The Clarity to Learn Objectively
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by James Rick
By freeing awareness you can allow yourself to learn and experience anything of value. You can recreate yourself in any moment. Even if you invested 8 years to get a degree, you do not have to assume the identity of that degree. Even if you worked a job for 50 years – you do not have to assume the identity of that occupation. These are boxes that block you from making choices you were would otherwise make if you considered yourself free at any moment to make new choices and become aware of a new existence.
THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS
The brain experiences life based on information received through the body’s senses (the input).
The brain is divided into two main processes: the conscious and the unconscious.
In each moment your brain receives billions of bits of information. You are only consciously aware of a fraction of it. The brain does this on purpose. If you were aware of all the information you were receiving you would not be able to function. When you focused on breathing, you’d forget to beat your heart. Focus on the heart and you’d stop breathing. Like a good friend, the unconscious mind is there to support you.
You can demonstrate this for yourself by noting whether or not your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and your immune system is running without you having to think about it. If it is, it means the information exchange necessary for this elaborate system to function is working on an unconscious level.
You are quite obviously separate from the unconscious processes. You can demonstrate this fact by closing your eyes and commanding yourself to focus only on your breath. When new thoughts enter your mind – where do they come from? You didn’t give the order. In fact they seemed to go against your will.
Well who are you, if you are not the process running the heart, the lungs and the immune system and even controlling all the thoughts in the mind?
THE TRIUNE BRAIN THEORY
Perhaps the triune brain theory might explain it. Neurologist Paul MacLean has proposed that our skull holds not one brain, but three, each representing a distinct evolutionary stratum that has formed upon the older layer before it, like an archaeological site. He calls it the “triune brain.”
The reptilian brain which is the first brain governs instinctive behavior. The instinctive brains works to meet basic needs like food, water, shelter, sex etc. But over time evolution saw the need for emotions and so the second brain known as the limbic brain forms. Through a refined orchestration of chemical reactions and neurological arrangements it produces what is felt as love, possession, territory, meaning and purpose. The second brain meant that parents would guard their young instead of eat them, or create community bonds that lead to tribes instead of carrying on as rogue individuals. Then evolution saw a need for a third brain, the neomammalian or logical brain. This is the center for planning and organization of the other brains.
To understand how these brains work together, imagine a person without a third brain as being someone who is impulsive and emotionally unstable. Or imagine a person without a second brain as being someone who is impulsive and coldly calculating. Or imagine someone without a first brain as being emotional and logical but neglecting their self to the point suicide. A person with all three brains working together - is thinking ahead, feeling emotions and honoring instinct. Even though there might be confusion at times, it offers the most balanced approach to a dynamic and complex world. With logic at the helm to govern the other brains, a little confusion is acceptable.
Interesting to note, the 40% increase in cranial capacity over other forms of earlier human species is credited to our (homo sapiens, the only human species left on the planet) survival.
The triune brain theory is useful because it explains why on the surface of conscious thought you can be very confused at what’s going on underneath the surface. Now you can separate that confusion into three distinct parts:
· Instinct (the first brain)
· Emotion (the second brain)
· Logic (the third brain)
When you act on impulse, or feel strong emotions it’s because your instinctive or emotional brains are taking over and you are somewhat conscious of something you are not controlling.
The good news is that over time through exerting awareness and conscious control you can ‘rewire’ the brain and take more control over it.
But this still doesn’t explain who you are. It only hints at the idea. Because so far we’ve narrowed it down. You’re not the unconscious mind or body. Nor are you located in the instinctive or emotional brain.
The only places this idea of ‘you’ could be is in the conscious and logical; living amidst other forces that are unconscious, instinctive and emotional.
So just because you are conscious and logical, does that mean that’s who you are – or is conscious and logical qualities of you? In other words, just because you get sick, doesn’t mean that you are literally the same thing as sick, it just means you are in a specific state of health for a particular time. You cannot own the sickness, you can only experience it. Could this mean you cannot own consciousness or logic – you can only experience it, along with all the other parts of you – unconscious, instinctive and emotional?
Ah ha! Does this mean you simply experience all the parts of you through consciousness, when in fact you are not consciousness – you are simply using it as a tool to observe life with? If so, this would mean that you are nothing but awareness existing inside a container called consciousness for a temporary period of time.
You are awareness and you can only assume the qualities of the containers you inhabit but you cannot actually own them. You are not literally the state of being you assume for a temporary period of time. Just like you are not literally a sickness or any state of health, or age, or identity or circumstance that you assume for a temporary period of time.
Consciousness creates a bubble around itself known as a paradigm, a set of beliefs and assumptions based on experience. Consciousness gives birth to the Ego around 7 or 8 years of age (according to studies conducted by Piaget) and the Ego assumes ownership of everything it touches in some form or another; either in believing that it actually possesses an object (physical matter) or the story associated with that person or object (ideas). This is the basic operating method for the experience you call life. You had no choice in how it was constructed. Your available hardware and software was built not for today’s civilization – but yesterday’s survival. We now consciously try to mold all elements of what we call human into what serves us today, but we are operating with the inefficiencies of yesterday.
LEARNING OBJECTIVELY
Understanding who you really are is the first key to really learning on an objective level. Acknowledging that you are nothing more than awareness frees you up from the prejudices and biases of the identity forged in consciousness (known as Ego.) This allows you to constantly go beyond the paradigms and expand and grow at a level you never dreamed of before, because you were blinded by the boundaries of your own paradigm.
You don’t have to live in the past; you don’t have to be weighed down by what’s happened, you don’t have to believe you cannot do something because you were born into a particular family, race, religion or circumstance. You are as free as you allow your awareness to be! Learning then is more than just the assimilation of new information. Learning is the growth of the true self – the awareness that observes information and uses the brains processes as tools for understanding the life experience.
By freeing awareness you can allow yourself to learn anything of value. You can recreate yourself in any moment. Even if you invested 8 years to get a degree, you do not have to assume the identity of that degree. Even if you worked a job for 50 years – you do not have to assume the identity of that occupation. These are boxes that block you from making choices you were would otherwise make if you considered yourself free at any moment to make new choices and become aware of a new existence.
IN CONCLUSION
If these ideas are new to you, it may take some time to digest it all. I understand these ideas may be nothing more than a seed for you but when nurtured in consciousness they will blossom into greater self understanding.
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