CONSCIOUSNESS Archives - Mindful Happiness

April 21, 2018 By Admin

Consciousness of Your Emotions

Besides common scientific reflections on human emotions – that is neuro-chemical-electrical cellular impulses in response to sensory inputs – our emotional response system includes you and your innermost emotional reactions to both internal and external stimuli (people, places, things, memories, experiences, phenomena). Your mental state in response to sensory contact with phenomena often initiates your subjective experience of emotions. To help you do a better job in emotional responsiveness versus emotional reactivity, I have listed several aspects of emotions and consciousness. Hope these are helpful in your quest for inner peace and happiness.

All consciousness, thus all emotional responses, are highly subjective in nature.
Perception, perspective, cognition, neural images, and personal interpretation turn experiences into emotions.
You have a form of subjective self-originated consciousness, which colors how you interpret life’s experiences.
If you already know that your developmental attachment history was difficult emotionally, then you already know you need improved emotion regulation skills to navigate through life’s challenges.
Personal subjective experiences always includes feelings in your body – pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Long-term consciousness in living helps to integrate various experiences into our personal emotional life.
It is this personal inclination that sharply reflects itself in your emotional reactions and responses.
There is no specific part of the human brain that holds consciousness; it is integrated in our human brain
Our personal emotional experiences relate fully to sensory inputs, relational/personal perspectives, cognition, and interpretation of people, places, and things.
Feeling states, like all other human systemic responses, are homeostatic in nature; there is a tendency to return to a more steady state after fluctuations of energy.
The identified personal quality of human experience is called “feelingness.” (p. 160).
To cope better emotionally use the information above as well as breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, exercise, and compassion.

For more information refer to Demasio, A. (2018). The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feelings, and the Making of Culture. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 11-31, 44-52, and 99-161.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha

Author of Mindful Happiness

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

September 12, 2017 By Admin

Consciousness, Emptiness, and Well Being

This is an advanced post on the complex relationship among consciousness (awareness), emptiness, and well being. Readers with advanced understanding of Buddhist Psychology will recognize the inherent relationships among consciousness, emptiness, and well being and interactions with core Buddhist concepts and experiences such as happiness and suffering, impermanence, non-dual nature, dependent origination, and emptiness of all phenomena related to the former. It is the total integration of these concepts, processes, and experiences that guide us on our personal path to enlightenment or nirvana. If we achieve wise-mind skills and meaningful regular meditation/yoga practice – as well as keep the above information in mind – we will also achieve mind and body wellness to the highest possible levels.

In an advanced contribution to our understanding of consciousness, , R. Spira (2017). The Nature of Consciousness opens up many doors of awareness to just what consciousness is and what it is not. Spira reminds us that only consciousness is aware of consciousness, and that WE are the only conscious entities that are aware of experiencing it. Unlike the epiphenomena of the universe, in which we become aware of the seamless, unified wholeness of it all, the space between the subjective (our mind – the I/Me/Mine)) and the objective (something outside or inside that you become aware of) eventually leads us to an error in perception: That we are separate, substantial, solid individuals experiencing separate, substantial, solid things in the world. We believe the objects and experiences we are aware of are solid, full, real forms of form in a very temporary time-space continuum. However, our consciousness and awareness are transparent, empty, and formless; thus, our mind-body of experience making sensory contact with objects – and registering as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral – is also transparent, empty, and formless. It is simply just how the mind and body function. Consciousness has no set of values or valences; it is simply a state of neutral awareness.

Leading physicists (Einstein, Planck, Bohr, and Schrodinger to name a few) have for a very long time noted that observation effects the observed; that is that subjective (mind) investigation of objects of matter do change the objects of matter. We can only observe the wave energy or the particle at one time but not both. As we observe subjectively, the object of observation undergoes some form of change. Perhaps this is the barely noticed effect of the very subtle energy in observation impacting the observed. So our consciousness is the only absolute reality of all things that appear to exist. The momentary sensory contact with objects and experiences produces that which consciousness is aware of. So, with these somewhat heavy viewpoints from Buddhist Psychology, we will examine upclose the meditative experience of being conscious of pure emptiness. Personal awareness of your consciousness is a neutral continuum of constancy, but sensory contact with objects and experiences leading to pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant feelings is a limited time-space phenomenon in the present moment.

