Back to the future, part 2 - On consciousness, unconsciousness and intuition
07/05/08 07:47 Filed in: Future | Consciousness
Time varies according to one's perception of it and how one is perceiving it.
It bends, warps, slows down and speeds up.
I remember being involved in a motorcycle accident a long time ago. A car pulled out in front of me when I was travelling at about 40 miles per hour. It was just feet away, I had no time to think, no time to apply the brakes. My motorcycle struck the car square on between the front and rear doors, and I was sent flying through the air. My body continued to travel at the same speed as the bike through the air. Perhaps it was two or three seconds in time, perhaps it was less than that before I came crashing to the ground. In whatever brief time it was, I saw whole passages of my life – it felt like minutes of film footage. I was totally conscious of what was happening too, and seemed to have time to prepare myself to land in a way that caused me the least physical damage. My mind would have just shut down and probably done denial of the event had it been in control. But it wasn't anymore. I believe that what happened is that my intuition had taken over completely, it created my time, and its perceptions saved my life. Hitting the ground at 40 mph is not something I would recommend. It really hurts! But intuitively I landed in a way that did me the least physical damage.
I was very fortunate. I had some very bad bruises, grazed knees, and I had chipped a tiny piece of bone from one of my knees. After the shock, I stood up much to the amazement of two policemen whose car had been travelling too close behind me and had collided with a lamp-post at the roadside to avoid hitting the car that blocked their way.
So here in my flight through the air was a sense of not only time slowing down, but also of time almost stopping; of my intuition showing me that my life was valuable in its moments of my life's reflections and having "time" to prepare myself to land.
Some sportsmen, I have heard said and Lungold also makes this point, see their games whether soccer or basketball in slow motion as they fly over the ground at high speed. This is also how intuition works. Our mind has its cycling time a little like a camera operating slowly. Our intuition varies perceptions of time to suit our consciousness and intent.
On the mind: It's said to operate at approximately twenty four frames per second. It is worth noting that one twenty fourth of a second is too slow to take a photograph with a camera without some artificial support, like a tripod. Handholding a camera using that speed would usually cause camera shake and distort the image. That is how slow it is and how slow our mind works at its fastest.
In part 1 of this piece, I felt that I was not really clear about the importance of consciousness, that it is consciousness, both individually and collectively that upholds our social worlds.
It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may embrace one or the other or synthesise or combine them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.
Consciousness also produces ideologies that uphold the status quo. Ideo is from the Greek word meaning ideas and logos to the systematic organisation of ideas and doctrines. What is really fascinating are the many different ways we have chosen to translate logos to suit the context. Logos is translated in the bible to mean the 'word of god'; it also gives us the word logic meaning rational or scientific reasoning, so even an ideology has different realities. They are man-made and upheld by our consciousness. They are often contradictory and conflicting.
Being conscious of consciousness frees us to perceive and feel deeper within ourselves and within our world. It gives us the power to question our knowing and where it comes from.
Consciousness is very powerful and empowering. There are many in the world who would wish us to be neither conscious or intuitive, since both states of being liberate us into the freedom by which we might see their realities for what they are. Turn on your TV and tune into Fox. They have a reality in which I would rather not believe. But the media bombards us with ideas about reality, the urge to consume and to uphold repugnant values. Perhaps it's the reason I don't enjoy much TV. Its mental and feelings blancmange; bland tasteless food for the mind that keeps us in a state of unconsciousness where we exist and survive and do not live at all.
But I want to talk about the unconscious here too for a moment. The unconscious is the last resort of the mind. I don't trust mind. I recognise it serves my sense of survival well and I would not be without it, but that is as far as it goes. The unconscious is that place where we push down all the muck, slime, hurt, pain, anger and all those other things that are too difficult for us to face and to look at about ourselves. It's the stuff that we repress in our unconscious that frequently comes back to bite us. We project these "shadow" parts of ourselves onto others often to justify doing hurt and violence towards them. It's these dark parts of our unconscious that we turn outwards to do hate, violence, racism and prejudice, or else we turn it inwards to do addictions, depression, suicides and other crippling behaviour.
