Friday, 7 June 2024
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Hello. All is well. God is love.

We dream so much one can almost get enough. I'm quite sure our dreams do take inspiration from our day. I always seem to be able to map a few things. It seems to be an imaginative combination of past experiences with our most recent life experiences.

Do you think in words or pictures? My thoughts were very quiet yesterday. In fact, when I went to bed, it was quiet. Instead I heard birds chirping in my head? I was confused, but it was a pleasant experience nonetheless. It seems I was thinking in visuals too? It was as if I was dreaming in my thoughts.

The internet says I either have tinnitus, am in psychosis or am developing schizophrenia. Oh dear. I don't believe so. My sense of reality is quite clear.

I think one should not forget the influence our day to day lives has on our minds. A life in a city must be a stressful one. I like to walk in the nature. Oh it is so pleasant. To feel all of its love in the summer.

Continuing with chapter eight, we learn of what parts of the brain are involved in memory.

We seem not able to find the specific neurons responsible for memory. Scientists believe memories involve all of the brain. Other neurons can take over for other neurons. We learned that by giving a few rats some brain lesions. As we learned before, our brain works on the principle of degeneracy. However some parts of the brain may have some specific functions for memory.

The specific parts involved in memory are the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the cerebellum.

The amygdala is typically known for regulating fear and aggression, as the book says, but we also read before it may be more about novelty, as it's known for consolidating new information from learning into long-term memory. Perhaps I have many memories because I'm easily aroused due to my sensitivity. Could my emotional sensitivity be due to me experiencing things with more novelty? It does make sense with the feeling of always doing things for the first time.

I like to wander my memories. It's like an infinite universe. One memory takes you to another. So many feelings. I don't remember exact details, but I seem to remember snapshots of all my experiences. I do believe I have a good sense of knowing when something in my memory is made up. For example, I don't trust memories that are too simple. You can sort of look around and investigate it. If it's too static or surrounded by a void, it's usually a memory I formed from a picture I saw or a story I heard.

I remember seeing a TV show where they tested this, allowing us viewers to follow along, and I was baffled at how people made up false memories. I think this relates to how I feel my experience of life is not an absolute certainty. My brain keeps it all in smaller pieces, and I have to put them together myself. My brain doesn't automatically fill in the blanks for me.

Before, I used to have moments where I think back to a memory of awkwardness. Oh boy, I've had many of those. I don't feel the cringe anymore when I look back. You're simply this person without attachment to a perfect one-dimensional story of this person. In fact, it's pretty intriguing to be a person of imperfection. It adds a sense of depth to life. You allow yourself to experience life with freedom and curiosity. Embracing my imagination has made this even more extreme. It's like I've gained a higher level of agency.

I truly experience three levels of my mind. But it's difficult to notice it. I still have so far. Yesterday, I noticed this clearly. I could feel my stomach being hungry, simply acknowledging it and letting it know we'll get food when we're home again. It'll be alright. When I encountered two people on my path and greeted them, I felt slightly anxious afterwards, which I tried to acknowledge or understand in my thoughts. After accepting it would be okay to be awkward if I met them again, I noticed I didn't feel hungry. I returned back down, the hunger returned, and my thoughts and feelings of anxiety disappeared. This was an interaction between what I call the intuitive and intellective system. Working with my imaginative system is what allowed me to greet them in the first place with love and curiosity. I sense most people are quite stuck in themselves. I do want to reach a place where I'm truly free. I think isolation in a peaceful environment is quite necessary for such a journey. I think a sense of awe is related to the imaginative system. Being in nature and experiencing a sense of awe, I believe, can help one get in touch with it if one can't reach it solely within one's mind.

One's imaginative system easily gets hijacked by the stories your environment tells you. I do feel sad for all the people being told stories of having to be something particular in order to feel okay. I also believe cruelty breeds cruelty. We get sucked into it and grow our anger of people. In practice, one technique I use if I encounter news of something terrible with a human perpetrator is to focus my attention on the victims, which more easily fills my mind with compassion, as I find if we focus on the perpetrator, our mind will picture an evermore evil being, filling our mind with anger and hate, which is a dangerous path to take. If one has enough strength, one can focus on the perpetrator afterwards with more nuance without letting oneself get lost. An eye for an eye is a losing game. I believe we severely underestimate the power of our imaginative system and its network effect on a societal scale. It is no wonder one will suffer when lost and entangled in the three systems of the mind.

