August 7, 2012: Post 574 (2012 Day 220)
August 7, 2012
Daily Comment
The difference between self-perception, or self-awareness, and others' perception of us is one of the more disconcerting things we all have to deal with. It is, by turns, amusing, frustrating, usually surprising, and, because of that, sometimes frightening.
Part of the problem - a significant part, I think, is that we perceive how we communicate with others - and how others communicate with us - inaccurately.
We are not aware of everything we're communicating or how it is perceived, and, just as importantly, we think we're communicating things we're not. We fall into the trap of believing we have gotten some or all of our message out, and we have not. We believe we are transparent, but we're never completely transparent and certainly not as much as we'd like to think.
Similarly, with things like tone of voice and body language, we give unintended (not necessarily true or untrue) messages and inadvertently contradictory information.
I have learned to assume (yes, I know...) that my perception is incomplete - there are more things that I can't see (hear, feel, smell, taste) than what I can see (etc.). I have also learned from experience that I can't know how I am being perceived, no matter how elaborately I try to control others' perceptions.
It is an exercise in futility.
I have a knack for not knowing how the things I try to communicate are being perceived. This is because some of my body language communicates a different message (in the eyes of at least some people, if not a majority) than the message I'm trying to send, or I say something in the wrong tone, or try to communicate tone of voice in a medium where there is none. It is all still a mystery to me. Either I'm kidding myself (unintentionally sending conflicting or even wrong messages) when I'm trying to communicate verbally, or I am being misunderstood, as I would, egocentrically, like to believe.
Root cause seems to come down to two things - the limitations of self-perception (always ego-driven, and I don't mean that in a bad way), and the limitations of perception of things that, sensually, at least, appear as outside-of-us things. Since it involves more than oneself, it is doubled, because it happens on both ends of a conversation/communication.
For instance, my cultivated inclination to be 'cool' (my definition: to not show surprise or fear or lack of comprehension, to always seem competent, and certain, etc.) has been misinterpreted as aloofness, emotional emptiness, stupidity, arrogance, lack of interest or compassion, and so on. All, the opposite, in many respects, to what I actually feel.
This is one example among an uncountable number in my lifetime so far, with more to come, I think it is safe to say. The limits of sense-based perception. The conflict between the duality of the material world and the unity of science, philosophy and spirituality makes it difficult to transcend barriers in communication.
Thus the illusion of 'other-ness' with our environment... walking behind Maya... There it goes. Around. Here it comes. Around.
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Food and Diet Section
Today's Weight: 202.4 lbs
Yesterday's Weight: 203.2 lbs
Day Net Loss/Gain: - 0.8 lbs
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| Year 2012 daily weight from December 31, 2011. |
Diet Comment:
A little progress made yesterday, but today... I had just made coffee when the birthday cake appeared. Oh, well!
Tomorrow should be my cheat day for the week, instead, it will be a big fail. I just found out a couple of things. First, tomorrow's the ice cream social. I will be partaking. Then, I just confirmed I have a ticket to see Jane's Addiction tomorrow, and will be picking up my ticket at dinner at the Dinosaur BBQ. That's after my scheduled lunch with Al at the Chinese Buffet.
If I didn't have a reunion picnic on Saturday, I would make tomorrow my cheat day, but it will be tomorrow and Saturday.
Tomorrow should be my cheat day for the week, instead, it will be a big fail. I just found out a couple of things. First, tomorrow's the ice cream social. I will be partaking. Then, I just confirmed I have a ticket to see Jane's Addiction tomorrow, and will be picking up my ticket at dinner at the Dinosaur BBQ. That's after my scheduled lunch with Al at the Chinese Buffet.
If I didn't have a reunion picnic on Saturday, I would make tomorrow my cheat day, but it will be tomorrow and Saturday.
Food Log
Breakfast
A cocoa-kale protein shake (almond milk, whey protein (36g protein), kale, chia seeds, cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, stevia-inulin blend).
Lunch
Snack
Big slice of birthday cake.
Dinner
A cocoa-kale protein shake (almond milk, whey protein (36g protein), kale, chia seeds, cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, stevia-inulin blend).
Lunch
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| Tuna with home-made mayonnaise over a salad of Spring Mix, broccoli slaw, and cole slaw. |
Snack
Big slice of birthday cake.
Dinner
 |
| Italian-style chicken sausage and Dal Tadka (lentil curry) with broccoli. |
Liquid Intake
Coffee: 36 oz, Water: 72+ ozPlease leave a comment if you visit my blog. Thank you!
posted by Reverend Ken at
10:38 AM
6 Comments:
our brain functions to sense and collect and store inner and outer impressions to feed our awareness. the energy gained from digesting these impressions nurtures the growth (expansion) of awareness..The more we are aware of, the the greater the potential for understanding, the closer we get to seeing through the veil of Mara.
