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Perception & Habit Formation Diagram
I’ve been working on a way to communicate some of these ideas visually. I made a little sketch of all this the other night, but my mock-up in Photoshop came out really different. Hopefully it still communicates some of the basic points I am after.
It is all kind of speculative, but is based on my own experiences and supporting research I have been doing. I certainly do not claim this to be any kind of absolute truth; instead it is something which I have found very helpful in understanding and realigning my own perception.
One of my main operating assumptions is that the brain has a corresponding point for every possible physical sensation available to every spot in the body. That is, the brain acts as a sort of isomorphic holographic reflection of the body. I speculate that when the body and mind are perfectly mapped together like that, one is operating in a “Natural State” or a sort of Edenic bliss.
The diagram above uses images from inside of kaleidoscopes to indicate what I imagine a “sensory data point” looking like. Imagine for a second what each cell in your body individually perceives. I like the kaleidoscope images because they look very cellular in the first place, and when you twist the end of a kaleidoscope, the image you’re viewing changes very organically. I am kind of imagining that each cell has an awareness which is loosely analogous to this. Cells are naturally arranged into levels of organs, etc. So each grouping of cells has an increasingly complex set of collaborative kaleidoscopic images which it creates in its group awareness.
Sense organs then are collecting and organizing these data points into sets and sending them to the brain/nervous system, whatever. The brain seems to derive patterns from these data sets which it receives. Its purpose in so organizing perceptual experience is to better enable it to predict and control outcomes of actions.
Data sets which it receives repeatedly form stronger and stronger patterns. Over time, the brain seems to collect so much data from particular sensory areas that it begins to shut down the influx of new information, because it believes that it already has enough information from them to predict and control outcomes of actions. This is how habits form. Repeated sensory stimulus which hardens into patterns, which eventually are relied on in place of raw sensory data to save computational processes in the brain. Which means that your brain naturally replaces reality with an image of reality, or perception is replaced with conceptions.
This is what I meant by the little picture of the world inside of the guy. The guy’s behavior becomes governed by his conceptions of the world instead of his perceptions of the world. Or rather, his habitual conceptions (images) of the world begin to act as filters for his perception. His conceptions drive his perceptions, rather than the other way around. [Wilson calls this “what the thinker thinks, the prover proves.” Or at least that is what I think he means by that statement.] This is where, I think, we run into ego formation and tons of other problems that plague modern life: because the interior images of reality (conception) become more meaningful than actual reality (perception).
Anyway, I will keep developing this. Any thoughts or additions to this?
August 20th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I would just add that its kind of like being interpenetrated with a machine. The machine is part of you and you are part of the machine.
The machine is the Black Iron Prison. The Empire which never ended etc. Its internal and external creates a matrix
August 20th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Why do you speculate that this is the case? interested in your reasoning/experience behind this.
I wrote about this myself last week I am currently working on a theory that your perceptions of the world are mostly governed by a personal narrative. This is directly analogous with an image as you talk about it in this post. Past experience AND programming mean that you create story elements which describe past, present and future interactions with the world. IE.
I did x so next time y will happen
if i do x then y will happen
I am afraid of x because of y
x makes me feel y.
It is this story that becomes our filter that we view every element of the world through. The story is a lens.
I think that we are both on the same track with this one
August 20th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Because increasing my proprioceptive awareness, even just a little has transformed me as a person and slotted so many things into place that I have no other explanation. And I saw very vividly last night, which I wrote about in the post previous to this: as I became distinctly and concretely aware of the actual physical sensation of blood pulsing through my body, I could feel my awareness teetering on the brink of something very large.
Yes, but I think that’s kind of backwards. I think your narrative of your life is governed by your perceptions of the world which is governed by your habitual responses to stimuli, along with unconscious associations and unexamined assumptions. We are both on the same track though, I think. More here:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007...ooting-so-called-irrational-behavior/
August 21st, 2007 at 1:28 am
Body thetans are I think another way to describe this negatively frozen habit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Thetan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_%28Dianetics%29
August 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am
I’m a knife trying to cut itself.
“What’s in the box, tell me what’s in the box, I have to know what’s in the box”
Dead cats.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:42 pm
This is nothing but a blatant lie:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6203560.html
August 21st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Tim,
when you say habits, are you strictly referring to physical habits, or also mental habits?
As I interpret your present hypothesis, mental habits are dissolved as a result of elimination of physical habits through total body consciousness. Is this correct.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:16 pm
should read “is this correct?”
August 21st, 2007 at 5:44 pm
When I say habits, I am using the term holistically: simply because all habits have physical, mental and emotional components. The most direct way around them seems to be through accessing their physical components. Becoming aware of first the physical components of a habitual re/action allows you to actively seek out other possibilities and adopt literally different physical responses. And as you change the physical responses, you observe over time the concomitant emotional and mental changes affixed to that physical action.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:47 pm
negatively frozen habits are just bits of programing that you cant get rid off.
