Increasing Awareness - What is really happening?

As part of Reality Checks, some people, including I, try to increase their awareness. I'm under the impression that people who practice All Day Awareness try to do this constantly. I also think children do this naturally, more easily. As we grow older, it becomes more difficult.

It is advised to focus on all 5 of the senses, to achieve the increase in awareness. Although I think this helps, I don't think it's the core of it. Increasing awareness doesn't just mean paying more conscious attention to our senses of sight, hearing, etc.

When nothing important is happening, it seems some essential part of my consciousness takes a 'back seat' to the rest of my mind. I'll think, I'll worry about the day, but I'm not really there. It's hard for me to articulate exactly what I mean by this. Whatever it is, why does it happen? Might it serve some evolutionary advantage? Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or have input?

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some people, including I, try to increase their awareness.

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This sounded wrong to me, but it's actually correct. Damn your superior Canadian education!! :pfft:

The kind of awareness you need is with the inner dialogue shut off... no mental chatter. In other words, practice meditation. Also, I know I've been pushing it a lot on the board, but you MUST read The 5th Agreement!!! It teaches in great detail exactly how to achieve the state you're looking for. The ancient Toltec tradition is derived from the same sources as Buddhism and other early Shamanic traditions of spirituality, and their main strength is awareness of exactly the kind you speak of.

You can skip the 1st book The 4 Agreements - when he wrote the 5th Agreement he went back over the original 4 in even better detail than he did the first time (the 1st book was rather slim).

Taking the back seat can be awesome sometimes! Especially with driving. Its nice to know I can just chill to music and my hands and feet know exactly what to do all because Im glancing, not even staring, at the street.

Evolutionary wise, taking the back seat allows us to forget the mundane activities of concentrating on physical things - like driving - so we can introspect and think about things (I think therefore I am!). Life doesn't stop just because youre thinking, so another aspect of your consciousness is needed to always be present and to always be conscious of the body. And that's the job of the subconscious, to be present when we decide to walk out the back door and go off into la-la land.

Being able to live in your own mind is a fundamental part of being human. But these days, were not real balanced, and we spend way too much time in our thoughts, and not enough time being present. We have to find the balance of being physically present in the moment, and the ability to retreat in our mind and think!

I start this process not by trying to focus on my senses but clearing the mind-cloud between my perception and my senses.

Then I find myself checking over and over again if I'm doing it.

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Originally Posted by Dianeva

When nothing important is happening, it seems some essential part of my consciousness takes a 'back seat' to the rest of my mind. I'll think, I'll worry about the day, but I'm not really there. It's hard for me to articulate exactly what I mean by this. Whatever it is, why does it happen? Might it serve some evolutionary advantage? Does anyone know what I'm talking about, or have input?

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So you're saying that you'd like to be present and aware, but unless there is some important stimulus to focus on, your mind continually distracts you?

This is the way most people are. What has happened is your sense of identity has become closely associated with your thoughts. You think of your thoughts as "you." Your opinions, beliefs, perceptions, all come together to make you feel like an individual. Once that happens (usually very early in life,) the mind will not cease thinking. For if you are your thoughts, and they were to stop, your identity as you know it would no longer be there. It would be psychological death. Therefore, the mind will not stop activity because it feels if it did so it would die. The only time it will stop is when, as you mentioned, something comes along to distract it. This is why most people watch T.V all the time, or busy themselves with gadgets like cellphones. It allows for a brief reprieve from the constant internal noise.

To begin to increase your awareness of the now, and slow the torrent of thoughts at least down to a river or a trickle, you need to stop energizing them.

Observe your mind. Each time a thought comes up, there is an initial upwelling of a concept, followed by a train of internal dialog or images. Say you are worried about whether you left the stove on. First there is just *worry about stove,* with no words, and the follows "oh shit I hope I didn't leave the stove on." Now that initial upwelling may have been beyond your control, but you carry it further by energizing it. You go "well maybe I should go home and check, nah I'm sure I didn't, well maybe I can phone my friend who lives close by and she can check for me..." and on and on.

Notice the though, but disengage from it and passively observe it. It will run out of steam really quick. Go back to your awareness of the present moment. The next thought upwells, notice it and disengage from it. And so on.

