It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Mind In The Middle

page: 1
1

log in

join
share:

posted on Apr, 21 2018 @ 07:01 PM
link   
I believe that before Human beings emerged, there was nothing called 'the sacred'. There was practicality - a long, long time of it. There was cause and effect - and even before the sense of the sacred emerged, there was the implicitness of its presence in the functional and motivational dynamics of living organisms. The cell considers the glucose to be 'sacred'; its need to function properly means it will always seek what it needs to survive.

Similarly, any behavioral function between organism and world has a 'power' about it; its continuous presence in organizing behavior gives it a 'godlike' power; the affects we feel - the meanings which arise from 'within', in animals and also in our own reflexive cognition, is felt but never 'known' in any metacognitive way; but we can see how essential these 'pathways' are.

The entirety of evolution up until the emergence of humans has been an evolution of the 'horizontal'. Rightly is the gnostic cross the recognized symbol for Earth - the 3rd planet from the sun which hosts life. The horizontal refers to 'dynamical' interactions between objects. The horizontal precedes us; before there was ever a mind able to reflect, the horizontal relations between organisms were 'selected' by the horizontal effects upon their functioning by other objects. The horizontal is first; it describes the foundation and base of what consciousness will later work from in its growth and development. Meanings - the basic 'crux' of how we think - comes from the body - the affective body, the body that is used in movement and provides source material for meaning. You cannot cut the vertical from the horizontal if you want to stay sane and in control of your existence. Nothing makes sense - and worst of all - happiness and relief from suffering cannot be found - without a thorough investigation of the horizontal.

We can call the vertical the 'existential'. What is 'existential', from a brain science perspective - that is, from a biodynamical account of image-formation (meaning)? In brain science, the idea of 're-entry' is essential to anything having to do with metacognition (i.e. existential perception), and this function appears to be mediated by the evolved frontal cortex, which in turn is ontologically 'reusing' the images formed through early-life interactions with mirroring caregivers. By the time 'existential images' form, there is a whole pre-history of affective-interactions which produce 'images' in the form of the feelings we experience in our bodies. These feelings are the base for 'metaphorical transformation' - or the complex image-schema derived from the semiotics of movement in a 3 dimensional environment, and interaction with 'others' who serve as the source of social (as well as existential) meaning.

The social is initself a basic geometrically organized dynamic operating between 'self' and 'other'. These categories of relation are based in affective-predictions of the other's body language, so that when a body-language is displayed, the organism reflexively represents what it believes will happen; this expecatancy is of course quite recognizable in our experiences, yet, because it is a process, and not a 'thing', people tend to ignore it as something which actually matters. Indeed, all existential perception is 'run through' the social dynamics underlying affect. If our world is competitive, our 'god' is competitive. If we contemplated a situation different from our own, its still the primary attractor, or archetype, or "god", which affectively frames how you experience and perceive the 'other'.



The idea of 'accepting the ground', or overlooking how feelings frame the way we think and reflect and assert something, is a profound error in judgement that derives, quite deliberately, from the self's understandable need to protect itself from perceptions that are experienced negatively by it. This 'reflex' is part of the circular process that operates within the mind - perception is largely passive (even if there are active dimensions to it, it is still in the larger scheme of things passive) whereas cognition is inherently adaptive - inherently about self-protection; furthermore, this cognitive response is more like a 'pyramid', then a point: there are unconscious 'knowings' from past experiences which cumulatively 'select' the conscious experience that would (based on past information) produce the most 'relaxed', or effective, way of processing the upcoming relationship.

I believe everyone knows this is the truth about how our minds work. Knowledge matters, whereas ignorance can allow the formation of false and irrational arguments that are, fundamentally, built around the subject of self-defense, knowledge can recognize what is real, what matters (literally, 'changes things') and so, we can and probably would feel a great deal better when we are in attunement with the natural world, rather than in opposition to it - as if our understanding and self-belief weren't in themselves reflexively organized around self-defense processes. We avoid this fact by pretending that are feelings aren't 'temporally longer' ontological objects - frameworks which frame our psycholinguistic mind, and therefore fundamentally encompassing our cognitive processes.

Whereas feelings are built in early-life, cognitions, or self narratives based in a 'psycholinguistically' organized belief system, occur later. Both of these processes are reflexes, even if people like to believe that the latter is 'true' simply because they experience themselves thinking it - as if it hasn't been proven again and again that we are more often than not overly confident about the source material of our experiences.

I don't mean by the term source material mere visual images; I am talking about the feelings that arise, and how we interpret those feelings. The former is largely a function of early life brain development, where 'affect regulation' is predominantly built with reference to how well the primary caregiver regulates us. We know from our feelings how well they did. Many, if not most of us, feel a lot of negative feelings because a good chunk of the general population has been traumatized in this 0-2 year range, and because of this intense dysregulation, have become incredibly anti-social in their self-organization; this may go a 'avoid individualistic' way, where friends are more or less people with alike views; or, they can become a full blown narcissist with intense 'self-belief'. Whichever way they go, they have a common 'sociopathic' relationship to other peoples needs and emotional realities, and they don't realize that their contempt derives from their own extremely wounded 'inner core self' which hates others because the other in their own development was so negligent and/or abusive in their relations. Having your needs ignored at such a basic age where self-regulation is a physiological impossibility is an intense cruelty; and we - or society at large - pays for it by not realizing how differently organized human beings can truly become. It's not their fault - true; but it's also deeply important that we find a solution to this problem - because perception is indeed a function of the 'attunement' between self and reality. Denying the latters relevance to your own internal perceptual experience is deeply deluded - and if were ever going to help ourselves through this complex situation we find ourselves in, it can...



posted on Apr, 21 2018 @ 07:03 PM
link   
...only come through acknowledging 'what causes what', and, because things are so structurally continuous, realizing the necessity for compassion to those people who, to no fault of their own, are inextricably 'caught' in a mode of being that is not a state that anyone would want to find themselves in.

