Blind spots
Just like any sleight of hand, the world of sociopolitical manipulation that has us held in such thrall – fake/real news, complex layers of lies, social supermemes, subliminal or repetitive messaging and all the rest – relies for its efficacy on the inevitable blind spots in human consciousness, born of our collective talent for selective awareness.
Being an advocate of the back-brain technique, whereby you entrain your mind to observe both your mental processes and all action external to your body (the outside world) from the rear part of the brain, I naturally practice it myself all the time, hence why I talk about it all the time (because it’s so amazingly powerful) – because when you do you’re operating from the omniscience of the subconscious rather than the limited scope of the conditioned rational mind in the forebrain. This affords you such a panoramic view of the human experience including your own you’re not nearly so adversely affected or disturbed by the ever-moving details as things fall in and out of harmony in cycles.
And you’re able to observe yourself deploying selective awareness to blind yourself to various aspects of reality in order to focus on other more pressing aspects.
Yet I notice even with this, or maybe even because of the broader less-detailed view it facilitates, combined with information-saturation, I still experience blind spots and it fascinates me – the mechanism behind the blind spots .
I had one yesterday that actually quite shocked me.
Sitting in my parked car outside a very close friend’s apartment block concluding a lengthy in-depth and important phone-call with someone I was advising on health issues, so in quite a concentrated state but nonetheless, two guys got out of a car, walked towards the building entrance, peered through my windscreen to check me out in case I was a trespasser as I assumed and carried into the building.
It was only when a few minutes later I was sitting in the apartment and they asked if it was me sitting in the black car, did I realize those two guys were one of my oldest friends – 40 years worth of friendship with him, and his son, whom I’ve been close to since he was five, which makes altogether 80 years’ worth of friendship peering through my windscreen and me not registering it was them.
Now obviously I have to concede the possibility of the onset of early senility but my mind is toned and honed by meditation, qigong, martial arts and creative stimulation like very few others I encounter so I hesitate entertaining that possibility.
And this is where I’m up to with it.
From day one, for survival purposes we learn to ascribe significance to the connections we make with others, starting with mother, father, siblings, then grandparents and extended family, child-minders, peers, teachers and so on.
And we tend to do so irrationally presuming each is ultimately indispensable, which in respect of the brutal actualities of survival is not the case, hence that if one source of sustenance and support is removed from your sphere another will appear to redress the balance, because that’s how the theater of life works.
Hence I wonder whether with increasing accent on maintaining the transcendent perspective facilitated by being ‘back’ inside, engendering increased awareness that no one form however beloved is indispensable, and thus seeing past all surface appearances to the big presence within each, the enlightening effect is so powerful my mind isn’t even registering faces I’ve recognized and loved for 40 years.
More importantly though perhaps, is on noticing my human fallibility, also on account of maintaining the transcendent position, even if it’s due to so-called senility and the system succumbing to entropy to some extent, it hardly causes a blip of perturbation, merely amusement.
But my sense is more that it’s due to our/my being increasingly obliged to use our/my innate propensity for selective awareness, whence blind spots are precisely the expedient we/I deploy to avoid seeing views that would otherwise disturb us/me too much to function effectively in the moment, simply for being obliged to process an exponential increase of information on account of all these too super-clever for our own good technological devices and systems originally described ironically as labor-saving.
And there’s simply so much to deal with each moment – I’m in full concentration seeing into the vital organs of the person I’m talking to on the car hands-free phone system, I’m both transmitting chi and figuring out technique and natural remedies to suggest, while what’s become an endless stream of messages (this aside from notifications etc) are flashing up on the screen from a variety of different applications with people asking or saying different things, which I’m ignoring but aware of in the generic sense of ‘incoming messages to be dealt with later’, plus I’m aware of wanting to pee – and that’s exactly what my selective awareness function did in terms of managing the facial recognition and significance-ascribing functions to the extent it even decided not to bother me with having to process the otherwise distracting albeit heartwarming information of two beloveds, each of 40 years standing, passing by my windscreen.
It’s the multitasking skill being stretched beyond capacity.
I suggest this is universal and evidence of us evolving rapidly.
By contrast to which on account of the immutable constant of yin and yang underlying all phenomena we also witness unprecedented regressive behavior as society polarizes exponentially more, and belligerence increasingly colors the tone of the collective conversation all the way from world-leader level to the straining grass roots.
But this progressive (yang) trend is always accompanied by its opposite conservative or regressive (yin) trend when growth is occurring so mustn’t be allowed to dampen our enthusiasm or resolve to continue evolving – to the contrary we must welcome it as a sign evolution is occurring.
I’m aware esteemed reader, all this may be a tad wafflesome and perhaps not up to my usual levels of succinctness, for which possibility I apologize in advance, but my feeling is to connect with you by disclosing my own process as best I can, that I might possibly strike a resonance with you that inspires a beneficial stream of introspective awareness of your own processes.
And what the corporate and political types trying to sound groovy as they ‘reach out’ in an endeavor to sound as if they’re actually communicating from the soul rather than a sales agenda, call the ‘take-away’ in all this, as in my gift to you, beyond the possible pleasure of your eyes tracing the quasi-poetic drift of my words, is as follows.
The way to expand capacity for processing information lies in firstly re-situating your mental vantage point as far to the back of your skull as you can get it to sit, whence you can observe all your internal narrative and relevant thought processes with clarity, equanimity and holistic perspective, and then most crucially by lowering the floor supporting all your awareness all the way down to the middle of your chest, down to your heart center. Because while your brain is where the processing occurs, the arena of consciousness in which the brain functions is supplied by and originates in the heart or more precisely heart center – the middle tan tien, or field of heaven, the crimson palace where the emperor or empress sits and runs the realm – not from the front of the chest, but from all the way back behind it – the back of the imperial throne rests up against the spine with the headrest between the bottom of the shoulder-blades.
If this resonates and intrigues you the only way to make it do its magic is to afford yourself just a few minutes dedicated solely to sitting with closed eyes, breathing slowly and comfortably, softening all the muscles and sinews, unfurling the spine, and taking yourself through the procedure step by step.
Do it by commanding your mind – mentally say these words and your mind will obey:
Sink back. Sink further back. Rest there in my back-brain. Intention is to expand my capacity for processing information of all sorts so I can enjoy myself more and inside and help others to too. Lower the floor of my thinking down to the center of my chest, down to my heart. Anchor the floor to my back. Think everything from back and down here upwards from now on. Remember again each time I forget.
And if you do that and enjoy it, do it again and again forever and your enjoyment of being you will grow and grow and as it does you’ll inspire everyone around you likewise but more importantly you’ll be transmitting the message into the collective mind and adding to the force of evolution, which ultimately always wins the game, so definitely the one to align with.
May this have delighted you and provide fuel for your instant reception of an unprecedented slew of unforeseen benefits.
With love, your brother Barefoot