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Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

First there is just *worry about stove,* with no words, and the follows "oh shit I hope I didn't leave the stove on." Now that initial upwelling may have been beyond your control, but you carry it further by energizing it. You go "well maybe I should go home and check, nah I'm sure I didn't, well maybe I can phone my friend who lives close by and she can check for me..." and on and on.

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Dream schema FTW! It doesn't only happen when we're alseep.

Um - altering your state of consciousness is known to help as well. Not with alcohol. I mean like - meditation and stuff.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

This sounded wrong to me, but it's actually correct. Damn your superior Canadian education!! :pfft:

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Yeah I was thinking it looks wrong when I wrote it, but knew it was right.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

The kind of awareness you need is with the inner dialogue shut off... no mental chatter. In other words, practice meditation.

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I've practiced meditation on and off for the last few years. The thing is, I'm not sure if an absence of internal dialog is necessary to attain increased awareness. It might be a bit easier with thoughts slowed down, but that might just be because it's harder to concentrate on maintaining it. I'm not saying it isn't and that you're talking about a different thing than I am, I just don't know right now.

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Originally Posted by juroara

Taking the back seat can be awesome sometimes! Especially with driving. Its nice to know I can just chill to music and my hands and feet know exactly what to do all because Im glancing, not even staring, at the street.

Evolutionary wise, taking the back seat allows us to forget the mundane activities of concentrating on physical things - like driving - so we can introspect and think about things (I think therefore I am!). Life doesn't stop just because youre thinking, so another aspect of your consciousness is needed to always be present and to always be conscious of the body. And that's the job of the subconscious, to be present when we decide to walk out the back door and go off into la-la land.

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Yes, there are many things that we can do subconsciously or semi-consciously, like walking, breathing, etc. But I don't think this is the type of thing I'm talking about when I say 'awareness'. Focusing on these otherwise subconscious activities, and on our senses, helps to increase the awareness, but I don't think it's the direct cause. It's almost like... there's a part of my brain, a hyper-conscious part, that's usually asleep, and while thinking about my senses, it's awakened. But it can also be awakened while thinking regular thoughts, it's just a bit more difficult because it's easy to get absorbed in the thoughts and turn it off.

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Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

So you're saying that you'd like to be present and aware, but unless there is some important stimulus to focus on, your mind continually distracts you?

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I made this thread to be about the phenomenon, why it occurs, etc., rather than about how to increase it (although I would like to increase it). As I said in replying to what someone else said, I don't think the thoughts of the mind and the 'awareness' I'm talking about are exclusive. When something particularly exciting is going on, like if I were being mugged or I'm about to jump off of a waterfall, I become more aware of the situation, more conscious of it.

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Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

This is the way most people are. What has happened is your sense of identity has become closely associated with your thoughts. You think of your thoughts as "you." Your opinions, beliefs, perceptions, all come together to make you feel like an individual. Once that happens (usually very early in life,) the mind will not cease thinking. For if you are your thoughts, and they were to stop, your identity as you know it would no longer be there. It would be psychological death. Therefore, the mind will not stop activity because it feels if it did so it would die. The only time it will stop is when, as you mentioned, something comes along to distract it. This is why most people watch T.V all the time, or busy themselves with gadgets like cellphones. It allows for a brief reprieve from the constant internal noise.

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I'm not sure I agree here. I don't see any reason to try to cease my thoughts completely (which I doubt is possible), or even to slow them down. As far as I can tell, there is no 'me' except for my thoughts. There are certain types of thoughts, like internal dialogs, which might be bad practice as they enforce an identity which might be limiting. And sometimes it might be better to let go of that identity and start clean, get out of loops and become more creative. So in that way, I agree and your advice might apply. But I doubt there is anything beyond the brain involved in any of it.

Not beyond the brain - there's nothing supernatural or religious about it.

Thoughts rise up from the unconscious into consciousness and then become available to the conscious mind. But consciousness is a limited part of the total mind, much of which is unconscious. Therefore even the thoughts themselves have a source outside of consciousness. If you ca observe your thoughts, then you can't also be your thoughts.