As you meditate, apply complete attention, awareness, and deep consciousness on the following statements about your possible meditative experience here now. This is difficult; do your best.

Consider the reality of physical, empty, transparent space between your mind and the object of interest.
This inter subject-object space is invisible, but your consciousness knows it is there (close or far).
We can experience timeless-space and spaceless-time.
Since the essential nature of mind is awareness (pure and empty consciousness), our space-time and time-space consciousness is borderless and boundless.
In the experience of conscious emptiness there is no up, down, right, left, outside or inside – there is no solid object entity, just atomic space and surrounding space.
The human mind is the action of pure consciousness/awareness via sensory contact with objects.
Our awareness of being conscious of our consciousness means that is the only true entity of the self.
It is the I/Me/Mine of the ego that registers consciousness of something, anything.
Consciousness of ultimate emptiness is the highest understanding possible in human life as well as in physics.

For more details refer to Spira, R. (2017). The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter. Oxford, UK: Sahara Publications, pp. 3, 19-33.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

November 8, 2015 By Admin

Exploring Consciousness with Dr Quintiliani

What Consciousness Really Is

Considering that we have been to the moon and back, and more recently surveyed important moons of Saturn, science is still a very long way from understanding how the human brain works – and even further away from having a clear, agreed-upon interpretation of human consciousness. Consciousness is the “stuff” of knowing, the “stuff” of being aware of a specific experience inside and outside of mind-body. In some ways mind consciousness is the priority of all neuroscience research. From a Buddhist perspective, we could not know joy, suffering or neutrality without consciousness. Harvard Psychologist, Steven Pinker, has noted that human perceptual abilities are quite weak (we cannot see ultraviolet light, we cannot rotate an object in the fourth dimension, and we still are far from knowing the true nature of free will and sentience). In fact, the human brain perceived only about 5-10% of the energies at work in the universe. Thus, a full understanding of human consciousness is still considerably beyond our reach.

In his new book, The Future of the Mind, M. Kaku presents some fresh perspectives about the nature of consciousness. It is clear that consciousness has both evolutionary and genetic values. It has psychological, physical and emotional components. It posses bio-psycho-social-spiritual implications. It is our personal awareness (mindfulness observation) of person-space-time experiences; it supports our understanding of the world, and provides rich feedback for navigating it. Most of the time, consciousness includes some goal-directed behavior or an inner emotional reactions to things in our mindful awareness. Consciousness processes involve our senses, our cognitions, our behaviors, and most importantly our emotions. We know it and we feel it!

In my own clinical work, I view consciousness as being intimately integrated with what I refer to as CABs-VAKGO-IS-Rels system. Humans think, feel, act; human utilize their sensory systems (seeing, hearing, feeling/sensation, tasting, smelling) as well as powerful intuitive and spiritual aspects of being human. We do most of these “being” functions in relationships with our private selves, other people, animals and nature. Consciousness helps us to both survive and thrive; consciousness may help us become more skilled in radically accepting suffering and being fully intimate with joy and happiness. When suffering dominates, people tend to use consciousness to intensify suffering then reduce the duration of suffering, and perhaps experience short-term relief- at least in their mood preferences. When neutrality is boredom, and when suffering dominates, people tend to self-medicate for short-term relief. We do learn from consequences, especially consequences holding potent emotional rewards and punishers. Ultimately, consciousness helps us to recognize that “this is ME in this specific time-space experience.” Our experience may be painful, boring, or joyous. Consciousness also helps us to decide HOW TO respond to whatever the experience is.

From a recovery perspective (recovery from substance misuse, anxiety, depression, trauma, anger and eating disorders), consciousness may be the doorway into deep trouble was well as the doorway out of the same. The consciousness doorway into recovery is a potent one. It allows us to project our thoughts, emotions, and sensory information into the future. On a good day, consciousness may open up our inner awareness to future vision with specific and helpful CABs-VAKGO-IS-Rels involved. Working together, the prefrontal, sensory-motor, and parietal brain regions AND the body may help us figure out WHO we were in the past, WHO we are in the present, and WHO we might become in the future. If/when we enter recovery, consciousness will help us to understand our CABs-VAKGO-IS-Rels realities and engage them mindfully (for the good) in the present moment – the ONLY moment you have personal power to change everything. Use your personal consciousness to function well.

