones already there to produce inconsistent results.
An extremely small number (10 to 25%) of adult human beings can experience vivid hallucinations. These are usually the result of subconscious thinking. Although subconscious hallucinations are less common as we age and mature, they still can happen.
Perhaps this is connected with our experience of involuntary (as the subject) daydreams. This, just like sleep dreams, is something that we have all had.
Talking of sleep: When you go to bed, your subconscious will put you into lockdown mode so that you do not physically perform the dreams you have. This makes sense because you don’t have control over the lockdown. You could endanger yourself or others around you.
Ordinary conscious level mental puzzles might include how to move from A-B on the bus to B while your vehicle is being repaired. These types of mental gymnastics are common every-day tasks that require tools such as a hammer, nails, a recipe and a timetable for trains. You must have the concepts stored in your subconscious to be able to use them. Otherwise, every day mental and apparent conscious activity will not work.
A second type of subconscious activity deals mostly with body language, just as an aside. What number of times do you witness someone calling someone on the telephone? Neither party is able to see each other but both are using body language and hand gestures as though they were speaking face-to-face. It’s quite common. Or you see a woman sitting on a bus or in a café or some such, and she’s preening her hair, running her fingers through it but not even aware she’s doing it.
If you have only a few seconds to react, such as when you are standing at 60 feet from the pitcher’s mound, and the rapidly rotating ball is coming towards you at 95 mph. Do you consciously calculate the numbers or do you just let it go? The same goes for the outfielder who is chasing down a flyball. Your conscious mind becomes useless baggage in such instances. Your subconscious needs to be able to take control of your intuition, training, practice, and any other elements. After the game, you can perform the physics calculations at will.
Creativity (The ‘What If?’).
Are creativity and free will preprogrammed? What are some things you do in your day that you didn’t plan for? You must have subconsciously created those little, or even minor, things that you did not plan to do. It seems that you didn’t really have free will to do those items. This is because they were done consciously and with an intention before the fact.
Creative thinking is my favorite thing about creativity. “what if” exercise. This is how you take a bit from one cubbyhole, and another bit from another cubbyhole, as well as a third and fourth bit, fifth and fifth bit, from different cubbyhols. Then, combine these in unique, imaginative, creative, what-if ways. You should have the ability to imagine, or even create, the concept of an ocean or waterfall from just one drop of water. Now you can reach in your cubbyhole to visualize many, many billions, trillions, or even billions of dollars. You have your cubbyhole as a bowl, depression, or cliff. And your cubbyhole as gravity. So you create new cubbyholes for the theoretical waterfall (but without the thunderous sound, spray and foam), the theoretical ocean (but likely lacking salt, marine life and the waves), as well as your ‘what-if’ reality.
Let’s look at a typical everyday situation. Tonight, I will make a quick pizza. This is a sudden eureka moment, which was not present in your morning. Where did the idea of pizza as dinner come from? The idea of pizza for dinner came out of nowhere. It was probably a lightning bolt that flew by at lightning speed. However, it was built from bits and pieces found elsewhere in your brain – your subconscious mind.
Your mind stores a huge dictionary of concepts in your brain. Each concept is stored in its own cubby-hole that you likely keep updating. Five years ago, a five-year-old would have a much larger dictionary than a fifty year old. The ability to pick and select relevant concepts from the various cubby holes and string them together at a seemingly rapid pace into a coherent linear conglomerate is called imagination or creativity. Sometimes, the pieces and bits are strung together to make an original piece of creativity. You might think I cook small/meat/thin base/pizza/dinner, but you might find it to be a lot more creative or stretch your imagination than I cook small/thin base/magic mushroom/pizza/dinner.
