Consciousness

What Is Consciousness

Consciousness arises from a feedback loop between our senses and our memories that generates images, dialog, and feelings in a never-ending internal feed. It can be thought of as our memories stimulating our senses to produce echoes of the original stimuli that imprinted them.

Our Stream of Consciousness uses our memories and training to process new data from our external senses and create output to our motor neurons that determine how we interact with the universe.

Input (senses) -> Processing (thoughts) -> Output (muscles).

Mindfulness

When we are mindful, we are able to turn off the feedback loop and simply experience the new sights, sounds, and sensations that are coming to us externally. It's all input without processing or output.

Flow

Similar to mindfulness, flow states are when we bypass the feedback loop and connect stimulus and response directly through well-worn neural pathways created by repetitive training. It's direct input to output without processing.