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OK, I'm Conscious
Nov. 29th, 2002 12:23 pmThis is a muse about the nature of consciousness. Since the only conscious mind I know close to 100% is my own I'll use my own brain for example.
I have some four states of conscious existance:
There's the unconscious state. This doesn't apply to just dreamless sleep; it also applies to normally uncontrolled things like heartbeat, breathing, cellular healing... things like that.
There's my subconscious state. This involves the back of my brain handling background tasks while my conscious mind deals with thinking. It's a reactionary part as well as a background processor.
There's my conscious mind. With my conscious mind I deal with the things that take thinking - it could be accessing memories, it could be figuring out how to sell to somebody on the other end of the line, it could be what to do about a current problem, it could be planning for the future. And sometimes it's just strategizing about playing Munchkin. My conscious mind recognizes what's going on.
The last state is the superconscious. I'll get back to it.
There are times when I can take some limited control of my heartbeat and breathing by conscious effort, such as deep breaths for performance or to reduce heartbeat a bit.
I tend to tap into my subconscious for results of the background processing, like how to catch a ball or what I think about the election. My conscious mind and my subconscious have a running dialog and swap stories regularly; they're the parts that talk the most. You could call them a spectrum of thought if you wanted.
The superconscious mind allows me to take control of my subconscious and conscious thought the way that my conscious mind sometimes allows me to control my unconscious self and subconscious. I used to be in a superconscious state a lot, and that state takes a lot of mental energy but also keeps the mind fairly sharp. I still go to my superconscious when I need to, for dragging out inspiration when I need to as opposed to just doodling, or for controlling a mental reaction.
An example: when I was a teen I acted a certain way around my parents. I usually was goofy and waiting for the next whatif and kept needing to impress them that I could think too, really I could! And they reacted a particular way to me, generally a "he doesn't really know what he's doing and he's in a phase let's hope he gets a bit better." As an adult in my 20s I was (usually) better than this, but as soon as I was in my parents presence WHAM! back to teenage behavior and they were back to those. It was a pattern.
One time I went to see Dad back in central MA, a time he was visiting while they still lived in Georgia, and he started in on the pattern. My superconscious mind took over and didn't let me revert to the teen pattern. The pattern started to break right there - and once my superconscious had done it and demonstrated it to my conscious mind that it could be done I was able to do so as needed by regular conscious effort. I can't always do it on the first try, of course, but this time I could.
This is my mind. If this helps anybody, good.
Here endeth the ramble.
I have some four states of conscious existance:
There's the unconscious state. This doesn't apply to just dreamless sleep; it also applies to normally uncontrolled things like heartbeat, breathing, cellular healing... things like that.
There's my subconscious state. This involves the back of my brain handling background tasks while my conscious mind deals with thinking. It's a reactionary part as well as a background processor.
There's my conscious mind. With my conscious mind I deal with the things that take thinking - it could be accessing memories, it could be figuring out how to sell to somebody on the other end of the line, it could be what to do about a current problem, it could be planning for the future. And sometimes it's just strategizing about playing Munchkin. My conscious mind recognizes what's going on.
The last state is the superconscious. I'll get back to it.
There are times when I can take some limited control of my heartbeat and breathing by conscious effort, such as deep breaths for performance or to reduce heartbeat a bit.
I tend to tap into my subconscious for results of the background processing, like how to catch a ball or what I think about the election. My conscious mind and my subconscious have a running dialog and swap stories regularly; they're the parts that talk the most. You could call them a spectrum of thought if you wanted.
The superconscious mind allows me to take control of my subconscious and conscious thought the way that my conscious mind sometimes allows me to control my unconscious self and subconscious. I used to be in a superconscious state a lot, and that state takes a lot of mental energy but also keeps the mind fairly sharp. I still go to my superconscious when I need to, for dragging out inspiration when I need to as opposed to just doodling, or for controlling a mental reaction.
An example: when I was a teen I acted a certain way around my parents. I usually was goofy and waiting for the next whatif and kept needing to impress them that I could think too, really I could! And they reacted a particular way to me, generally a "he doesn't really know what he's doing and he's in a phase let's hope he gets a bit better." As an adult in my 20s I was (usually) better than this, but as soon as I was in my parents presence WHAM! back to teenage behavior and they were back to those. It was a pattern.
One time I went to see Dad back in central MA, a time he was visiting while they still lived in Georgia, and he started in on the pattern. My superconscious mind took over and didn't let me revert to the teen pattern. The pattern started to break right there - and once my superconscious had done it and demonstrated it to my conscious mind that it could be done I was able to do so as needed by regular conscious effort. I can't always do it on the first try, of course, but this time I could.
This is my mind. If this helps anybody, good.
Here endeth the ramble.