Animals don't have subvocal thoughts - but they're aware.

But it sounds like you already know about this stuff, and I don't want to annoy you by persisting.

I do want to say though that that hyper-awareness you mentioned I believe is unconscious - it doesn't use language at all, it communicates directly with your nerves and muscles with no conscious intervention. Example, if I'm riding my bike with no hands and suddenly start to crash, at the same instant that hyper awareness comes on and I stop thinking consciously - my left had grabs the handlebar faster than I can think (consciously anyway) and rights things with no conscious feedback whatsoever from me.

Interestingly - you know how they say the right half of the brain control the left hand etc... it's always my left hand that saves me in these situations (and it's happened several times). I'm normally clumsy as hell with my left hand, but n a situation like this it's unerring and instant. I suspect that's because it's responding to right-brain signals and I believe the unconscious is mostly right-brain activity.

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I made this thread to be about the phenomenon, why it occurs, etc., rather than about how to increase it

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The phenomenon being the fading out of your awareness, while the mind runs almost automatically?

Like I said, I believe it is a psychological issue where the mind fears silence due to its identity being associated with thoughts. Thoughts are helpful and necessary for survival, but should you not be able to silence them at least for, say, 5 minutes?

You are suggesting that having your thoughts run automatically as "you" fade out is hardwired into our brain and serves some evolutionary purpose? The need to think, plan and organize would certainly have advantages, and maybe "you" fading out allows it to happen spontaneously, whereas you would be more interested in less survival oriented thoughts if you were allowed complete awareness all the time. "Wow, look at the beautiful flower" you say, while your brain goes "NO, plan for the months ahead when we will be low of food."

The mind is an important tool, so I think there is some merit to that, but I believe that it has become extremely imbalanced. It serves its purpose as a survival machine, but continual use with no breaks over uses the tool. You don't need to be worrying and thinking about what has happened and what will happen all the time, especially at our current level of physical leisure.

I have no problem with hearing someone's viewpoint on it, don't worry about annoying me.

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Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

You are suggesting that having your thoughts run automatically as "you" fade out is hardwired into our brain and serves some evolutionary purpose? The need to think, plan and organize would certainly have advantages, and maybe "you" fading out allows it to happen spontaneously, whereas you would be more interested in less survival oriented thoughts if you were allowed complete awareness all the time. "Wow, look at the beautiful flower" you say, while your brain goes "NO, plan for the months ahead when we will be low of food."

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I don't know where I gave the impression that I don't want to increase awareness. In fact, I said in parentheses "although I would like to increase it" right after what you quoted me on. I don't know if increased focus on the present rather than the past or future is what causes the increased 'awareness' feeling.

Ok good, cause there is one more thing I wanted to say.

It sounds like your instructor unfortunately attached some spiritual or religious mumbo-jumbo to it. That sucks, and I hope you don't let that ruin it for you.

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Originally Posted by Dianeva

I don't know where I gave the impression that I don't want to increase awareness. In fact, I said in parentheses "although I would like to increase it" right after what you quoted me on. I don't know if increased focus on the present rather than the past or future is what causes the increased 'awareness' feeling.

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I don't think I said you didn't want to increase it :).

Perhaps something else to consider may be bodily health. The mind's energy is very intertwined with the body's energy. If you are tired or eating poorly, the mind will have less energy which would reduce awareness. I have great awareness early in the day, but as the day goes on and my body gets more tired the fade out which you describe happens.

There are also techniques for working with the human energy body which increase your consciousness.

In short that fade out may be due to an overall lack of energy, both in the physical and energetic body.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

It sounds like your instructor unfortunately attached some spiritual or religious mumbo-jumbo to it. That sucks, and I hope you don't let that ruin it for you.

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Probably.

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Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

I don't think I said you didn't want to increase it :).

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Okay, my mistake.

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Originally Posted by Dianeva

Yes, there are many things that we can do subconsciously or semi-consciously, like walking, breathing, etc. But I don't think this is the type of thing I'm talking about when I say 'awareness'. Focusing on these otherwise subconscious activities, and on our senses, helps to increase the awareness, but I don't think it's the direct cause. It's almost like... there's a part of my brain, a hyper-conscious part, that's usually asleep, and while thinking about my senses, it's awakened. But it can also be awakened while thinking regular thoughts, it's just a bit more difficult because it's easy to get absorbed in the thoughts and turn it off.

