How do you percieve your mind?

I'm curious, how do you picture your will/consciousness/mind/presence or whatever you want to call it. When you think of it in your head? What image does your mind produce to represent itself?

Do you see you? As in, your own physical body, or do you see something else?

This thought occurred to me a few months ago, and I'm still not sure what to think about it. Which is kind of odd, what to think of a thought.

Has anyone even contemplated this before? Or am I off my rocker?
What does your impression mean, does it even mean anything at all? Does it even matter?
It seems I'm full of questions tonight.

When I picture my consciousness, I see a large dark cloud (for lack of a better word) that begins at the edge of my vision, and stretches back forever.

So, what do you see?

reply to post by watchitburn


I see direction.

Direction created by everything that has occured in my life leading up to THIS point.

I am the sum of all I have been and all the things I could be. Moving, changing and never still.

reply to post by nerbot


That's interesting, I can understand that.

But does an image come to your mind at all?
Are you seeing arrows, a perception of inevitable movement forward, or nothing?

reply to post by watchitburn


I don't "see" anything at all. "Iam that I am"( to quote the christian God talking to Moses) is the best way of describing this I have available to me.

If I think about somthing, I see "it" in my head. But otherwise I don't really see any kind of interpretation of myself when I think of "me"

I do see my memories in kinda of a weird way though, it is kinda of like a tunnel, and the iinformation starts "far" away and quickens to the front of my perception, like a picture in your neighbors window, that comes to your face and begins playing a movie about whatever I want to remeber.

reply to post by inverslyproportional


I think it's amazing how different peoples minds can function from one to the next.

Your memory retrieval system sounds way more efficient than mine. I have to use an indirect association method to remember anything short term.

I see mine like a engine always running but sometimes the pistons are miss-firing, or the timing belt is off

reply to post by JValhalla


I've definitely pictured mine stuck in neutral a few times.

Maybe more than a few.

Originally posted by watchitburn
But does an image come to your mind at all?
Are you seeing arrows, a perception of inevitable movement forward, or nothing?

I see a myriad of moments in time that rapidly evolve into the next. A 'flow'.

They change constantly so no single point can really be focused on for long. 'Time' makes that inevitable.

It is the flow that helps me understand my past and percieve the future.

Simply put, I see endless images of what has been (memories) and what could be (imagining) and accepting the 'flow' is my key to perception.

Knowing that there is a natural flow to thinking means that sometimes when things are tough and the answer to a problem is elusive, it is better to do nothing and let the flow lead me there rather than force it or choose to focus on something incomplete.

The bigger scenario is that life IS a rollercoaster and goes in waves. Enjoy the ride and accept that for every high there will be a low and each has momentum from the other to get there. Call it ying-yang if you like.

I love my mind, it cannot scare me any more.

Originally posted by watchitburn
I'm curious, how do you picture your will/consciousness/mind/presence

My mind is a floater, randomly spewing bits of irrelevant thought. No direction at all. One minute I'm thinking about the origin of the universe, then the next minute I'm totally absorbed in the antics of the local squirrels. I battle to squash all thoughts of my job while I'm not at work, and then imagine myself back in time and singing today's songs to ancient Romans or cavemen.

For some really strange reason my mind connects pizza to primitive man. I want to show them how to eat pizza. LOL I open up a little shop in a jungle clearing of 75,000 years ago, and set up outdoor tables. I convince the inhabitants that I'm not an enemy, and that I am not on the menu, and then offer them pizza and Coke.

Weird I am!

reply to post by watchitburn


Since you asked....

It looks a bit like neon purple cotton candy that's been run through a photo-editing "cubism" filter. It's moderately lit and is contrasting a completely black background. It has a halo glowing around it and it undulates and moves as if it were sitting next to a very large speaker at a rock concert.

Oh, and it has a few rings around it that look a bit like ribbons of DNA. These are extremely bright white in color and have a very loud glow.

Again, you asked.

(This is what my mind produced when I closed my eyes and told it to picture my own being or essence)

~Heff

reply to post by jiggerj


I've imagined going back in time a few thousand years with a lighter and my guns.

I would be some culture's benevolent God-king.
Virgin sacrifices and blood orgies. Oh my!

reply to post by Hefficide


Well..., that's different.

Whenever I see one of your posts, I immediately think of bacon.
BACON!!! ATS Chat And The Cult of BACON!


Mmmm....bacon.

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I've imagined going back in time a few thousand years with a lighter and my guns.

I would be some culture's benevolent God-king.
Virgin sacrifices and blood orgies. Oh my!

Ha! My electric guitar would put your puny lighter to shame. I will be the god there!
Oh wait! You have guns. Guess I'm kneeling to the new god.

reply to post by watchitburn


SSSHHHH!!!!!

I'm currently trying to play down my skills of thought induction due to a recent rash of brainwashing accusations I've run into since I had the bad luck of posting a thread on the topic.

However, if I die soon, you can do my eulogy and title it "He made me think of bacon..."

It'd be fitting!

~Heff

My mental image of my own mind is quite boring, and is basically the vague emotional impression of the last time I looked in the mirror, but not any particular view of it, kind of front back and sides all at once.

But then the fact that I'm imagining my own mind, creates another 'remembered' head behind that one, and the fact that I'm seeing that head creates another, and so forth, then I end up with a kind of murky 'infinite mirror' effect.

It's actually really annoying.

This is a false (or neurotic) experience to me, to always be watching yourself, watching yourself. To collapse those watchers into just the one 'gateway' through which experience happens, with no apparent gap between experience and an imaginary experiencer, is zen bliss. It's happened a few times, and each time it was like 'woah, THAT was reality.'
Cue a subsequent interest in zen meditation.

I also have a way of visualising my self, which is not my constant experience but just a tool for conceptual illustration that I appropriated from 3d graph images, and is basically a point in a 2d plain that is raised up into a 3d point, like a wireframe topographical map, or that simpsons episode. My mind is literally a temporary 'bunching of the field', which looks at the rest of the field. Sometimes that field is the rest of reality and 'I' am the point, and sometimes the field is the rest of my 'self' and that point is just self-awareness. Ultimately there's no difference.

Is there a difference between mind (the apparent self) and self-awareness?
I guess so, in that self awareness is just a function of mind?

Ahhh, the infinite mirror beckons....!

Cool question anyways.