For more information refer to Kaku, M. (2014). The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind. New York: Doubleday, pp.1-10 and 41-60.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

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November 8, 2015 By Admin

Meditation – Getting to Some Clarity about Consciousness

Mediation: Conscious or Not?

A true, in depth understanding about what human consciousness is and how it works has eluded mind and brain scientists for many years. A few very interesting ideas have been presented by Stuart Hameroff, professor emeritus and director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies. Consciousness rests in the center of many brain-mind discussions. In it’s most basic form, consciousness is simply awareness – think meditation experience. Something changes in the dynamics of energy, and we become aware of it. The brain’s one-hundred billion neurons have much to do with this process of becoming aware. In their complex electrical-chemical processes, patterns, and interactions our brain’s neurons produce something experienced as aware consciousness. We are always conscious about something going on inside and/or outside of us. Thus, consciousness can be a double-edged sword – keeping us fully attuned to what the universe (small and large) is doing, but also maintaining a steady-state of mind-noise – endless flow of thoughts that may be either comforting or terrifying. Consciousness, itself, may be one reason why the human brain has so much difficulty relaxing itself. Let’s begin to review a few of Hameroff’s ideas.

1) Quantum processes in the human brain connect our brains to the quantum processes of the universe. We may be connected to others and everything in more ways than we could ever imagine.

2) Human consciousness may be as complicated as quantum superposition – that in the field of physics allows something to be in two states or places at the same time. This may refers to the particle-wave phenomenon in physics, when an atom/particle and it energetic location (wave of energy) cannot both be measured while being observed. The very act of simultaneous observation by a human brain (or machine made by human brains) becomes impossible. We cannot observe/measure both at once, even though they appear to be existing at the same physical dimension of time and place. So, this is to say that human consciousness is a highly complex phenomenon. Human consciousness may be the single most complex process we experience.

3) Today we know that photosynthesis – the sun-powered process that gives rise to plants and thus everything we eat – uses quantum coherence. What is even more interesting is that a laser also uses quantum coherence. So the very hard sciences dealing with quantum laser technology is also at work making the food we survive on. The raw requirements of consciousness exist everywhere in the universe, and effects almost all the things we know about (are aware of).

4) The mind-body system processes human consciousness within a two-second window of awareness. That is very, very fast. Some neuroscience research conducted by the Antonio Demasio suggested that there may be a process of backward time, in which subjects respond to a signal that has not yet been produced in their time-space experience. How can that happen? Perhaps our connectivity to all the energetics of the universe might explain this.

5) Research by Chrisof Koch at UCLA suggested that brain neuron firing in response to pictures of human faces actually occurred about a half-second prior to the actual perception (awareness) of the face being shown. More backward time perspectives. Or perhaps just a more powerful human brain than we ever imagined.

6) As Deepak Chopra has noted, consciousness is the fabric of all human experience in the universe. This coming together of science/physical and spiritual/classical understandings presents consciousness as something very important to human functions – and possibly our survival in the long term. What Vedic mystics called “locus locations” may also explain the fact that time-space realities may exist on different planes – thus different state of consciousness. The fact that human can perceive only 5-10% of the universe’s energies clarifies just how weak our human perceptual powers are regarding complete or higher consciousness.

7) Back to your meditation practice. Do you think that your meditation practice helps you handle energies better? Does meditation slow down or speed up energetic qualities of your awareness? After years of regular meditation practice, you may finally experience being nowhere and being nothing at the same time. Does this have anything to do with physical selflessnesss and the ultimate reality of Buddhist emptiness. In the final analysis, it is all empty of inherent origination and meaning. Or, is the meditation doing something very special to the brain’s consciousness processes? In such a state, bliss in the great void of existence may be possible. Keep meditating!