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March 2007 - Posts
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We are more open to insights from the unconscious mind when we are not thinking of anything in particular. That is why daydreams are so useful in the quest for creativity. Anytime you can just daydream and relax is useful in the creative process as for instance a shower, a long drive or a quiet walk.
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In your inner work through meditation you break the thought of yourself as a separate entity. When you break that identification, you experience your relationship with others on another plane, your identity with all things. When you have experienced that in your gut, not just in your intellect, it changes your behavior. Now, if someone is suffering out there, that’s me suffering, it’s not them suffering. I can’t hold on to the concept of them any longer. Love can be a celebration of unity, or a reflex of needfulness. How can we set about to discover that part of ourselves which is beyond needful separateness? What can we do to begin healing our emotional bodies? Are there ways to use our emotions to foster the growth of our awareness? Is there a way in which addictions mirror a subtler spiritual yearning?
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Our lives can be filled with creative moments, whatever we do, as long as we’re flexible and open to new possibilities, willing to push beyond routine. The everyday expression of creativity often takes the form of trying out a new approach to a familiar dilemma. Yet half the world still thinks of creativity as a mysterious quality that belongs to the other half. A good deal of research suggests, however, that everyone is capable of tapping into his or her creative spirit. We don’t just mean getting better ideas; we’re talking about a kind of general awareness that leads to greater enjoyment of your work and the people in your life: a spirit that can improve collaboration and communication with others.
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Hypnosis is the art of obtaining a patient’s attention and then effectively communicating ideas that elevates motivation and changes perceptions.
Those who seek out hypnotherapy to get rid of anxieties, phobias, or habits like smoking and overeating are already highly motivated to change their behavior. They also have a certain amount of faith in the hypnotic process. By taking on the role of hypnotic subject and agreeing to listen to positive suggestions, they are demonstrating their commitment to overcoming personal problems. In itself, evidence suggests, this commitment may alter a person’s inner frame of reference and impact the ecological structure of their unconscious, with no lift needed from hypnosis.
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According to the theory of schema, the understanding of text is about recognizing appropriately conforming the text to the schema. In order to understand how a person is going to react to a text, you have to know what schema they have and the situations in which they believe each schema is appropriate.
Although not all people who study comprehension utilize the concept of a schema, all agree that texts are interpreted in the light of prior knowledge. Water Kintsch’s work on text comprehension provides a good example of this sort of reasoning. Kintsch argues that there are two separate stages in the understanding of a text. In the first stage, the sentences in a text are translated into logical propositions and the logical propositions are knit together to form a model of the text. The text model is then formed into a situation model, which represents the understanding of the person that does the comprehending, of what is going on.
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If one aspect of cognition is monitoring or controlling another aspect of cognition, then the former aspect is metacognitive in relation to the latter aspect. Also metamemory has been investigated by psychologists for only about 40 years. Prior to that time, researchers often conceptualized people as blank slates, wherein the learner was considered to be passive and to have little or no control over his or her own acquisition.
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Further, from an evolutionary point of view, we know that different functions are piled indiscriminately on top of structures which may originally have evolved to support quite different functions. The tongue was an organ of eating before it was an organ of speech. The muscles of the face were also probably involved in eating before they were used as vehicles to express emotions, though we do not know this for a fact. It is, of course, possible that the complex emotional system displayed on the human face evolved primarily as communication mechanisms rather than as source of motivating feedback. My idea is, that emotional communication is a secondary functional consequence created by man rather than the primary biological one . This is not however to minimize its importance as a communication factor
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States of confusion and global disorders of attention can have an impact on consciousness. Attention disorders are reported to be among the most common problems of the higher mental functions seen in neurological practice. They may occur in some epileptic conditions, and as a consequence of cerebral infarctions, cerebral tumors or Central Nervous System infections (such as meningitis, encephalitis or cerebral abscess). Consciousness is not lost but the patient can no longer be described as awake and alert. Speech and thinking are not coherent: patients are distractable, do not respond appropriately to the surrounding stimulus from their immediate environment, and their behavior may show a variety of disturbances including apathy, agitation and emotional lability. This shows that although attention play and important role in the phenomenon of consciousness it is not necessary for it to occur
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The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant likened the human mind to a glass which imprinted its shape on whatever liquid was poured into it. Thus, space, time, causality, he thought, were constructions of the human mind, imposing the categories of pure reason upon the outside objects themselves, whose ultimate nature necessarily forever escaped us. I am suggesting that he neglected a major filtering mechanism, the innate emotions, which necessarily color our every day experience of the world, constituting not only a special categorization of every experience but producing a unique set of categories which amplify not only what we perceive but also activates each emotion also amplifying the organism response which occur because of the them.
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After cherished goals are realized, habituation takes over, and strong linkers return to their previous baseline level of happiness just like everyone else. But when a strong linker realizes that his or her level of happiness has not permanently changed, the person typically concludes that happiness lies just over the next horizon(Wiederman Mind Feb/Mar 2007).
Happiness then is cyclical and difficult to reach. However those that have experienced a happy childhood fill with affection as well as a reasonable amount of discipline and education, have a healthy emotional foundation that allows them to have a state of happiness(well being) most of the time in spite of the ups and downs of life.
Happiness is an interesting state of the mind that requires a great deal of study.
After writing this small article I am planning to go and have a beer with my friends, talk and chat and have a few laughs, about some of our recent and past experiences in life, and most probably that will make us happy
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March 3
Self Awareness
Self awareness is equivalent to discovering what we are doing saying, moving, thinking or feeling, it means to be in touch with oneself as well as to become conscious of our experiences and behavior in the world. Because of this faculty we can make choices instead of acting as automatons
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March 2, 2007
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist at Claremont Graduate University, has concluded that the people who tend to be happier are those who report experiencing what he calls “flow”, Csikszentmihalyi coined the term in a 1975 book that was based on hundreds of interviews. He has since published several other books on flow, which he define as experiences that are inherently interesting and motivating for an individual because he or she becomes totally absorbed in them. That is not to say that flow experiences have to be fun (although frequently they are) but rather that flow involves being fully engaged. The task at hands is not too boring or too frustrating; it is sufficiently challenging to require one’s full attention.
By incorporating the notion of flow, Western psychology has embraced the Eastern concept of mindfulness, which requires its practitioners to be nonjudgmental and conscious only of the present, immersed in what is happening right now. Unfortunately, this state of mind is not the norm for most of us; it is a skill that requires practice, through meditation, for example(Wiederman Mind Feb/Mar 2007).
Yes flow involve full engagement however flow almost always requires sufficient previous training and education in the area of work in which case the brain has learned to experience pleasure because of endorphin production as also happens with joggers. Involvement and the search for meaning most often demands a great deal of training. This doesn’t mean we cannot experience happiness otherwise, with experiences that are completely new or unrelated to every thing we know, but it is unlikely to have such exposure since most of our daily experiences are repetitive.
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