08 POST I Must Mind the Store for Freewill

Our consciousness and ability to handle it springs from our natural development and grows with us.  As a baby our Ant and Bee grew larger first.  We looked, listened, touched. and manipulated everything we could.  We had feelings, thoughts, and actions but they were diminutive compared to our drive to explore and catalog the world.  Ant and Bee got buff.  Spidie was close behind, as a toddler we learned to be sneaky and deceptive.  One of our first big choices in life besides going with the flow was the terrible twos, we said NO.  But we have not yet learned very well how to say no to our own whims.  But its a start.

Emotions come to the front and get buff when we turn teenagers.  Oh my gosh, we learned to say NO with more attitude to what others were saying and letting EMOTIONS rule.  Fear of what others think, first love, the roller coaster of life has began.  Not the moment to moment cries of a child but the on going passions that reach from heaven to hell.  Hopefully we with parental  help, 'I' learns to keep them to a workable level so I, or Mr./Ms. Do, can make better choices, and with each year we have more choices to make.  'I' eventually learns to ignore or control the wild Macho and Cuddles explosions in the middle brain.

Around 16 Geru in the frontal lobes has learned enough wisdom to think ahead and logically plan some useful actions, like taking the garbage out in a semi timely manner with only a few pleadings from mom and dad.  With time that can get better, I say it 'can' get better.  It seems with each stage their is more choices that have to be made and, well, there is more margin for error or, perhaps, again more dependence on the earlier stages, but if they have been controlled, or shall we say, wise choices can be implemented.  If not we get an immature person in the upper nature and in the lower nature a 'wise guy.'

The final stage is the top of the brain where Mr. Do (I) dwells to control the muscles. So habits and skills, good or not, build up.  If not we have a lazy and bored upper nature and a flaming lower nature which will rush in to liven things up. If we are too socialized or under socialized, too controlled or over controlled, the upper and even lower instincts we may end up depressed.  Hopefully that will motivate us, or Mr. Do, to begin to explore, feel, think, and act in new ways that are more satisfying. The basic ingrained biological development of the widgets goes on up to 25 or 26 years old.  Then it is all up to Mr. Do to choose and rearrange the widgets in priority of which widgets rule and which ones are to be ignored at any one time so 'myself' learns to be happy and growing.

So you see, this loop of curiously exploring with the senses, reacting with emotion, thinking about it to plan what to do, and acting on it is a continuous ongoing process, moment by moment, day by day, even to make cookies.  I assign the task of choosing which widgets to listen to and to act on to Mr. Do (I) although it is not so simple.  But it is a concept better handled by Mr. Do than left to the wind or whim of others.  The wiser Mr. Do/Ms. Do is the more freewill we have.

10 POST Consciousness is you and the Gunman

Consciousness is you, that every twelfth or twentieth frame that you process, the movie you make that you star in.  Even the feeling of who you are is memory of the movies you made.  Yes, others gave you ideas of who you were and gave you good or bad memories at that.  But you decide what memories and experiences to put together to maintain a sense of who you are.  Yes, others influence you to what to pick in that movie, but ultimately you decide.  That is your choice.  And you want to put some thought into it.  The more thought that is questioning and objective the more freedom will you have.

That is unless you are in an urgent and emergent situation, like a gun to your head, then you can see, feel, think more and even act in brilliant ways to save yourself.  You may not think so at the time but looking back you say time stood still and I seemed to do the right thing but it was the longest moment of my life.

In fact it felt like an eternity, an eternity of hell.  Time slowed down, not to me, to you.  The adrenaline was pumping so hard you seen every third frame or what ever.  Each frame is assigned a moment, and with more moments its a long time.

Who are you? At the moment of gun point you are... scared, on either side of the gun, pointing at you or holding the trigger.  If you are the gunman ask your self why you like to make yourself numb, non thinking and hurting others.

If you are the one facing the gun you probably are on automatic pilot.  Often you will do the right thing to live through it.  Your brain was working without you, subconsciously.  And you, my friend, are those subconscious frames and processing also.  Depending whats in the old noggin determines if you do what works or not.  You may be programmed to do badly. 

Now here is another angle.  You are the gunman  on autopilot.  In real life situations you are both the gunman and the victim.  It is the old devil and angel, each on a different shoulder.  You often hold the gun to yourself and do things you know you should not do. You put yourself on the old roller coaster because you may put yourself through unnecessary trials and tribulations.   Sounds scary, your lower nature victimizes the upper nature, but who let it. You set yourself up.

But relief.  You can control both sides.  You are the director of your own life.  You chose the scenes, the emotional players, the script, and you act it out.  Your script has developed over the years.  It is the accumulation of all the choices, millions of moments and in between moments that you made, make, and will make.  You are in a dynamic changing dance of life that you engineer.

Next Post: How to make better choices.