One last point about consciousness, unconsciousness and control: Here's a question. How much media coverage have you seen of ordinary Iraqi families doing the things that ordinary people do – of laughing, crying, kissing, hugging, caressing, mourning, feeling sad or frightened, sometimes happy, enjoying meals together, going about their normal daily work, joking and having fun? Have you seen any? Anything at all?
I have every cause to believe that Iraqis are normal people too, just like the rest of us. So what do they show us then? Images of violence and hatred, our dark shadow projection onto them. Keeping us in a state of unconsciousness is what justifies our going and bombing the shit out of them. So where were the weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? Where are the national ties to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda? There may be terrorists there, at least US Marine General Conway tells me they are there. But how many terrorists are living in the USA? How many mindless murders take place there each and every week? How many Columbine High School massacres will it take before we learn? And Oh! I forgot that naughty man, Saddam, spirited the WMD away by magic. He waved his wand and abracadabra, alacazam, they were gone. Oh yeah! As I might say to Marine General Conway, "Tell that one to the marines!"
Enough of that. Just a final word on intuition: Intuition might be thought so powerful that over the centuries, people holding power have discouraged us from, even killed us, for believing in it. I don't think it's that scary myself and it's never done me any harm, only the opposite. David Beckham, the footballer, does it very well too.
Powerful people know about intuition very well; after all it is their own intuition that keeps them in power. But intuition contradicts our rational scientific thinking, it is knowing without proof and it's not the same as religion either. Lungold talks about women, witchcraft, intuition and the inquisition. During the inquisition and beyond, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of women were put to death for so-called witchcraft. To be a witch was to have a "heretical" belief either good or bad that could not be substantiated by rational proof. That's intuition. I'm not sure about the heresy either. The Catholic Church was probably the biggest murderer of women in the inquisition. Of course, the only heretical belief one was allowed to hold was that proselytised by the Catholic Church itself. I have every reason to believe that the Church has rewritten its particular story to suit its own purposes too. A knowledge of basic Greek and the bible shows how much we have distorted that story.
There are many things I have written about here that might inflame anger amongst some people. I don't believe that being conscious or intuitive is harmful. I do believe that it might carry with it the choice of profound emotions that I talk about elsewhere here: Emotions like forgiveness, understanding, forbearance and compassion.
Consciousness and intuition have nothing to do with hate. Hate has everything to do with remaining in the dark place of unconsciousness.
It bends, warps, slows down and speeds up.
I remember being involved in a motorcycle accident a long time ago. A car pulled out in front of me when I was travelling at about 40 miles per hour. It was just feet away, I had no time to think, no time to apply the brakes. My motorcycle struck the car square on between the front and rear doors, and I was sent flying through the air. My body continued to travel at the same speed as the bike through the air. Perhaps it was two or three seconds in time, perhaps it was less than that before I came crashing to the ground. In whatever brief time it was, I saw whole passages of my life – it felt like minutes of film footage. I was totally conscious of what was happening too, and seemed to have time to prepare myself to land in a way that caused me the least physical damage. My mind would have just shut down and probably done denial of the event had it been in control. But it wasn't anymore. I believe that what happened is that my intuition had taken over completely, it created my time, and its perceptions saved my life. Hitting the ground at 40 mph is not something I would recommend. It really hurts! But intuitively I landed in a way that did me the least physical damage.
I was very fortunate. I had some very bad bruises, grazed knees, and I had chipped a tiny piece of bone from one of my knees. After the shock, I stood up much to the amazement of two policemen whose car had been travelling too close behind me and had collided with a lamp-post at the roadside to avoid hitting the car that blocked their way.
So here in my flight through the air was a sense of not only time slowing down, but also of time almost stopping; of my intuition showing me that my life was valuable in its moments of my life's reflections and having "time" to prepare myself to land.
Some sportsmen, I have heard said and Lungold also makes this point, see their games whether soccer or basketball in slow motion as they fly over the ground at high speed. This is also how intuition works. Our mind has its cycling time a little like a camera operating slowly. Our intuition varies perceptions of time to suit our consciousness and intent.
On the mind: It's said to operate at approximately twenty four frames per second. It is worth noting that one twenty fourth of a second is too slow to take a photograph with a camera without some artificial support, like a tripod. Handholding a camera using that speed would usually cause camera shake and distort the image. That is how slow it is and how slow our mind works at its fastest.
