How to sharpen your consciousness
11:00
Carlos Castanedas often wrote about the need to abandon one's personal history. I wondered why until one day, I realized something: physically, we may live in the present, but psychologically, all of us are basically living in the past.
("We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.")
Indeed, most of us only see things in life that our past has PROGRAMMED us to see. In fact, we don't perceive anything new, really. We only "recognize" things and events and people, based on the memory we have of them.
Therefore, there seems to be a struggle between PERCEPTION and MEMORY.
Artists -- real artists -- seem to have developed "strategic amnesia": they look at life with fresh eyes all the time.
Children also look at life with fresh eyes, although in their case, it's probably because they don't have many memories.
So what is the trick for most of us? How can we escape the tyranny of memory? How can we develop a way to look at the world with fresh eyes?
A trick I use is to stop before I do something, then say to myself: "Normally, I would do it this way, but today, I will try a different approach..." Then I try to do it differently.
Another trick is that I imagine myself playing a character in a movie. This drives me to do unpredictable things in order to be interesting to the audience. After all, when you watch a movie and the hero's actions are predictable, isn't it kind of boring?
The main benefit of trying to do things differently is that it awakens your consciousness and allows you to experience a richer life. It also sharpens your sensorial acuity and makes you a better thinker and strategist, since you grow keenly aware that the way you've been doing things is just ONE way and might not be the best way.
Carlos Castanedas often wrote about the need to abandon one's personal history. I wondered why until one day, I realized something: physically, we may live in the present, but psychologically, all of us are basically living in the past.
("We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.")
Indeed, most of us only see things in life that our past has PROGRAMMED us to see. In fact, we don't perceive anything new, really. We only "recognize" things and events and people, based on the memory we have of them.
Therefore, there seems to be a struggle between PERCEPTION and MEMORY.
Artists -- real artists -- seem to have developed "strategic amnesia": they look at life with fresh eyes all the time.
Children also look at life with fresh eyes, although in their case, it's probably because they don't have many memories.
So what is the trick for most of us? How can we escape the tyranny of memory? How can we develop a way to look at the world with fresh eyes?
A trick I use is to stop before I do something, then say to myself: "Normally, I would do it this way, but today, I will try a different approach..." Then I try to do it differently.
Another trick is that I imagine myself playing a character in a movie. This drives me to do unpredictable things in order to be interesting to the audience. After all, when you watch a movie and the hero's actions are predictable, isn't it kind of boring?
The main benefit of trying to do things differently is that it awakens your consciousness and allows you to experience a richer life. It also sharpens your sensorial acuity and makes you a better thinker and strategist, since you grow keenly aware that the way you've been doing things is just ONE way and might not be the best way.
posted by Super Peter at 7:23 AM
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