You have to ask yourself, what is this habit getting from me? attention? energy?
August 21st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
I would ask, what am I getting from the habit? Attention, energy, emotional satisfacton or suppression, addictive brain chemical cascades, etc.?
August 21st, 2007 at 5:54 pm
That is 100% the wrong way of looking at it and will lead you nowhere because you have set it up from the beginning that you will fail and it cannot be changed.
No, you have to ask yourself: is it possible that I could feel, act or react in a different way? Then you have to ask yourself: am I ready to do so? If not, what would make you ready to do so? If you get that far, then you have to look at what is standing between you currently and being ready to actively change? Then you work on changing those conditions, as well as your attitudes around all of it.
That’s the long version, which is always required, but which becomes easier and easier as you begin to yoke together more closely intention & action. The “short version” (which isn’t so much shorter as it is different) is observing - as I said above - physical sensation associated with habits, and modulating them consciously. Working all these things together is the real way to do it.
August 21st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
why would the most direct way around an emotional habit be physical? Why not just access the emotional component itself. Observe the emotions, and then ask what is triggering it and why does it persist? I have found that the power of observing an emotional habit, naming it, shining light on it seems to diminish it’s power in me.
But, I am quite open to your ideas as I am trying to understand them-
Hypothetical example: if my boss clearly has a pet employee in the office, and when I see her display this blatantly I get jealous of the employee, and miffed at my boss.
So my heart rate goes up, I get a little flushed in the face and my breathing becomes shallower and my neck tenses along with the emotions.
To me it doesn’t matter if I first notice and think about the emotions then subsequently the physical effects (this might be because the emotional response is quite strong) or if I notice first the physical manifestations, and that leads me into thinking about why I am having them. (i.e. emotional response is subtle).
I think you are saying then, that by altering my breathing and relaxing my neck, and perhaps using other physical cues when I observe this happening that it provides an added feedback loop into the brain to help solidify and perhaps expedite exorcising or de-energizing the demon.
I think it is a very interesting approach that I am biased against because of my preconceptions, but am very interested in experimenting with further.
For example, the left-handed writing and baoding balls are not initially being applied to a specific emotional or mental habit (but physical habits), but can help lead to exposing and relieving habits that we haven’t been aware of.
It helps when I try and put theory into these types of examples, and also into my own words to try and better gauge how it might be related to my previous experience and how I might integrate it into what I already do, and also, and maybe most importantly, for critical review.
August 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Totally fair question. My way of looking at it is this, which you are welcome to take or leave as to its usefulness:
Can you point to your emotions? Can you point to your mind? No and no. But you can point to your body. Philosophical arguments aside, we are physical beings. Even if that is not our *true* nature, the fact remains that our experience of existence is rooted in physicality.
Therefore, the physical is the simplest place to begin looking for any clues as to the origins of our behavior.
If that works for you, then fine. I do not know any better about your life and works best for you. All I know is what I have experienced, and I am open to that changing over the course of additional experiences and information.
Yes, exactly. You have to do this as well, in addition to any physical work that you do. But I would ask: do you ever experience an emotion without having a physical sensation associated with it? Try to call up an emotion, any emotion, and observe your bodies slight responses to it.
Yeah that more or less makes sense to me!
Yes, and this is vitally important: because we are completely blind to the most powerful and dangerous habits which we have. We live them as though they were absolutely necessary, as opposed to observing them as habits which can be modified or removed entirely.
Beginning strictly, then, with working through physical habits (left-handed writing, baoding balls, juggling, etc) makes you aware of the walls of frustration (and later on fear) which protect any habit from conscious observation. “Conscious pain” is what I refer to as intentionally confronting these habitual movements within the physical body, and making the conscious decision not to give up when you hit those walls. But to just keep going, gradually and daily. And then you begin to layer in other activities on top of that which help you bridge these learnings into emotional realms and mental ones. Chess has been a good one for me. But in playing chess online, I have had to essentially resolve myself to losing every single game that I play. Because the point is not winning, but in facing pain and frustration over loss until that goes away.
And it does. It goes away. And it stays gone if you work at it and make it a lifestyle.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:07 am
Yes, I agree with you, there is almost always a body response.
Nicely put. This is one of the hardest hurdles for anyone to get over. To admit to oneself that one is a creature of habit. We believe totally the opposite and society continually reinforces this fallacy.
thanks, I understand your approach much better now.
Overall I think we are talking about the same thing, just slicing slightly differently at the moment. I think your initial approach of using Propricieptive awareness is a natural first step. I have found taking a closer look at PP awareness on top of previously used PP techniques (I didn’t know that term before you introduced it to me) through more intensive exercise inspired by you very helpful in bringing my awareness to a finer level, at least on the physical side of things, and maybe it will help me chase subtler emotional states.