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Thats not what I meant........!

I was saying that the subconscious is the part of you that is always hyper-aware. Thats why I used driving as an example. Think driving is an unconscius activity? Uh-ah, its anything but unconscious.

The subconscious has to pay attention to every little thing thats happening while you drive. What the cars next to you are doing, what the road looks like ahead. And every time you turn your head to check your blind spot, it quickly remembers what the road looked like ahead to accurately adjusts your hand and feet movement. I've checked my blind spot while on a curve driving next to a construction wall and I'm marveled every time that I don't crash. I don't crash because my subconscious knows to continue the curve and can do so even without looking. This is no easy feat.

Breathing is UNCONSCIOUS. That means it requires NO THOUGHT. (we can be conscious of it though)

Driving is SUBCONSCIOUS. This means it requires intelligent thought, we just aren't aware of the process of those thoughts.

I think we are confusing unconscious and subconscious. They're not the same. Unconscious means mindless activity. Subconscious on the other hand is a testament to our incredible brains to process millions of bits of information per second - and then to make a "conscious" decision based on that information. That's the key difference.

There is NO consciousness in unconscious activity.

There IS consciousness in our subconscious. And its a hyper-consciousness ever aware of every waking moment, and ever aware of our dream landscape. It is after all, the part of our mind creating the dream. You aren't aware of how many leaves there are on the trees of your dream - you're subconscious is! It put it there itself!

Are in darkmatters example of falling off a bike, grabbing that handlebar faster than you can consciously think - we tend to call that instinct. It's not exactly instinct though. Instinct is an animal having sex and it has no idea why its having sex. But grabbing the handlebar of the bicycle is the most logical conclusion. It was a split intelligent decision on the part of darkmatters subconscious. In moments like this, the subcosncious doesn't wait for us to think - it acts on its own volition.

Instinct is written in the DNA. This kind of split second conscious activity isn't. Another person would have freaked out and just fallen. Because intelligent thought processes are a part of the subconscious, not all subconscious minds are the same. The subconscious grows and learns just like you.

Like I said, the subconsciousness IS a consciousness. Its completely compatible with our waking consciousness. So our waking consciousness can dip into it, and literally become more conscious by adding consciousness to itself.

Or you can say that lucidity isn't just awareness. Its awareness that you are aware of!

Aw see - now I stopped using the term subconscious cause it's pretty controversial. It's not recognized in psychology at all afaik.

Now ya gotta go and make it all complicated again Juroara!! I was happy with my simple conscious/unconscious divide.

You seem to be using the term unconscious not in the same way Freud and Jung used it, but in the sense of "knocked out" or just controlling automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat. But according to Freud and Jung (the guys who pretty much gave us the term, though it may have been in use previously) the unconscious is where dreams arise from.

Yeah, I think ima stick with my simple 2-part breakdown until and unless psychology recognizes the subconscious. Though you do make a compelling case.

Yeah, that is an interesting perspective Juroara, but I don't know what the terms are supposed to mean. I've been under the impression that unconscious just refers to a person who is passed out. I like the definitions you've given, but it would be nice if everyone defined the terms the same.

A while back I got frustrated with the confusion between the terms unconscious and subconscious, so I did a lot of googling. I ran across a lot of conflicting info, but usually the people who used unconscious to mean knocked out were laypeople. Also of course, neither Freud nor Jung use the term at all. Whenever I found something online by a qualified psychologist they always used the term unconscious in the same way Freud and Jung did. So I consider that to be the correct usage, and unconscious meaning knocked out to be just a popular misconception.