Let’s move on to the cubby hole store. It is possible to specify the outcome by using the I / cook/small / mushroom/thin base / pizza/ dinner command. Cubby-holes are available for cooking from scratch, readymade frozen, dial-as-you-deliver and dining out. Cubby-holes can be used to add toppings, such as mushrooms vs. tomatoes vs. pepperoni or beef vs. chicken vs. turkey vs. olives. Onions vs. capsicums. And many other things. Cubby-hole plans can be made for breakfast, lunch, snack time or dinner. You can also choose to have a small or large family, where everyone gets the same deal. Thin base, medium base and thick base pizzas. The final consideration is the decision to make pizza. There are many other options. One subconscious decision is made from hundreds or even hundreds of options / combinations derived from these concepts in your brain. This could even be a completely irrational one – you might not have the ingredients you need for pizza; bad weather means you will have to run to the grocery store!
You might be overwhelmed by the number of choices available. This is just one small aspect of daily life. How do you narrow down your options to make a conscious choice? Your options would overwhelm you. Faced with so many conscious choices, you’d feel stuck. You can almost feel like your subconscious is crunching the numbers and then your consciousness takes action. When your subconscious tells you to cook, it will then make the answer concrete and put that information into action.
However, not all creativity comes from subconscious. It is possible to write a letter from the tip of your tongue; or you can hold a conversation in real-time.
DECISIONS
Are you going to make a right or left turn on Oak Street? It was a common issue for a song. It is clear that the decision to resolve the issue can only be made conscious and with free will. If you pull them out, you will find that your subconscious can store the positive and negative aspects of each choice and present them for you. What if this is your first decision? That decision is sure to be 100% free of any bias. Will it? You don’t have enough data to help you make an informed choice. It’s easy to just toss the heads and tails. But that doesn’t mean you get a free will to do so.
Maybe you’re right-handed and subconsciously, it might be true when you reach Oak Street.
As with the rest, your mind is comprised of molecules. These atoms in turn are made up of elementary particles. The probability laws of quantum Physics govern the microverse. If you want to do the dirty work, quantum physics should be taken into consideration for all mental activities. The big question is: What does quantum physics mean? Your decision to take Oak Street to the right or to the left might be based on a quantum probability of an elementary particle within your brain. This state could change in a completely random manner that you don’t control.
A superposition of state is a quantum phenomenon in which you can have either an equally or and opposite situation. You can go left or right on Oak Street until you see someone, and then it becomes either/or. Schrodinger’s Cat in the Box thought experiment is repeated with radioactive substances that have a 50/50 chance to decay in about an hour. The box will activate a device that causes the cat to die if it experiences decay. If it does not happen, the cat is still alive. If the cat remains unattended for more than an hour, it is still alive. If someone peeks at the cat, it is dead or alive.
It is possible that a radioactive radioactive atom in your brain will eventually decay (and this happens naturally, so it could be). Not whether the cat survives or not, but whether or not you make Oak Street turn left or right will determine if they live or die. There is no way to control this. Quantum physics is the driving force behind your decision-making and control over your subconscious.
FREE WILL
You have no control over the way your subconscious operates, as we’ve seen many times. With respect to your subconscious, there is no freedom of choice.
Your phone rings while you are watching the DVD of your favorite TV series or feature film. Your phone rings. “pause”When you answer the telephone, click on the “Return” button. Mentally, you will be able to see hundreds of scenarios and options when you return. “play” button. However, you are certain that only one situation will occur and it can be resolved – completely. Why? The characters are preprogrammed. It doesn’t have any free will.
What if you could put your mind on a DVD and freeze it? “pause”A button was pressed just seconds before the finality of a pizza dinner entered your consciousness. Outsiders could envision hundreds of possible outcomes if we un-paused our minds, but only one would occur.
The question is: you don’t have control over what your subconscious thinks, but the subconscious often rules. A lot of your decisions are unplanned. Your creativity is also unplanned. All that is left to your imagination to use is unplanned. This means your conscious mind had no role in the planning. It was just that you slept on it, your subconscious mind didn’t know what to do with the information.
