It’s just a memo. I decide to write here, as some people may find it interesting.
Please ignore if you are not interested.
When I became aware of the awareness at the age of three, it was sudden.
And there was definite sensation of something being not entirely “correct”.
There was the feeling of something being wrong or contradicting, and it triggered questioning.
Since then, I experienced different states and degree of awareness.
I learned how to enter certain state of awareness at will and observed involuntary changes.
I’m a natural lucid dreamer and I keep some degree of awareness in my dreams. I’m often aware the changes in dream awareness, too.
And when I realize that my awareness has shifted from dream level to waking level (well, when I wake up), I often recall that I noticed something strange in the dream and the also started to question about it just before the shift toward higher awareness.
So, it seems our waking state of awareness (We are aware that we are aware) is caused by the detection of contradiction and subsequent questioning activity.
Since we are aware that we are aware, it suggests there is some sort of feedback loop going on in this type of awareness.
And the “contradiction” and “questioning” suggests logical elements are somewhat involved in it, too.
Possibly, human type awareness is the product of multistage feedback loop.
First, there is the physical perception and physical reaction feedback loop.
This can be seen as the hardware feedback circuit.
Then, there is emotional type more or less fixed (belief, core value/preference) based evaluation/reaction feedback loop.
It can be similar to the firmware, which can be changed with some effort and risks.
And finally, here comes the logical and more plastic evaluation/reaction feedback loop.
It’s like a software written in fully dynamic self-modifying programing language.
However, even in the waking state of awareness, there are differences among individuals and each moment.
The degree of focus (a.k.a concentration) can be different, for example.
The depth and width of the focus can be different.
And we can have relatively focusless, round awareness, too.
From my point of view, the awareness of average person isn’t very high.
It’s slightly more than dream awareness, I’d say.
And it’s not possible to perform certain type of tasks nor possible to understand certain perspectives with this level of awareness.
It’s as if people are barely aware.
This is the main reason why we are so stupid as an animal race.
Yes, we have (some) ability to think (although often pretty faulty…).
But we aren’t using it, fully.
Actually, I think we are making more mistakes because of it.
It’s like a stupid person with gun (I’m not just talking about Americans).
With more ability, unless we are educated/trained, we can cause more damage.
Also, each person at each given moment may have different degree of awareness in different part of our existence, such as logical thinking, emotional feeling, and physical sensation.
We can be more aware of logical perspective for a moment, and then sucked into emotional feeling. for example.
And it goes even more detailed. We can be very aware of our hands and then our teeth, and then the combination of finger tip and nose and the happy emotion with the memory of certain event, etc.
It’s not enough to be aware only in certain field. If there is a part of us we aren’t very aware, it can pull our legs and drag us down, so to say.
In other words, we need enough experiences in physical activity, emotional feeling, and logical thinking to be more aware in general.
The motor of our actions is the emotion, or emotional judgment.
And it’s based on pretty unreliable beliefs/values we acquired from parents/community/schooling/etc.
Also, these databases/data-links are not in our surface awareness in most case, at first.
This means we can change our tendencies by altering these databases by becoming aware of them and by evaluating them with full awareness and with logical analysis.
Also, it means others can alter our actions by tapping into and triggering/modifying these databases.
Mass social control is done by primitive but effective triggering of common beliefs/values. But it has the consequences and secondary effects that is largely unknown to those who are trying to manipulate others.
To have generally higher degree of awareness, it’s imperative to learn how to think purely logically.
It doesn’t mean to learn formal logic, but to learn to adopt wide range of perspectives and evaluation things without creating exceptions/taboos.
See the thread about “Perspective Logic” for more information.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=169433
With the logical thinking, we can dig into the beliefs/value junk pile.
First thing to do, generally, is to throw away junks, to have less things pulling our awareness and thought.
And then, learn to live without absolute anchor, without (the illusion of) solid ground.
As there is no absolute rules/moral to follow blindly and mechanically, each decision making is done on our own (and often with the remaining preferences even though they are not reliable in any way).
By living with preferences and desires, we would be satisfying ourselves and less frustrated, less stressful.
Also, it means we have less repression thus less things that goes under our surface awareness. It can be seen as accumulating less karma, if someone prefers eastern type of interpretation.
Since the chunk of beliefs/values/desires/preferences under our surface awareness are directing our focuses and thus creating ego membrane that splits different levels, cleaning these and reducing these by digging and satisfying them would eventually break the membranes, layer by layer, spot by spot, till they becomes remaining chunks and filaments of desire/belief/etc.
When his happens, some people may experience the flow of repressed energy. And unfortunately, some would interpret these thing as “miracle”, “super natural”, “encounter with angel/god/satan/alien/whatever”, and so on.
If they sticks on to these types of interpretation, this would become their new anchor, the core belief, which would reform another ego membrane.
We can see this as the self patching/mending mechanism of ego membrane.
Nihilist going after the hope for superman, atheist becoming religious again, and so on, can be seen as the example of this mechanism.
One of the basic and strong desire in us is the desire for the absolute, the desire for the certainty.
Unless it’s brought into our awareness and satisfied, it will pull us into funny directions.
Probably, this desire manifests in physical, emotional and logical part of us, separately and a bit differently.
And each of them needs to be satisfied with full awareness if we don’t want to do funny things feeling and thinking funny way (like religious fanatics, for example).
Trying to deny or ignore desires/feelings/sensations/thoughts is usually counter productive as far as awareness is concerned.
However, if we want to deny/ignore, somehow, we’d better do it fully.
Although all efforts are meaningless in absolute sense, we may learn a lot with any effort, especially when it’s done with pleasure with ease.