In real life, I don't know what i'm doing, for all the reasons you correctly describe above.Every strategy I devise results in unintended and unanticipated consequences. To deal with this, I fall back to the default strategy, the strategy that has never resulted in unintended consequences for it has no results beyond its own action. I focus my attention here,now and allow my brain to do its thing. That is, eat impressions. Outwardly, I remind my self to go with the flowand learn from it.
So, it is interesting but I don't know whether you two know that all my research has been in an area called self perception theory. It is essentially a black box theory (e.g. behaviorist) that asserts that we come to know ourselves in much the same way we come to know others. We observe our behaviors, thoughts, feelings, actions and make up a story about ourselves that fits. Much like looking at a picture or hearing music, our self knowlege is an amalgam? sp. of information we bring to the moment. And, much like that other experience, much of it is not available to our conscious selves so we fill it in with a story about why things are the way they are. Love you both
energy/cosciousness is constantly flowng in to and out of us from the immaterial to tte material and vice versa. This is evolution/ involution. As it flows into the realm of physical reality (duality) it is distributed through the brain which acts as a capacitor. Attention directs the release of the accumulated energies for work. This work is either automatic (unconscious, subconscious, conscious memories and conditioning) acting from personality.or it is conscious (acting from self.
* note:I am using these terms as follows -
.
.• The unconscious - processes the involuntarily automatically acquired impressions and genetic information accumulated in memory for the mind.
• The subconscious - processes the acquired information (from education and remembered experiential association) along with the activity of the unconscious process
• The conscious - processes the outer sense information, the inner sense information, along with the activity of the subconscious and unconscious processes
• Personality - the “face” (not a function) of the individuality presented to and perceived by our outer world. – the result of the co-operation of the independently operating unconscious, subconscious, and conscious functions of mind.
• Self - the result of the integration and focusing of the three independent active functions into one common function.
Most of the time I run on automatic. there is no one functioning as captain of the ship.The crew members are all independently working according to function, co-operating (personality), putting the ship in motion, but they haven't been informed of the present destination or navigating instructions to guide them, since there is no captain.The end result is the ship runs around in circles, or is damaged in collision with some other object floating around, or runs out of fuel and is dead in the ocean.
For a successful voyage , a captain (self) is needed to integrate and focus the activities of the crew on guiding the ship to its destination.In order for the captain to do his job, it is necessary that he be aware of the present location, seaworthyness and condition of the ship, the present capabilities and readyness of the crew, the current weather forecat, etc. All these factors are useful only if known in the present.The captain must turn his attention away from the demands of the members of the crew to leave them alone and let them do what they've been trained to do, and focus his attention in the here and now ( the only place where we can know anything). this action allows the uncoordinated crew activities to become focussed on the task of the moment.
"We observe our behaviors, thoughts, feelings, actions and make up a story about ourselves that fits. Much like looking at a picture or hearing music, our self knowlege is an amalgam? sp. of information we bring to the moment"
I think that in this statement you are confusing seeing and hearing with thinking about what has been seen or heard. You can only see an object in it's present state if you are totally present with it. This is observation..When we are creating our story we are always thinking about what was and never about what is.We are constantly changing, and everything around us is constantly changig, and all relationships are constantly changing. Just when you think you know it,it is different.I think that any self image that we hold onto over time,becomes increasingly irrelevant to our real self now.
I agree with you in that I think most of what we do is autopilot and I think that we experience it as "mindful" because of this story that we automatically make up - much like we automatically fill in a curved line and call it a circle. I also agree that we can, at times, step outside this process and be more mindful. I'm not sure we can be truely mindful.
Joan, Before I started Using LSD and before I practiced meditation, yoga, tai chi, before I read any philosophy (western, eastern), religious texts, psychology, physics, biology I had experienced moments of true mindfulness. those moments when you lose yourself in the objects of attention, when thinking evaporates into a quiet state of simple awareness.The first memorthat popped into my mindy of such an event was pling 1st oboe in a symphony orchestra.Have psychologists repudiated Maslow's work concerning " peak experience "? The thing about mindfulness is it becomes easierto reach that state the more often you experience it.
The first memorthat popped into my mindy of such an event was pling 1st oboe in a symphony orchestra.
this should read --- the memory of such an event that first popped into my mind, was playing first oboe in a symphony orchestra.
We had prcticed the music indivdually and in rehearsal for two weeks ( it was the firebird suite). each musician, acoording to his/her own ability, had made this music "his/her own". In the final rehearsal before the performance, the 1st oboist plays an A note for the rest of the orchestra to tune their instruments. This is the beginning of intense focus.which increases as the musicians listen to each others playing and try to blend.It is also the entry of a state of true mindfulness which lasted until the next to last note of the piece. Unfortunately, I was unable to enter that state in the actual performance, as my mind was overome .with stage fright. I could not hear the music over the noise of my automatically flowing thinking. It was a terrible performance (mine, not the whole orchestra. They performed well).
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