Challenges

[unveiledbouquet]

Jen - I am from Brisbane, too. It's a little haunting to read those Facebook posts with the hindsight we now have. Very sad. But beautiful to read Joseph's sentiment beforehand: "I love everyone". I hope that has provided his loved ones with some comfort.

Sighclone - I loved receiving that present moment reminder from ET and recalled it a few times each day this week at work in the office. I work in a law firm where the ego seems to be regularly activated each hour. Watching it rise and try to do its thing almost makes me smile now. But I more and more gravitate to looking to those moments as opportunities to go deeper into my presence.

Onceler - I'm struck by how much love there is here for you. What a lucky guy. Thinking of you in these more challenging times.

Rachael
x

PS My first post but long time reader of the forum. Thanks for having me.

[ashley72]

This is the latest "Present Moment Reminder" from ET:

“The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep.”

Do you think being conscious of your body/self/thoughts is a left or right hemisphere function?

I think conscious awareness has a sequential and symbolic nature...with Add, Multiply, Divide and Subtract calculations and also data comparisons such as 'Greater Than', 'Less Than', 'Equal To' are available. Whenever I'm conscious of my body, location, what I'm doing... Comparisons naturally follow sequentially. It's like a fixed software program that repeats itself or has a program loop. On the other hand, when I'm not particularly conscious of myself and maybe focused on something else it doesn't always feel sequential and fixed.... but more spontaneous and receptive.

I'm not the only one that thinks this => http://books.google.com.au/books?id=cXt ... CDUQ6AEwAw

Driving a car is an example of this state, you're not always conscious of driving the car, your mind is in a parallel mode where you might be talking to someone, thinking of stopping for fuel, basically multitasking which is not sequential and you are not overly conscious of moving the steering wheel left or right... You know how to drive you have complete confidence so it just happens... you don't need to be conscious of the steering wheel or brake, clutch & gear stick.

[Fore]

Do you think being conscious of your body/self/thoughts is a left or right hemisphere function?

No.

[runstrails]

Welcome, Rachael! Glad you upgraded from lurker status!
I know all about big organizations and egoic goings on (including my own, of course!). Over time however, clarity does seem to displace unconscious behavior. With the realization that you are awareness, there is also the very useful and practical awareness of all your mental conditioning and reactivity.
Looking forward to your contributions!

[Sighclone]

Welcome unveiledboquet! Wonderful screen name! Thanks for joining. We look forward to your contributions!!

Andy

[ashley72]

Do you think being conscious of your body/self/thoughts is a left or right hemisphere function?

No.

Why do you say that neither hemisphere is involved?

Take inner speech (subvocalization), if I say in my minds eye... "To Whom Do these thoughts arise? To me, well who Am I?". This gives myself contextual awareness.... a pointed focus on my own activity.

When we use inner speech there is bilateral activation in predominantly the left frontal lobe, which would indicate the left hemisphere is strongly implicated in conscious self awareness or introspection.

I think anything that requires "new"motor skill learning, driving for the first time, requires you to be conscious of the road, your own actions, the brake, the wheel, the gear stick, the clutch.... It's a mechanical process. It can feel lacking confidence, forced, awkward & clumsy. It's not a smooth and relaxed process. You are trying to do things in a sequential fashion or order of steps. Like following a recipe.

When you have been driving for many years, over-learned, the activity of driving you no longer have to be conscious of the brake, the wheel, the gear stick etc. Its as if the "conscious" sequential aspect of driving has been removed and it becomes smooth, automated and confident.

[ashley72]

Agoraphobia is when a sufferer becomes overly hyper-conscious of certain actions, it becomes sequential and clumsy.... like a new learning task. The sub-vocalisation is also usually a strong trait of agoraphobia. It feels like you can't switch off and just do tasks without being hyper attentive to a small number of tasks. There is a strong & obsessive focus on your own sensations, thoughts and behaviours... and a strong & constant sub-vocalisation of those tasks. It seems to me that an Agoraphobic is mainly left hemisphere activated when doing undesirable activities.

[Fore]

Why do you say that neither hemisphere is involved?

"They celebrated the first successful cryogenic freezing.
He had no way of letting them know he was still conscious."

Take inner speech (subvocalization), if I say in my minds eye... "To Whom Do these thoughts arise? To me, well who Am I?". This gives myself contextual awareness.... a pointed focus on my own activity.

This is identification with thought not mere awareness.

[ashley72]

Why do you say that neither hemisphere is involved?

"They celebrated the first successful cryogenic freezing.
He had no way of letting them know he was still conscious."

