Conscious snacking

This morning there was a feeling to cut back on snacks. This would shrink my belly, and make it easier to apply my surgical stockings. So, there is motivation to make something happen, to change my mindbrain and therefore to change my behaviour. This is an example of thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) being transferred from the unconscious to the attention centre where they can be witnessed and labelled.

If there is motivation there is energy and intention. Energy makes work possible. Work involves making changes. Intention involves a goal and action plan related to the changes. This is likely to be constructed in the executive modules of the pre-frontal cortex with inputs from other parts of the mindbrain. Most of the hard work will be done before the TFM are passed to the attention centre of the self conscious.

Now consider the lilies of the field. They don't have a mindbrain but they know how to germinate from a seed and how to grow and produce flowers and seeds in the next generation. What is the nature of this kind of knowing. Must there be a knower and a known? Might not there be an unknown knower?

Now consider your 9 months in the womb. Before your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg

you did not exist. But once the egg was fertilised, it divided many times, and went through a set of development stages. Then you were squeezed through your mother's birth canal into the world of breathing, breast feeding and years of reliance on others.

A lot happened during the 9 months in the womb. There was transition from single-celled zygote (fertilised egg) to many celled neonate (new born). The knowledge to manage the process evolved and was handed down from the ancestors in DNA code. But when did you come to your attention? When did consciousness turn into self-consciousness? Was it somewhere between zygote and neonate or was it not till well into childhood?

With one part of my mindbrain my intention is to cut down on snacking but with another part the intention is to carry on as normal. Yet another part witnesses the struggle between the earlier two. When I pass the packet of chocolate digestives on the kitchen counter the urge to reach for one makes me smile. Old habits die eventually if only I can be aware of what is going on more often than not. Familiarity breeds cement. We become whatever we accustom the unconscious to act upon.

My I is mind made from moment to moment. Having experienced the absence of any abiding reality it gets easier to be aware of and to unhook from such TFM as may turn up in the attention centre. And, in the non judgemental stillness that follows, there are thoughts without a thinker¹, peace is found, and the chocolate biscuits remain for visitors.

1ref Mark Epstein