In part 1 of this piece, I felt that I was not really clear about the importance of consciousness, that it is consciousness, both individually and collectively that upholds our social worlds.
It is shifts in consciousness, not technology, consumption, money markets or any aspect of our physical environment or social, political and economic systems that causes change. Back in 1962, when Kuhn wrote about "paradigm shifts", he talked about scientific revolutions occurring when a body of beliefs, what we are calling consciousness, could no longer uphold the reality they created.
There are conflicting realities in science too that co-exist, and one may embrace one or the other or synthesise or combine them in a new form of consciousness.
It is consciousness that governs our perceptions of the world that in turn creates our realities. How and what we perceive is our reality, to that extent a philosopher might say that truth is relative. I am not that sure that discussions of absolute or relative truth are that helpful in a world that is governed by consciousness and our perceptions of that world.
Consciousness also produces ideologies that uphold the status quo. Ideo is from the Greek word meaning ideas and logos to the systematic organisation of ideas and doctrines. What is really fascinating are the many different ways we have chosen to translate logos to suit the context. Logos is translated in the bible to mean the 'word of god'; it also gives us the word logic meaning rational or scientific reasoning, so even an ideology has different realities. They are man-made and upheld by our consciousness. They are often contradictory and conflicting.
Being conscious of consciousness frees us to perceive and feel deeper within ourselves and within our world. It gives us the power to question our knowing and where it comes from.
Consciousness is very powerful and empowering. There are many in the world who would wish us to be neither conscious or intuitive, since both states of being liberate us into the freedom by which we might see their realities for what they are. Turn on your TV and tune into Fox. They have a reality in which I would rather not believe. But the media bombards us with ideas about reality, the urge to consume and to uphold repugnant values. Perhaps it's the reason I don't enjoy much TV. Its mental and feelings blancmange; bland tasteless food for the mind that keeps us in a state of unconsciousness where we exist and survive and do not live at all.
But I want to talk about the unconscious here too for a moment. The unconscious is the last resort of the mind. I don't trust mind. I recognise it serves my sense of survival well and I would not be without it, but that is as far as it goes. The unconscious is that place where we push down all the muck, slime, hurt, pain, anger and all those other things that are too difficult for us to face and to look at about ourselves. It's the stuff that we repress in our unconscious that frequently comes back to bite us. We project these "shadow" parts of ourselves onto others often to justify doing hurt and violence towards them. It's these dark parts of our unconscious that we turn outwards to do hate, violence, racism and prejudice, or else we turn it inwards to do addictions, depression, suicides and other crippling behaviour.
One last point about consciousness, unconsciousness and control: Here's a question. How much media coverage have you seen of ordinary Iraqi families doing the things that ordinary people do – of laughing, crying, kissing, hugging, caressing, mourning, feeling sad or frightened, sometimes happy, enjoying meals together, going about their normal daily work, joking and having fun? Have you seen any? Anything at all?
Enough of that. Just a final word on intuition: Intuition might be thought so powerful that over the centuries, people holding power have discouraged us from, even killed us, for believing in it. I don't think it's that scary myself and it's never done me any harm, only the opposite. David Beckham, the footballer, does it very well too.
Powerful people know about intuition very well; after all it is their own intuition that keeps them in power. But intuition contradicts our rational scientific thinking, it is knowing without proof and it's not the same as religion either. Lungold talks about women, witchcraft, intuition and the inquisition. During the inquisition and beyond, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of women were put to death for so-called witchcraft. To be a witch was to have a "heretical" belief either good or bad that could not be substantiated by rational proof. That's intuition. I'm not sure about the heresy either. The Catholic Church was probably the biggest murderer of women in the inquisition. Of course, the only heretical belief one was allowed to hold was that proselytised by the Catholic Church itself. I have every reason to believe that the Church has rewritten its particular story to suit its own purposes too. A knowledge of basic Greek and the bible shows how much we have distorted that story.
There are many things I have written about here that might inflame anger amongst some people. I don't believe that being conscious or intuitive is harmful. I do believe that it might carry with it the choice of profound emotions that I talk about elsewhere here: Emotions like forgiveness, understanding, forbearance and compassion.
Consciousness and intuition have nothing to do with hate. Hate has everything to do with remaining in the dark place of unconsciousness.
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