I know all models are wrong, and some are useful. But in every day life, I find myself thinking of my brain in two parts that are roughly A) my beam of attention and B) my everything else. This doesn’t seem to be totally captured by the other divisions and metaphors mentioned. Both A and B feel like *me*.
My attention (A) feels a lot like a beam of light that can be narrow, wide, dim, or even off. My everything else seems to include my subconscious, the answers that pop into my head without effort, the habits I execute by rote, internal dialogue that chatters away even when I’m not particularly paying attention to it, desires, emotions, and much more.
B churns away whether A is on, off, paying attention to B, or looking in some other random direction. But overall, my decisions and quality of life seem to be better when I use A as much as I possibly can, and when I spend a big chunk of A’s time studying what B is doing.
[I updated this comment to add the rest of this.]
The behavior of scrolling through the internet late at night, and the thoughts that I should probably stop and go to bed, both feel to me like they’re in the same general category. The behavior and the inner dialogue both appear, bubbled up from the mysterious machinery of my brain (B) and presented to my awareness (A) on a platter. (I know awareness is also generated in the same machinery and that it isn’t ultimately an unsolvable mystery how the brain works. I’m only describing how my experience feels.)
Directing my attention seems to be the extent to which any meta level of control is introduced to the picture.
In the above example of scrolling when I have thoughts I should be sleeping, I ultimately decide to go to bed right away if I really focus my attention on how worn down my eyes and body feel and notice how muddy my thoughts are compared to when I’m well rested. For extra ammo, I can focus on how whatever craving is driving the scrolling doesn’t seem to be diminishing from moment to moment and has no hope of being satisfied.
I know all models are wrong, and some are useful. But in every day life, I find myself thinking of my brain in two parts that are roughly A) my beam of attention and B) my everything else. This doesn’t seem to be totally captured by the other divisions and metaphors mentioned. Both A and B feel like *me*.
My attention (A) feels a lot like a beam of light that can be narrow, wide, dim, or even off. My everything else seems to include my subconscious, the answers that pop into my head without effort, the habits I execute by rote, internal dialogue that chatters away even when I’m not particularly paying attention to it, desires, emotions, and much more.
B churns away whether A is on, off, paying attention to B, or looking in some other random direction. But overall, my decisions and quality of life seem to be better when I use A as much as I possibly can, and when I spend a big chunk of A’s time studying what B is doing.
[I updated this comment to add the rest of this.]
The behavior of scrolling through the internet late at night, and the thoughts that I should probably stop and go to bed, both feel to me like they’re in the same general category. The behavior and the inner dialogue both appear, bubbled up from the mysterious machinery of my brain (B) and presented to my awareness (A) on a platter. (I know awareness is also generated in the same machinery and that it isn’t ultimately an unsolvable mystery how the brain works. I’m only describing how my experience feels.)
Directing my attention seems to be the extent to which any meta level of control is introduced to the picture.
In the above example of scrolling when I have thoughts I should be sleeping, I ultimately decide to go to bed right away if I really focus my attention on how worn down my eyes and body feel and notice how muddy my thoughts are compared to when I’m well rested. For extra ammo, I can focus on how whatever craving is driving the scrolling doesn’t seem to be diminishing from moment to moment and has no hope of being satisfied.