It was preprogramming that led to the analogy of the DVD. Your subconscious might also be pre-programmed. You have no freedom, but your existence as virtual reality within a simulation universe is one thing that could pre-empt your free will.
If you don’t have control over your subconscious, it means that your mind is not free to make decisions. While you can’t fly faster than sound or flap your arms, mind-over-matter is something you do not possess. However you believe that you have complete control of your thoughts. Any sign that this is not true suggests that your brain has been simulated by computer software. This simulation gives you little to no freedom, but only the illusion of it.
Your belief in astrology means you are denying your belief that your will is free. The stars and planets have the upper hand. Maybe one reason you accept astrology so readily is that it doesn’t take your free will away and that astrology serves as your substitute.
EMOTIONS
In that you might see X on a photo and be moved by it, you could also find yourself in a state of shock. Another image might cause me to rave and rant, while yours may make you yawn the-big-yawn. You seem to have no control over how you feel in either situation. It seems that you don’t have much freedom in the matter of liking or disliking someone or falling head-over heels in love. Therefore, emotions can be part of your subconscious.
The SUBCONSCIOUS IS THE CNSCIOUS.
Although it may seem unnecessarily confusing to have a subconscious as well as a conscious mind, this is not necessary. Sigmund Freud was the one who separated the unconscious (unconscious mind) and conscious minds. It begs the question, is the subconscious really doing all the number crunching, feeding your subconscious (unconscious) mind the answers, often unexpectedly, like a eureka moment? Although you may think that your conscious mind is writing that letter, the subconscious interface feeds your illusionary consciousness with words and sentences. In reality, there’s no separate consciousness. It is only an illusion. Your body’s automated nervous system controls your mind; the unconscious, which we call the brain, runs your entire mind.
Although this is probably an oversimplification of things, regardless of whether the subconscious or the conscious are distinct and different or one-and the same, it’s top of the pecking list over which we don’t have any control. Only the central nervous system (automated) rules over all others. Without it, we would be extinct and stone dead like a doorknob.
MEMORY
As I said above, you cannot in reality operate at the conscious level. That’s the way you read it “tree”In a book, you can hear or read the words spoken. “tree”You can see it in movies and outside. To make the image or work understandable, you must reach into your subconscious and find out what a tree looks like. If you see gibberish, or hear it in a book, it could be real gibberish, or it might just be a foreign language. But, it’s gibberish. You might also see or hear something new that you have never before. Because there is a subconscious hole that you can reach into to find the information that you need, it’s impossible for incomprehension. So you’re faced with gibberish and the vast unknown.
Your five senses account for 100 percent of what you perceive of reality. If something that is perceived does not match your cubbyhole dictionary, then it’s part of your reality.
These millions of inputs and outputs are happening so quickly, but not at the speed light, you don’t even notice it. There is a lag between reading and writing. “tree”And the “ah ha, I know that that means”It’s so quick it doesn’t register. It would be obvious if there was any significant time difference. Any lag would cause you to be sick in the Stone Age days when we were cavemen. You see? “sabre-tooth cat” – five second delay – subconscious cubby-hole says “sabre-tooth cat bad news, run”. It’s already too late.
Another common situation is: When you first wake up, you are more likely to greet your surroundings with a greeting. “Good morning (person’s name)”. Speak it! “Good morning, John”. You will need to go back to your memories to find the correct phrase and the name of the person. Remember the meaning of “appropriate” as well. This would make it inappropriate and strange to say “Goodnight Josephine” instead, or “I think I’ll have pizza for dinner tonight”. However, how can you go back to your memories and find the exact phrase you need? You wouldn’t need to search if you knew what you were searching for. This is true for any thought process. To think, say, or do the actions, you must remember the details. This is circular reasoning. To remember, you must remember the details!
You don’t have to search your mind to find your keys if you know where they were put. However, you did need to do that initial search in your memory because you already knew where your keys went! How did you find the right place to search? You have a lot of data in your memory bank. Very little of this data is useful. “where did I put my keys”. It is similar to trying to find one sentence from an encyclopedia or the proverbial needle inside a haystack.