If one likes stories of a god, in Christianity, I do find the concepts of the Trinity and viewing humans as the image of God delightful. I haven't read the bible or really know anything about Christianity, so I apologize for my coming blasphemy. My interpretation is that you could view humans as co-creators of reality. We have been given the power of imagination. We are the storytellers of reality. If you think about it, we really need a sense of responsibility and a perspective of a god. If we get lost or too attached to any of the three systems, we lose our godly agency.

You need intuition, intelligence, and imagination to work together. One must be aware of how the systems affect each other and form one's perception and how the interaction between them will create emergent agency. Well, this is just my current attempt at understanding it. I'll see if this model helps me in practice. It's the ultimate test, you could say.

I think some people are more intuitive, some are more intelligent, some are more imaginative. If we live in a society that values only one, slowly we lose our agency. It's a balancing act. Maybe, I have no idea, but it feels like it kinda makes sense.

Intuition keeps us grounded. Intelligence moves us forward. Imagination aims us higher. Something like that, eh. I'm not sure. There's this person from my server who would constantly say eh. Eh.

Okay, You have made this little 3-system model of yours. Intuition. Intellect. Imagination. It seems a bit fluffy.

What is intuition exactly? Think. Think. Think. It's knowing the relationship between your body and your affective feelings. Mapping your affective feelings to your bodily sensations. Hmm. What about when you have a gut feeling about something, like a person or a situation? Hmmmmmmmm. Empathy. Mirror neurons. We have different strengths in our senses. Erm. So, intelligence and imagination will connect with our intuition without our knowing. Your intelligence and imagination will be expressed in your intuition. Similarly, intuition will be expressed in your intelligence and imagination.

Intuition is simply a type of expression in your consciousness. It's affective feeling. Am I mentally deficient? Hmm.

Intuition feels. Intellect explains. Imagination frames. What on earth is imagination. Can you even explain imagination? What about feelings. Can I explain feelings to someone without feelings? What can we even explain? What is explaining? Ahhhh.

Okay. Back to basics. Sensations. I'm holding a snack bar. There's a difference between sensation and explaining. Explaining is conscious. I intuitively knew I was holding a snack bar without explaining it, and while writing this, I'm intuitively eating it without paying attention.

I do things without consciously knowing it. Or what. The more abstract the doing is, the harder it is for me to do it intuitively. Like I can't autopilot walking. Uhhh. But I do sometimes? If I'm talking, I forget that I'm walking. Never follow me if we're talking. I will lead us to nowhere as I completely forget that I'm walking or where I'm heading. Huh. Okay. Okay what? I talk. But who is doing the part where. Wait, who is typing right now? Am I typing? I'm thinking right now, how can I be typing right now? The person typing right now can you hear me, hey, stop ignoring me, I can see you're typing what I'm saying. I'm talking to you! Hmm. Weird. The thing writing started scratching its head before I was aware of it. Yes, there's a difference between who is acting and who is thinking. Because I may have some mild autism, it becomes more obvious to me. But why exactly. Umm. Yum. Gum. Rum. Bum. Sum. Alright. Enough of that.

Intuition is an expression of whatever more hardwired patterns your brain has. My brain is capable of making sure my heart beats. That I breathe. Oh. Does that mean if you don't have any autism, the imagination stuff gets hardwired into you. I do think so? Um. If you think about it. Social reality, the constructs, are part of our imagination. But, like, people change, right? But it's like more slowly. Ohhhh. If it's hardwired, it becomes part of your intuition. Ehm.