On a final note, there is a tendency amongst 'occultists' to interpret the human being as literally the embodiment of god on Earth. I question this statement for the simple reason that it seems like a grandiose defense of the self against its own unconscious and therefore dissociated history.

There is a good quote from Gregory Bateson which captures what I mean:

Rigor and imagination are the two great contraries, either of which by itself is lethal

When someone makes a massive claim and doesnt have the knowledge base to support it, and yet insists, despite his inability to intelligently communicate his assertion, maintains that belief, than we can and should say that this exaggerated affective need to believe in this way derives from a still dissociated history of self, as well as an implicit devaluation of the 'horizontal' as a relevant vector underlying the way the self makes meaning.

Whether or not the 'whole universe' is mirrored in the self cannot in itself be proven, yet this is, of course, a common mode of experiencing reality for the 'primitive' psyche, we cannot just jump to its affirmation as an ontological truth in itself about the self AND physical reality, as opposed to serving an ontological purpose for the needs of the human self, without any one-to-one correspondence between our existence and the existence of other animals.

So much 'speculative metaphyiscs' is done by human beings, all of which ultimately goes to serve the egotistical pretentiousness of its creator.

Meaning and meaning alone - as determined by the organism in its relation to the world, is real. But to crack at the mystery of objective reality and the various laws which operate within it, we have to step outside our anthromorphic tendencies of thinking that 'everything is FOR us and a REFLECTION of us'). Metaphor may be essential; alikeness may be real; but this doesnt justify the sort of devaluation of other beings and other realities that exceed our human ability to know.

Batesons advice to be patient - to not seek more than you can rightfully claim, is a deeply democratic and egalitarian quality to have. It's respectful of the other and also respectable as a trait.

edit on 21-4-2018 by Astrocyte because: (no reason given)



posted on Apr, 22 2018 @ 01:37 AM
link   
If there is a gap, how could the mind not fit in it?

The middle is only a spot on the extension or slack of a particular thing..

So the mind IS in the middle.. but it is also in every other position as well.. This is the means of time and the meticulousness afforded to us, by it..!

It being time..

The mind naturally goes whereever you think about!

The mind is like a needle that is in perfect polarity with the pulls and gyrations of gravity..

It goes everywhere!



posted on Apr, 22 2018 @ 03:03 AM
link   
I like to compare it to a computer. Our operatingsystem, our mind and emotions, through the connected devices, determine what we do with it. How.we assign meaning.

Yet, without the filter of the mind and emotion, it is possible to see not only the raw input data from the obvious senses, but also recognise there are devices that may access more raw data.

The operating system will start to rewrite itself, first perhaps by adding a specific programme to deal with the new reality of observing the raw data. Later, perhaps, it may find new ways to rewrite the operating system, by discarding, abridgeing, and new lines of code.

This is a work in progress. Never finished, till the point of say enlightenment. ;-)

But given our initial response to survival to agrandose the mind, thinking and emoting, making us separate from everything, the process of reverse engineering it, leads to sharing of those latter experiences with others, leading to healing.



posted on Apr, 22 2018 @ 03:05 AM
link   
So the Mind is like Quick Silver Mercury..

Boundless and Free!
edit on 22-4-2018 by Boundless1 because: (no reason given)



posted on Apr, 22 2018 @ 10:26 AM
link   

originally posted by: Boundless1
So the Mind is like Quick Silver Mercury..

Boundless and Free!


Hahaha, indeed, as long it is being satisfied with adding to it. Dogma of every stripe arises from it. And because of that we see a world of violence. The prison, the mind, can grow. But still, remains a prison.

Once you recognise that you is not your thoughts or emotions, when you can achieve to let the identification with that grandiose device go, you will discover more freedom, than the mind is capable of giving you.

It is a simple matter of trying. Then, interactions with other beings no longer happen on the plane of the mind, but on the plane of soul.



posted on Apr, 22 2018 @ 09:31 PM
link   
I appreciate that thoughts "are not you" but do they not link you to the real world!?

Like I think its a basic mechanism in existence.. thinking is like a gear, or Sprocket.. connecting the mind to the outer world..

Thoughts are like one of our senses..

So my question then.. is what is it like without thinking?



posted on Apr, 26 2018 @ 01:52 AM
link   
Peaceful... ;-)

The faculties we have, come in very handy. Thought and emotion have their function. For everyone these faculties are used in conjuction. Sometimes only emotion takes over: panic for instance.
We can be so focused on solving an issue, the awareness of emotion is fully gone.

For solving problems, thought is perfect!

Yet, the question needs to be raised: who is aware, observing thought and emotion? By taking time to step out of the conditioning that leads to the thought and emotional makeup, when those are silent, we are able to see, to feel not only the raw data, but the interconnectedness of everything, the truth beyond our 3d preoccupations.

What's it like? I can only say: peace, love, joy. A state of being that is more natural than anything I've ever experienced. The state in which I know instead of the state of approximation.

For me, the moments I free myself from the incessant chatter of the mind: thought and emotion, require effort on my part to let them go.

What I wrote in words is just a signpost pointing. Try it for yourself. There is nothing you have to do, other than letting go.

It all starts with the question: who is observing your thoughts and emotions? ;-)




top topics



 
1

log in

join