Fast Asleep - X-post

Your unconscious mind is running your life!

Studies from as far back as the seventies show that our brains begin to prepare for action just over a third of a second before we consciously decide to act. In other words, even when we ‘think’ we are conscious, it is our unconscious mind which is actually making our decisions for us.

This blog post is crossposted from To Scape The Serpent's Tongue. It also appears in Hypnotic Erotic.

Neuroscientists have shown that the conscious mind provides 5% or less of our cognitive (conscious) activity during the day – and 5% they say is for the more aware people, many people operate at just 1% consciousness. Dr Lipton also says that the unconscious mind operates at 40 million bits of data per second, whereas the conscious mind processes at only 40 bits per second. So the unconscious mind is MUCH more powerful than the conscious mind, and it is the unconscious mind which shapes how we live our life.

The scientists show that most of our decisions, actions, emotions and behavior depend on the 95% of brain activity that is beyond our conscious awareness, which means that 95 – 99% of our life comes from the programming in our subconscious mind.

The article continues:-

All of your thoughts come from the outside. None of them come from within, although there may be some inner basis for the thought inside you. The thoughts themselves come from the outside, but there are grooves along which they run inside you.

You are all filling each others’ heads with garbage and you are so fast asleep that you don’t realize what you are taking in. You take everything in. You are like a guesthouse where there are no caretakers and no guards outside to see who is coming in and who is going out. You are a place where anyone can come in - man, animal, thief or cheat. And when he feels like it he can leave, and if he doesn’t feel like leaving he will stay.

The mind lives in a sort of sleep; it lives in a sort of unconscious state. You become conscious only very rarely. If your life is in tremendous danger you become conscious; otherwise you are not conscious. The mind goes on moving, sleepy. Stand by the side of the road and watch people and you will see shadows of dreams on their faces. Somebody talks to himself, or makes gestures - if you look at him you will be able to see that he is somewhere else, not here on the road. It is as if people are moving in deep sleep.

Somnambulism is the ordinary state of the mind. If you want to become a meditator, you have to drop this sleepy habit of doing things. Walk, but be alert. Dig a hole, but be alert. Eat, but while eating don't do anything - just eat. Each bite should be taken with deep alertness, chew it with alertness. Don't allow yourself to run all over the world. Be here, now.

-- Osho

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

-- Prospero, Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1, 148–158