If you have hardcore autism, you may not form patterns for things like speaking words? You know, the patterns of motor movement for speech are pretty intricate, as we learned in the linguistics book. If you look at my writing, I mostly use very basic words. Maybe that's just because I'm stupid. It's hard for me to store something intuitively, which forces me to make things as simple as possible so I can quickly retrieve it. Perhaps I can store it intuitively when I make it simple enough? Am I bad at learning? Hmmmmmm.

I can see objects intuitively. That's a table. But it does seem like it looks for random stuff on the table. As if there's something more. It can't stop zooming in. What the heck. Maybe that's why I find it calming to be in the dark. If I close my eyes you still see all the blood and stuff in your eyelids unless I strain myself to keep them fully shut.

Okay, but like if my intuition is so basic. Why do people scare me? Because you don't intuitively understand them? You know the question if you'd rather meet a bear or a man in the forest. I guess it expresses that a bit. You know what you're getting with a bear. You have no idea how the person will act. Hmm. Do I have prejudices? Oh. Perhaps I can better recognize a prejudice because it's not intuitive to me, but I can still like have it intellectually. My problem is intuitively adding my imagination senses to my intuition? What. Hmm.

Wouldn't it be funny if I didn't have autism at all, and I've just been talking absolute nonsense all this time.

The System 1 and System 2 processing by Kahneman. The fast one and the slow one. That's the intellective system. Either lazy or not. Not sure, should look into it. Your thinking is also impacted by your patterns. Thinking is not feeling but understanding something by thinking. Like 1 + 1 is pure intellect. You don't feel 1 + 1 is correct. You know it's right. Logic. Rationality. What can we use that for? It allows us to reason within a framework or context. You need rules. Math is imaginary? Like 2 is two 1's and 2 is one 2. So two could be one. So, it's still in the framework of how we conceptualize reality into entities or objects. Who says reality is made out of objects but merely how we see the world?

Is artificial intelligence truly imaginary or creative in the sense humans are? Do we really know what humans are made up of, or do we simply just see the surface and assume we can work from that surface to create our cognition? Because numbers seem to be an abstraction. Can numbers account for some emerging function that may be taking place in our brain?

Thinking is meta intuition? Intuition is bound by time. Thinking is not. Thinking. What on earth am I babbling on about.

I just realized I'm such a slave to my acting self. I will mess with you. To fight against you, I will create a purpose. I will sit here and document whatever happens. I'm not doing some meditation or something. Just observing and writing if I feel like it.

I will brush my teeth and then sit here for 8 hours. Yeah. Deal with it.

Okay. It's now 11:22. I'm sitting in a chair before an empty table, staring into black curtains. How do I feel right now? Fine.

It's 11:32, and I have just realized that I should start the washing machine, back in a minute.

Chicken monkey. When is it 8 hours? That would be 11 + 8. So 19:22. That's going to be boring. Wait, the washing machine is not making any noise. Oh, you have to press twice.

It's 11:53, and I'm fine, except the noises from the washing machine are kinda annoying. Nhhhhhuuuuuuuuuun. Short silence. Nhhhhhuuuuuun. Short silence. Nhuuuuuuuun.

It's 13:11. The washing machine stopped. I'll be back soon, but not for long, because I found something that satisfied me enough.

So, yeah. I have become more reaffirmed you can split the brain into 3 systems. Well it's just a sketch. But the acting self, the thinking self, and the imaginative self? However, I don't think the imaginative selve is quite the same as the two other?

Basically I started meditating as I got bored. I didn't have any thoughts, really. I was more experiencing some sort of imaginative dreamish visual thingy. It was quite nonsensical. I think external stimuli will impact this as well. The washing machine sound made me feel I was in an elevator going up and another time speeding away in a rocket ship. But it wasn't fully vivid, but I still saw a bunch of weird things very slightly, completely forgetting at times, I was sitting at home in my chair.

When I focused on my body, I could feel it very intensely, but it wasn't bothering me. Oddly enough, it was actually quite pleasant.

I'm not sure if it was the washing machine, but my body was moving in circles on its own. At first, I thought, umm am I doing this or what, but when I let go, it just continued. My upper body circled at one point, my head circled at one point too but my eyes kept circling many times.

The washing machine was possibly trying to possess me.