Remember that your keys were left behind. The infinite regression of “I need to recall in order for me to remember” is similar to the series of Russian dolls that are stacked one upon the other. Your entire brain becomes clogged up with the problem, and your mind shuts down. There’s a way out.
You can rely on your subconscious if you are unable to consciously remember where your keys were left. You can always resort to the relax, wait, and see method if you are too eager. However, this requires many memory exercises.
AUTOPILOT IS OFFICIALLY ON
There is no need for you to be able to keep your eyes open, remember how to stand up or take a step to move from A to B. Or how to eat your breakfast. If your body has injured or become sick, it will usually fix the problem. It doesn’t matter if you have to know how to treat a cut, or what to do to get rid of the common cold. You might find that almost all your body, even the mind, is already pre-programmed and on autopilot.
Assistant in Office
Actually, I have two distinct virtual reality critters. Felix and the Standard Office Assistant are cleverly disguised as cats. [the cat]. The question now is: Do these simulation critters, in whatever shape and manner, reflect the real (apparently) human being?
We can all agree, first of all, that these virtual critters represent simulations. We can agree as a group that these virtual critters are software programs and have no freedom of choice. However, there are many commonalities between their behaviour and their mental processes with that of an (apparently real) human being.
The Office Assistant (OA), for starters, has memory. If I complete a specific action, I receive a prompt for something to be done in response. Office Assistant (OA), which is my computer, has searched the memory of its system for an appropriate answer. The Office Assistant (OA) has taken a decision. In trying to get my attention, it also displays emotion. Software can be upgraded and is often updated. That’s learning under another name. Felix is able to use its senses of smell, sight and touch to interact with any objects that it comes across. The cat exhibits many of the same behaviours as real cats. The only thing they don’t do are sex and vomit.
Both feed off electrical energy. The OA wakes up whenever I turn on my computer. They go to sleep when I shut it off. The OA can actually take catnaps over long periods of inactivity, where it doesn’t need its help hints. The OA cannot be told if it is programmed to go into a dream like real cats. As it would require programming, I doubt they are.
It’s just complex programming. It’s not clear how it works but any good computer programmer could explain the concept in great technical detail.
These clearly simulated cats are indeed able to reflect many biological traits we recognize as human. Given the differences in sophistication, this is like comparing the cost of a five penny piece against a $5 bill. But the truth is, both five and five cent pieces are equal. It is only a matter of degree that the difference between Office Assistant/Felix versus me is.
MIND OVER MATER: The POWER OF Positive Thinking?
You can influence the behavior of living material but you cannot think like a slot machine or poker player. 18 holes in one at the golf course is par.
Non-living is when your mind has the ability to influence living beings. However, I do not mean by telepathy or other technology devices that could be used to mind-control. As any Drill Sergeant can testify, a simple hard stare, the evil eye or the barking voice are all you need. Sometimes minds become stale in the hands of others. You can also influence other minds’ worldviews by your thoughts, ideas or words written.
One lover looks into the eyes of another – a kind of mental communication occurs between the two of them, affecting each other’s physiological state.
Your mind has the power to influence other people, even if they are not your actual body. Some people can control their heartbeat to an extent. There is a placebo effect that enhances the positive or aggravates the negative. This has been shown repeatedly in minor medical conditions. The latter is the most important. If someone really puts the whammy in your face, and you truly believe in its power, then you are free to just waste away or curl up with a book. This is not surprising, as your mind (biochemistry), and your body (biochemistry), are both matter. Biochemistry can also flow between them. This is a very small scale. Although you might be able to defy gravity by throwing a ball into the air and defying the Earth, you cannot do so to the point where it can reach Mars. Similar to common colds and pneumonia, you might find your mind able to reduce the time or severity, but that’s unlikely to be realistic.