consciousness

the core self is ceaselessly recreated for each and every object the brain interacts with.........

the owner of the movie-in-the-brain emerges within the movie . . . antonio damasio

Billions of photons a second streaming into our eyes are interpreted into myriads of visual images that only start to make sense when they compile into a seamless panoramic image of a world outside of us.

Billions of bits of information a second stream in and bounce around inside us until they assemble into the few dozen concepts that are selected for attention at any moment. The world is experienced through this narrow bandwidth.

living in the past
We don't live in the present. We experience things after they have happened. Nearby events occur fractions of a second before we receive news of them and a second or more before we get around to processing them. Celestial events can precede our sensation of them by millions of years. We live within a cocoon of our memories of past experiences that filters our sensations of our-self and the outside world.

Countless memories of sensations, images and words teeming around beneath conscious awareness assemble themselves into an experience of the world. Whether that world is still there or ever was is conjecture and maybe ultimately unknowable. In the meantime we have our theories and can strive to expand our experience.

our sense of being ourself
A sense of being a particular person emerges from the sensations we have of our body experiencing itself experiencing the world. We discover our existence as we interact with our realisation of our body experiencing the world. As we interact with ourselves and the world a picture is imagined as if it was outside of ourselves.

We can see this if we awaken slowly in the morning. Sensations in the body gradually displace the feelings and images of dreaming. We then notice sensations and images of the world around us. We then begin to be aware of ourselves experiencing the images and this soon progresses to an awareness of where we are and then who we are and then what has happened to us recently and then what we plan for the day.

During awakening we progressively discover ourselves and then gradually become aware of the thoughts and images of our symbolic consciousness.

we are what happens to us
We are continuously created by our environment. Without an environment our usual idea of our self vanishes. If we spend 24 hours in a float chamber deprived of sensation or in deep meditation the picture of the world around us that we take for granted in everyday life no longer stays together. We enter a world of shifting images and scenarios drawn from our memories.

Dreaming is similar. When external stimuli are reduced during sleep we produce images and stories that make sense of passing sensations and memories. Our autobiographical self with its memories of our history slips into the background.

Our awareness of our self is awareness of change. Without change there is no sensation of existence.

stories
Our sensation of existing arises out of the thousands of stories that happen as we interact with the world around us. If we have few stories we have little existence.

If we don't have a life of our own we can find a second hand one in imagination, myths or idols. Or take the roller-coaster ride of a movie or book for an emotional and mental workout. Or go shopping.

stories have 3 parts

beginning	a description of characters (a hero perhaps) - unknown at first we have a sense of how we feel
middle	something happens we respond to something that happens to us
end	a description of the main character – changed - more defined now we have had a workout - we have been stimulated - we feel a teeny bit different or a lot different - we continue to exist - we exist a bit more - we have a little more history

When we believe our stories they pull us into their orbit and other perspectives fade. We are our stories. We maintain them by rehearsing and repeating them and reorganising, adding and deleting bits to get them to fit our world-view.

The awareness therapy pages describe how to examine and reconsider these narratives. With focused introspection it is possible to experience stories taking shape and rising into awareness as we make sense of feelings and events and fit them into how we imagine ourselves and present ourselves to others.

Susan Blackmore

Douglas Harding

V.S. Ramachandran

Rupert Sheldrake