Labels:text | human face | drawing | sketch OCR: ME Concentration Attention My Feelings 1 My Self Choice "Buy the' My Memories bike or the My view of the skiis? world My Story My Meanings My Ideas CONSCIOUSNESS My Actions ME PANDEMONIUM of processes, thoughts, calculations, Indecision! decisions, and perceptions that we take no notice of but we depend on for moment-to-moment engagement with our worlds. CONSCIOUSNESS Figure 12.2 Most of our actions, thoughts and perceptions get processed without our awareness in a sort of "pandemonium" of simultaneous cognition. Consciousness happens when we turn our attention and concentration to some aspect of this fast-paced multiplicity of our brains. It happens in four basic ways: 1) the pandemonium fails to resolve a problem and we are stumped, 2) we are aroused or alerted by strong feelings, 3) we are "summoned" by an outside source (someone calls our name, we recognize a face or situation), and 4) when a strong memory is snagged. Regardless of how it is invoked, these things begin to happen: 1) attention is focused, 2) cognition slows down, 3)thoughts are studied, 4)one's SELF seems to take control, 5)memories are gathered, 6) parts of the brain used to do the concentrated thinking begin to produce electrical pulses of 40 cycles per second, 7) we rehearse possibilities, Imagine alternatives, and 8) our vital signs rise. What results from our self awareness might be a decision, an action, a conclusion, an experience of meaning and feeling, a creation, a destruction, or a pleasure. Whether something "punches" through to our awareness from the pandemonium (as depicted here) or we are called by another person, our consciousness and the self that seems to direct it is created fresh each time.