Was it Juroara who mentioned something about controlling automatic actions like breathing and heartrate? I don't remember, but I'll address it anyway. I believe those kinds of functions - simple physiological actions that are carried out automatically - are controlled in the brainstem, which is really outside of what I consider the unconscious mind, or maybe could be called a really low part of it - analogous to that little microprocessor in your engine that monitors everything (as opposed to your desktop computer, which can do a lot more processing and has many more functions). Let me paste in something I wrote on another thread today that's relevant:

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And if you understand how evolution works (I learned this from Carl Sagan, so it MUST be true! :cheeky:) - it can't throw away old systems, it can only build onto them. This is true for DNA and for the structure of the brain itself. Starting from the brain stem there are three distinct layers - the Lizard Brain, which we share in common with ancient reptilian predecessors, the Mammal Brain or Limbic System, which is the outgrowth responsible for warm fuzzy feelings that mammals have and reptiles don't, and then on top of that the newest addition the Cerebral Cortex or Human Brain. All the higher logic, the stuff that separates us from the other animals, is contained in this newest part. So evolutionarily speaking, we've only just emerged from the mostly unconscious state into the human consciousness recently.

Another fact I got from Sagan is that the same pattern that we went through evolutionarily as a species shows itself on an individual level as we grow from zygote to adult - we start as a single cell twitching in liquid, then go through stages where we have gills and where the embryo is almost indistinguishable from that of a bird or a reptile. Then we emerge and crawl on four legs while existing in an unconscious state (babies are dreaming all the time) before finally standing unsteadily and beginning to take on the heritage of full human consciousness. Each one of us has re-enacted evolution.

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These 2 paragraphs considered together pretty well explain my concept of the unconscious. It's the mind we had the longest, both evolutionarily and individually, and the one that's always running, even when consciousness is online and eclipses it. The unconscious thinks in images and symbols - in (regular) dreams there is dialogue, but it doesn't usually make sense - its more like pre-recorded sound bytes inserted almost randomly and the actual meaning comes through separately. Just look at DC's Say the Darndest Things! A DC might say "Cold-Fishing precedes ironmongery for the metadata." and you know what he means is that you have to escape before the overlords arrive.

Yeah, the unconscious has a hard time with language - that's the realm of the frontal cortex and left-brain consciousness. Dreams communicate through direct means - memories, thoughts, ideas, feelings, all presented complete and prefabricated directly into your dreaming experience. Another bit from that thread:

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So both evolutionarily and on an individual basis you can see that the unconscious mind is large in comparison to the conscious. It has to be because it (unconscious) handles so much more - it's broad and unfocused like the peripheral vision, capable of detecting patterns and movement while the focused part of the mind, like the central disc of focused vision - is small and detects fine detail. Each plays its part - THAT'S why they don't communicate in the same language. One is deep programming that deals with unfocused thought, and the other is the newer, constantly-upgraded focused User Interface that allows us to reach into the database of the other (larger) one and make conscious sense of what we find there.

I'd also like to add - about the right-brain/ left-brain thing. i have no idea if each hemisphere is responsible for a different way of thinking, but I do know that there are two distinctly different ways we think - described in the familiar right-brain/ left-brain dichotomy. This fact has actually been known form the beginning of humanity, and originally was described in myth and later codified by Nietzsche as the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy. I have a nice long blog entry about all this here if this hasn't already been long enough. :lol:

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I could go on and on - I've really delved deeply into this stuff over the last few years, but I better quit here.


***EDIT***

It's been about 20 minutes or so, and my mind has been chewing on vague thoughts related to all this. Sorry if I'm rambling, but this feels important - I often find I reach new levels of thinking in conversations like this one - come to new conclusions.

Anyway, I'm thinking about all this - the conscious mind thinking in terms of logic and language (the familiar mental chatter that you need to quiet when meditating) and the dreaming unconscious in symbols and feelings etc - and suddenly this struck me.

Usually we structure language in full sentence structure.

The unconscious doesn't structure things like this. It might have some different kind of structure, but it doesn't seem like it. This may be why poets are able to tap into unconscious thinking and pull dreamlike imagery out through language.

Don't sentence yourself to structure.

By allowing free-association and automatic writing we allow ourselves to use the conscious mechanism to look into the unconscious realm and draw forth content from it that resists normal grammatically correct structured thinking.

So Dianeva, you might be right that you're sometimes able to activate that hyper-awareness while still thinking in words. That might be when you're in poetic mode.