Instant Enlightenment, Awakening Your States of Mind, Summary Part 2 ($)

Thinking – Sensing – Feeling – Recollecting

Here is the second of three parts summarizing my book Instant Enlightenment, Awakening Your States of Mind.

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Chapter 5 – Thinking

Meta Thinking / Images / Words / Thoughts / Acts of Will / Hearing / Comprehending / Reason / Continuity / Internal Dialog / Social Bonding / Volition and Control / Groups / Minds / Context / Intentions / Needs / Emotions / Integrity / Perception / Deception / Results / Thoughts Aren’t Reality / Beyond What You Think / Give Rhythm a Try / Obligations of Learning

Thinking about thinking, or meta-thinking, might be uniquely human, except that most humans don't do it. Meta-thinking is not just talking to yourself or passing judgment, it's reflecting on your whole cognitive process: thoughts, emotions and sensations.

Meta-thinking requires having some way to make sense of experiences that are not based on reasons, words, structures, or sequences. Meta-thinking is an examination of self, memory, and meaning. It means you don't assume anything. It is the questioning of questioning itself.

Our personalities are built on patterns and protocol, and our sense of self is built from reason and perception. We use these tools to compare what we see with what we remember. This enables us to move forward. When we question everything, including time and space, we start to disentangle our relationships from our preconceptions.

It's not that our preconceptions are wrong, it's rather that they describe us more than they describe the world. There is no time or space, there are only events, and the space of events is larger than space-time.

We can think outside these concepts, but to do so means navigating a larger reality. This jump takes you outside language and logic, into a realm of expanded reason and subtle communication. We feel out of control in this larger nontemporal, nonspatial world, but situations make more sense and relationships are deeper.

Chapter 6 – Sensing

Perception / External Awareness / Interoception / Currents / Resonance / Pulse / Arousal / Lungs / Heart / Anger / Elimination / Creativity / Attention / Internal Awareness / Language / Summary

To be whole requires seeing the whole, but we tend to focus on details. We can reduce the project of being holistic and, by that means, learn holism reductively. This is like solving a jigsaw puzzle, as we repeatedly narrow and expand our focus. We create something that is larger than our focus.

The apparent obstacle to greater understanding is a lack of knowing more, but the real obstacle is a lack of feeling more. It is our emotions that are wholistic, not our intellect. It’s not a question of emotional versus intellectual, we need to combine them.

Our sensations are disparaged as bestial. They are discouraged by intellectuals, rejected by clerics, ignored by managers, overlooked by counselors, and debased by the media. Yet, sensations are a key to our mental and physical health. They are the means by which our thinking body speaks to us.

Our sensations bridge thought and emotion and join them both. The very process is holistic: it requires a combination of thought, feeling, memory, and imagination. When you build a reality that combines these, each becomes more fluid.

Working these elements together is a key to greater awareness. This is reflected in spiritual traditions that engage intellect through study, emotions through spirit, and the body through action. All of us can do this; we don’t need to join a monastery.

Chapter 7 – Feeling

The Delusion of Personality / Game of Intellect / Disrespect of Emotions / Neurology / Autonomy / Negative Affect / Positive Affect / Positive Maintenance / What You Know and What You Are/ Acquaintance and Discovery / Emotion as a Whole Being / Intellect and Emotion / Strength and Weakness / Trust and Distrust / Light and Dark / Good and Bad Behavior / Positive and Negative / Love and Death