Consciousness. There’s
been a lot of debate about what consciousness is. I’m with Anil Seth, that having
consciousness is having something that it feels like to be you. I
think consciousness is a really useful invention for animals, and minds are
part of bodies.
But what about the Subconsciousness?
What is down there
in the dark unknown zones of the Subconsciousness?
I discovered in the
fantastic book Sentient by Jackie Higgins: we have way more senses than
we’re aware of – for example, proprioception, which is the sense that tells the
body where it is in space: nerves in our muscles are sending this information
to our brains all the time, but luckily we’re blissfully unaware of all this data-sharing
going on. But senses of space and time are all part of our subconscious, bound
up with our idea of what will be coming up in the future.
The Subconscious is
trying to keep us safe: it is doing its own safety calculation and summoning up
the feelings for the action it has worked out is necessary. But what it has
pulled up is fear, anxiety, dread and a thousand other uncomfortable feelings
that it is horrible to sit with.
So the Subconscious
is trying to help but causing chaos: unease, panic attacks, a roller coaster of
adrenalin rushes, immobilizing wells of rumination. My subconscious
is a drama queen, a catastrophizer, an over-reacter.
Thanks for that, Subconscious
Mind. The upcoming event was challenging enough, but now you’ve summoned up the
Monkey of Dread to sit on my chest at four in the morning. Really helpful.
It could be that
back when we were hunter gatherers before farming caught on, the threats we’d
face would be short-lived and real, and needing a swift and definite response
for survival, so this super-reactive subconscious was useful to us. But in our
world now, so much is long term, complicated and imaginary, so the subconscious’s
response can be way more mental anguish than must be good for us.
The writer Daisy
Goodwin, on Radio 4’s
Saturday Live, said: “I think all creative artists are to some extent
depressives, they write to get out of that slough of despond.”
But I wonder if the
over-active imaginations that dream up worlds also fuel over-powerful anxieties.
It might be that
book-makers, who spend so much time living in their own minds inventing stories
– could be prone to the roller-coaster rides conjured up by an over-active
imagination. So it’s important to escape sometimes.
This is how I
escape, when I can.
If I can, I go
running first thing in the morning. (If you can run or walk it is win-win-win
in so many way: exercise, endorphins, sunlight, changing nature, and more.)
Then I go down the
bottom of the garden, and think about my Nine Things.
I adapted my Nine
Things from Jon Kabat Zinn’s 9 attitudes. Thank you Jon. It's an attempt to reframe my day, and to shift from being immersed in my feelings or worries ( like a fish in water who can't see the water), to being an interested observer of what's going on in me today.
Mini’s Nine Things:
Patience How can I
bring patience to what may be happening today? It could be patience about what
needs to be done, and where I am in getting it done; patience with my own
feelings; patience to remake things that need to be remade.
Acceptance How can I bring acceptance: to be OK with things
taking longer than I thought they would, to shake hands with an uncomfortable
feeling and let it sit next to me.
Trust I can have trust:
I can trust myownself that’s had a lifetime of looking after me, I can trust
the skills I’ve used a million times, I can trust in my people, the world, the
Protector of all Small Things, the Universe.
Letting Go/Letting Be Things
do not need to be resolved right now, they can hang and wait, like a pot on a
wheel. (Sorry about that simile.) Things can be fine just as they are. Don’t
just do something, stand there…
Everything’s an Offer Today
is the present – with all it offers. Accept the offers and do what you can with
them. And when the offer is something you don’t want – sometimes that’s the
offer you can learn most of all from.
I Change My Mind, I Follow My Skis My first ski instructor, Jeff, said this. I think it
means: Jeff has been skiing so long that all his body understands how to ski
and he can just follow his body’s well-experienced decisions.
Gratitude Thank you!!! For
today! For my family, my friends, for having a house, for living in this good
place…Thank you, overactive brain, for trying to keep me safe…
Generosity What or who
can I bring generosity too? Can I pay more attention to my family? Can I bring
some generosity to myself…?
Beginner’s Mind This
is about looking at the world as if you were seeing it for the first time.
Often we see the familiar and we see what we are expecting to see. With the
truly unfamiliar, really new things, we have no expectations and what we see
can be surprising.
With beginner’s
mind – you can escape “the anaesthetic of familiarity” (Richard Dawkins) – and discover that
everything is interesting, nothing is ordinary, nothing is ‘obvious’. That we
are sentient and alive on a living planet for a brief window of time is
vanishingly rare and extraordinary.
Mini's latest book is The Greatest Show on Earth, published by Puffin.