Before you post, you must read these rules:
The purpose of this thread is for intelligent discussion of philosophical and theological ideas and views. It doesn't need to be structured, but there are a couple ground rules you need to follow.
- No flaming.. This should be self evident, but too often, I see discussions online break down as someone starts making personal attacks on someone else. An argument needs to be governed by logic, and there's no logic in attacking the person expressing their idea, instead of the idea. Summed up: Hate the idea, not the man/woman who expressed it.
- No stupid posts. I am not going to waste my time dealing with people being idiots. If you can't post something intelligent, don't post anything at all. I will promptly message Spectere requesting him to delete any posts that are obviously stupid.
That's about all I can think of for now, but If I think of more, I'll post them.
Now, on to my first musing:
This is about my mind.
I've been realizing this a lot lately, and it's somewhat creepy to me when I think of it. I've noticed that when I think something to myself, word by word in my head, I already know what I'm going to say, long before I say it. It's as though the idea comes, fully formed, in the back of my conscious mind before I'm completely aware of it, and as I'm thinking it, I realize that. Lately though, I've been catching it as it happened. By the time the first word has been thought, I'll already be conscious of the rest of it, without needing to think it to myself. It's a bit of an awkward feeling, and I'm wondering just how much my subconscious mind is really doing.
Most people think of the subconscious as something that doesn't really affect your daily life. I'm one of the few people who's learned to use it for conscious thought in at least one way. I use it to write my essays. I sit there and do nothing, talk to people, and kill time, knowing I need to work on my essay, and then later that night, I begin writing. The essay come out in stream of consciousness, more or less ordered in the way an essay needs to be ordered. I rarely consciously think about it and most of the essay comes directly from my subconscious into my head and onto the paper with next to no editing on my part.
However, with this new revelation, I've realized that my subconscious controls nearly everything I do. It controls when I go to bed, it controls my internal thinking, it controls when I decide to do something, It controls virtually everything I do during the day, except for the few times I make a conscious decision for some reason.
My mom has been getting into this new spiritualist guy named Eckhart Tolle, and the biggest thing he talks about is living in the Now and stopping all of those conscious thoughts that we constantly have (like, when you're thinking to yourself word by word in your head). He talks about being able to observe yourself thinking things. For example, if you think something mean, and then you think to yourself "that was a mean thing to think.", you're observing your own thoughts. But what parts of your brain are making those thoughts? Eckhart says that you have the unconscious mind, the real You, and then you have the Ego, the conscious mind, the part that had that bad thought. He teaches that the Ego is the part of your mind that is responsible for all the pain and such you have in your life. He says that if you can succeed in stopping using the Ego, stopping thinking about the past, and the future, and completely consciously living in the Now, that we can go beyond all the problems and pain in our life. We would no longer think about anything painful in our past, and we would also no longer think of anything in the future that could be a problem. We would have no worry, we'd be completely absorbed in what we are doing at this exact moment.
Why did I mention all of that? Because my examination of my own mind is tied in with ideas of consciousness, and ego, and all the rest of it. As much as I didn't want to admit that Eckhart could be right, I'm coming to understand and agree with a number of the major aspects of what he teaches. I refuse to believe in the soul aspects and other semi-religious things he mentions, but I find that as much as I feel opposed to him, I understand and agree with him. What do you guys think of all this? What sort of thoughts do you guys have on your own mind, and how it works?
And to give you another example of when you stop all conscious thought, like Eckhart talks about, I'll explain the one time where I've been able to do that. It only happens when I'm reading a book. There are times where I become so engrossed in a book that I'm reading that I'll come to the point where I am no longer consciously thinking. Afterwards, I cannot honestly remember reading the words. Many times, I see things as a movie in my head, but something more than simply a movie. Because the writer explains feelings and thoughts, as well as simple narrative and description, I feel as though I am the narrator. I feel as though I'm the world, watching things unfold from a perspective that can see the vast majority of what's going on. I no longer am simply reading, but at the same time, reading is exactly what I'm doing. I'm no longer consciously reading, but my eyes are still doing it. I block out everything around me, and my mind is completely dedicated to the task at hand, which is reading the words, and constructing the mental image of what's going on, but I'm so trapped that I'm not even consciously aware I'm doing it. That's as close as living in the moment as I get. I'm completely and totally absorbed in reading a book. I no longer think in past and future, I no longer think of now, I only think of what is written in the pages of the book. It's a rather interesting event, really, since so few people are capable of losing themselves so completely in something like that.
I'm kinda interested in how that sort of thing fits in with Eckhart's ideas, and whether I could ever succeed in reproducing that state of mind without actually reading.
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