I aspire to produce a blogpost every other day. The subject matter is mainly my reactions and responses to ideas about the structure and functions of the human mindbrain. This is a hot topic and there is an ongoing blending of eastern meditation with western neurology and evolutionary psychology.
However, on the downside, I am not officially connected to an institution and I do not have a large number of people to talk with and experiment on; and neither do I have a group of experts to provide peer reviews. But, on the upside, I have internet access to texts, audio and video from the leading experts in the relevant fields, and I have privileged, if subjective, access to my own mindbrain.
My mindbrain is shaped by nature, nurture and serendipity and most of its operations are confined to the unconscious. This becomes obvious when, during mindfulness, people feel that the mind has a mind of its own. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) reckoned that “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”. The insight can be restated as, “the unconscious has its intentions of which the self conscious knows nothing”.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), while sitting in his armchair, reckoned that the unconscious was full of crude animal passions (notably sexual ones) that have to be held in check in civilised societies. However, recent research suggests a more positive view. It is the same nature, nurture and serendipity that shapes the unconscious and the self conscious parts of the mindbrain. So there is no need to demonise the unconscious; both parts have time-tested hard wiring designed to aid survival in small groups of stone age foragers in the African savannah. Some of this genetic programming might be out of sync with ‘modern’ patterns of living but cultural nurturing exists to shape them for the irrepressibly emergent new age.
Like most other people, especially western intellectuals after the European Enlightenment, I was earlier led to believe that the rational and egoic self-conscious should be promoted and the emotional and non-egoic unconscious should be suppressed. But, following research findings, there has been a dramatic turn around. I now view the mindbrain as a massive unconscious iceberg with a tiny, misty fragment of self-consciousness peaking above the vast ocean of reality.
Most of the important stuff happens in the unconscious. Many professional people now realise this and have learned how to exploit it. The trick is to shut down the self-conscious egoic chatter so as not to interfere. Athletes are in the zone, musicians are in the groove, and ordinary mortals operate in flow when they wash the dishes with numinous grace rather than with a grudge.
I am in two minds about my present method of being. I read, write and doodle non-egoicaly with a minimum of forward planning. This goes against my formal training - but that is the point. There is product in the form of stories and doodles that are generated effortlessly and in flow. It is as if something comes from nothing - but nothing comes from nothing. Thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) originate in past times and are tweaked in the present by way of channelling the future. The evolving thought train never stops – not since the Big Bang.
There is need to radically change attitudes concerning ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ ie to change mindbrains. A thought train, which is in fact a TFM train, never in fact stops although many people, once they are culturally indoctrinated, are willing to die to maintain the status quo. We are all born free to be culturally nurtured but we are now at a stage of planetary evolution where more and more people are becoming mindful to the extent of appreciating that ‘reality’ is a mental construct which can be deconstructed.
Authors construct and deconstruct reality using spoken and written language. They come in assorted guises, notably, academics, bloggers, diarists, essayists, journalists, lyricists, novelists, playwrights, poets, scientists, speechwriters, and etc? I consider myself to be an essayist and blogger and I write for myself, for friends and colleagues, and for sub groups of the general public in various countries; there is a strong following in Ukraine and Russia.
There is a linguistic conundrum with the idea that ‘I’ write for my ‘self’. The idea is to park the ego and give my unconscious a free rein. There is an ongoing churn in the unconscious and every now and then a tit bit is directed to the conscious attention centre.
And that seems a good place to conclude with the title to this article - Inviting writing to nurture culture.
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