Ultraparadoxical

I read “Man and His Symbols” by Karl Jung a while back and his thoughts have had a lasting impact on me and the way I view the machinations of my mind and the impact of the unconscious side of myself.  The subconscious is a critical  aspect of the mind to analyze in order to fully understand human motives, feelings and ideas that bubble up into the conscious mind as coherent thoughts.  Humans are the only creatures that have a split and clearly defined conscious and subconscious.  *sidenote* I think the way that animals think and operate in daily life is similar to how humans operate in a dreamlike state.  They flit along having a sense of the world around them “knowing” and “feeling” on a superficial level but not having a clearly delineated duality of thought capable of being finite yet thinking infinitely.  As animals have physically evolved the same has happened in the mental sphere and the biggest evolutionary leap was achieved when humans were able to have a clearly defined conscious and subconscious. *End sidenote*   This is both the source of human intelligence as well as the root of many problems which stem from integrating both aspects of ourselves. read more »

As I have mentioned before, I have the attention span of a hummingbird.  It is not my fault though – I blame the internet.  I used to be able to sit down for 45 minutes and enjoy reading a book.  Now I can barely sit still for 5 minutes in the bathroom and scan a magazine while I take care of business.  I am so used to seeing information in 30 word chucks that it has become difficult for me to focus for the amount of time it takes to read something longer than a standard CNN article.  It is pathetic but has become a reality.  The way we consume media has fundamentally changed.  Communications in general have moved from longer more in depth articles and ideas to bite size pieces of information we read, process and discard almost immediately.  Substance is sacrificed for immediacy and the information turns into a summary of a summary based on someone else’s summary.  This boils information down to almost nothing of any real importance. read more »

Dreams are so fascinating to me because everything is so random and logic does not apply the way I use it in every other part of my life.  It is so jumbled and fleeting yet it can compel me to do things or infuse me with real emotion. ”I had the most fucked up dream last night…” usually precedes a convoluted story that makes no sense the the person hearing what the speaker dreamt.  Invariably the story ends with “… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain… but it was fucked up”.  The reason it was fucked up is because interpreting a dream is like translating a language that is different for each individual.

The subconscious contains all of the urges, impulses, intentions, perceptions, thoughts, deductions and feelings we have ever experienced.  Most of this information stays cordoned off in the recesses of our subconscious and may only bubble up as an instinct, idea or at times a rational thought in our waking lives.  Our minds have evolved and developed a rational sense that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  Having the conscious and subconscious working in tandem is a uniquely human characteristic and elevates us to be able to think in infinite terms while the subconscious unites us with our instinctual heritage in the animal kingdom.  I imagine when we are able to more clearly determine exactly how animals think that we will discover it is very similar to our experiences in the visceral simplicity of a dream-state. read more »