The unconscious driver

There is a stream of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) passing through the attention centre. And there are many topics in quick succession. ‘I’ am being swept along like autumn leaves in a bubbly stream. It is not surprising therefore that there is a craving for a story line which results in my being non-egoic, focussed and therefore peaceful.

Most of the TFM are centred on egoic social stuff. I sense that much of it comes from early childhood. There is a mirroring of the TFM of Mam and Dad and an assortment of ‘significant’ others. Much of the stuff was informally caught rather than formally taught. There is a feeling that members of the community are watching my every move – “What will the neighbours think?” (Note: omniscient God will see anything the neighbours miss.)

In my present renunciant life style, the intention with writing is that gut-felt subjectivity should trump evidence-based objectivity. The idea is to let the unconscious be in the driver’s seat.

If I was an ordained monk I would be with people intent in being mindful during all their waking hours. I have attended many, well structured, short retreats. There is affirmation and encouragement in mixing with fellow travellers but they cannot do it for you.

“you gotta walk that lonesome valley
you gotta walk it by yourself
nobody here can walk it for you
you gotta walk it by yourself.
(Woody Guthrie)

And I have a ‘thing’ about time and bells.

When I was a student and then a teacher I was expected to drop everything every 40 minutes. When I retired, I thought I would be free of them pealing in my ears; but now there is medication every four hours; pill popping punctuates the day. But this might be a good thing.

The prefrontal cortex is home to the higher executive functions (HEF). People are hard wired for project logical frameworks (Logframes).  This is good stuff for physical planners and engineers but it is not the way of evolution where there is no central planning, forward thinking or striving after beauty and perfection. It is good enough if it out-breeds the competition.

These days ‘I’ allocate chunks of time to specific actions which include:

• sitting quietly doing nothing but being a non-judging witness
• being numinously awe struck (eg the light and heat in the sun room) 
• acting non-egoically in flow, groove or zone (eg read, write, doodle, musical things, media, house-keeping, feeding, peeing, pooping etc)

 

A logframe could be prepared.  The man in the white coat could define aims and objectives with objectively verifiable Indicators (OVI) and means of verification (MOV). But this would be a case of the scientist investigating himself, and of using his mind to study his mind. There is thus the subjective/objective problem.

SO - this story was built from a tiny fraction of the many items of TFM that emerged from the unconscious in the past few days. ‘I’ was not in control of the process. But language and logic demand a causal agent.

Enter the ‘muse’ - within the non-egoic framework of ‘flow’. The reality, in my case, is most often hum drum rather than magic. Heavy editing is sometimes needed. Note that for many authors the output from the muse is perfect on first appearance. This suggests a continuum of outputs from the unconscious that range from rough and humdrum through to polished and magic’. And a key difference is in terms of egocity. If the mindbrain is occupied with I, Me and Mine (or with them and us) in the past, present and future the attention centre will not have space for other TFM.

It might be useful to compare two of my ‘creative’ mindsets – doodling and writing. In both cases there is non-egoic non-action which is associated with peace and contentment.

I doodle using black ink so there is no possibility of editing. I use big strokes to divide the A4 page into sections. Then there are subsections and patterns and quite often conversion of spaces to faces. After about 15-30 minutes the doodle is finished so I put the date on the page and move on to other things.

Writing is like doodling with words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and stories. The title can appear early or late in the process and may sometimes change. I begin with a blank screen and a word or phrase arrives to build into sentences and paragraphs. The last paragraph usually mirrors the first one. In many cases the mindbrain goes back to egoic mode so I take a break. I assume that the unconscious works on the story during the break.

SO – the real driver of ‘me’ is ‘my’ unconscious which is shaped by nature, nurture and serendipity. If the goal is to ‘know your self’ then you will have to learn to make yourself non-egoic. The man said: “No self no problem”.