I'm not following?

How does cryogenic preservation have anything to do with whether our conscious awareness is a left or right hemisphere dominate?

If something is frozen...it solidifies normally fluid processes. So those fluids don't flow. A human being is 70% composition by water, so human beings solidify well. The motor neurons which are linked to cognitive & sensory neurons are all chemical processes will also solidify. Consciousness doesn't function when your neurons are cryogenic preserved.

Take inner speech (subvocalization), if I say in my minds eye... "To Whom Do these thoughts arise? To me, well who Am I?". This gives myself contextual awareness.... a pointed focus on my own activity.

This is identification with thought not mere awareness.

It is contextual awareness. To give any device (even human) contextual awareness you have to reference it against something... it requires relativity. Relativity implies comparison. This I believe is a left hemisphere process of sequential processing.

If we're talking about non contextual awareness or pure awareness...it's the process of receiving sensory input without any frame of reference. So if you looked at your arm, you wouldn't be conscious it's your arm. I don't see pure awareness as being conscious.... As conscious implies a frame of reference. A person can't have a point of view... "I am conscious". Unless they first know what it is to be non-conscious. They therefore first need to establish a polarity.

[Fore]

How does cryogenic preservation have anything to do with whether our conscious awareness is a left or right hemisphere dominate?

who's conscious awareness?

Consciousness doesn't function when your neurons are cryogenic preserved.

Who says?

It is contextual awareness. To give any device (even human) contextual awareness you have to reference it against something... it requires relativity. Relativity implies comparison. This I believe is a left hemisphere process of sequential processing.

Mere consciousness or conscious awareness is not of anything. "It" is not dependent on anything.

Conditioned consciousness is dependent:

Through ignorance are conditioned volitional actions or kamma-formations.
Through volitional actions is conditioned consciousness.
Through consciousness are conditioned mental and physical phenomena.
Through mental and physical phenomena are conditioned the six faculties(i.e., five physical sense-organs and mind).
Through the six faculties is conditioned (sensorial and mental) contact.
Through (sensorial and mental)contact is conditioned sensation.
Through sensation is conditioned desire, 'thirst".
Through desire ('thirst') is conditioned clinging.
Through clinging is conditioned the process of becoming.
Through the process of becoming is conditioned birth.
Through birth are conditioned decay, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair.

[ashley72]

Mere consciousness or conscious awareness is not of anything. "It" is not dependent on anything.

That explains a lot.

Is the physical world also an illusion?

[Fore]

Is the physical world also an illusion?

A dream of mind identification.
Whatever you experience from moment to moment is real to you.

[ashley72]

Is the physical world also an illusion?

A dream of mind identification.
Whatever you experience from moment to moment is real to you.

"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our live."

Self-consciousness: an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously.

However, self awareness isn't a mystery anymore. Douglas Hofstadter the brilliant polymath, worked out way back in the 70's that the 85 billion neurons in our human brain are subject to self reference (Godel Incompleteness theorem). Self reference occurs in infants at around 2 years of age. This happens when infants go past a certain threshold of neurons that automatically cause self reference to occur. If you look at the amount of neurons in different animals, all the animals that have some form of self awareness have the most neurons. A jelly fish only has 800 neurons -a jelly fish is not self aware. Yet Jelly fish can respond to things, but they don't have self awareness.

But it seems Humans are the only species that has "acute" self awareness, which is the ability to introspect ones life. I think it has something to do with the huge number of neurons we have compared to other animal species. My gut feeling is that language has something to do with the reason acute self awareness has evolved. Language is uniquely human. Our symbolic world is much much richer when compared to a jelly fish.

I think self awareness is 1st order self reference related to the right hemisphere. But Self Consciousness (acute self awareness) is a 2nd order phenomena which is self reference relating to left hemisphere processing (sequential life story) in our language centre of our brain.

I don't think infants can introspect at two years of age, even though self awareness develops. Therefore, infants don't have self consciousness yet.... I think that comes much later as the language centre in the brain starts to develop language and we build a story about our selfs which we can introspect, prospect, retrospect etc
In a sequential fashion.

Sentience (being aware of one's surroundings) is not the same as self-awareness (being aware of oneself as an individual). The mirror test is sometimes considered to be an operational test for self-awareness, and the handful of animals that have passed the mirror test are often considered to be self-aware. It remains debatable whether recognition of one's mirror image can be properly construed to imply full self-awareness, particularly given that robots are being constructed which appear to pass the test.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_bui ... are_robots