We have a view of correspondences between engaging in micromastery and some of the basic elemento of practical wisdom. Also the first part of a series of looking at 'allowing intuition to emerge'
'Certain emotions if overly pre-eminent, such as greed and fear (or the perception of presence of reward and punishment in the situation), depression and even strong positive emotions, can interfere with its operation. They confuse the source of the emotions that would normally be specific to the situation. Also, fixed preconceptions and ‘addictions’, over emphasis of conscious will and groupthink or peer pressure can often seem similar to intuition.'
Greed, fear, narcissism, a need to dominate, a need for recognition and prestige, group think, too much emotion all get in the way of one's intuitive thoughts, what might be also called Common Sense. As a woman, I was always told when young that women were more intuitive than men. Apparently, this is not true and why this misconception grew up has yet to be explained? I see any Intuition I may know have as coming from a balanced view of the world and those around me, perhaps, a sudden togetherness of the right and left brain and other parts of the brain. Is it possible humans will develop a new lobe in the brain which will help this process? We are all ONE, we are here to be of service to each other. We are not in charge. Most human beings do not know where they come from, most humans do not know why they are here, and they do not know where they go when they leave this planet. A conundrum and one to generate fear without some form of Guidance to instruct you. Thanks to my experience of Jews, Armenians, Lebanese when young in the USA and time spent in Turkey in adulthood and with experience of some Muslims and Indians here in the UK, I have often found that they seem to use Common Sense and intuition much more than the average Anglo Saxon type Westerner who is relying on Logic. Is this possibly because these Orientals have not been subjected as much to College and University indoctrination? They rely more on experience, if not a form of micro mastery, stories and possibly the Koran to guide them? There is much good information and meat on how we in the West CANNOT THINK in Rafael Lefort's book The Teachers of Gurdjieff which I have just reread, not just information about how Gurdjieff is now passé.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments Linda. I think the academics in the west are coming round to see intuition as something more positive rather than 'irrationality'. We ordinary people may well be using it more than we are aware of. More to follow on both points...
By definition nothing can be said about the actions or characteristics of the unconscious! That is of course assuming such an entity exists - in his book 'The Mind is Flat' Prof Nick Chater denies its existence and to quote from a review: "Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience, behavioural psychology and perception, he shows that we have no hidden depths to plumb, and unconscious thought is a myth. Instead, we generate our ideas, motives and thoughts in the moment." Also the division between conscious, critical thinking (ie reasoning, assessment, decision-making) and intuitive, creative thinking is questionable. In the same way that Robert Ornstein stated that there is no thinking that does not involve both hemispheres of the brain, I suggest that all thinking is a random interaction between critical and creative thinking. If we have any control over these modes of thought it is in the emphases we place upon them at the macro level (we have no control at the finer level). If you over-emphasise intuition to come up with the answer to this problem you will probably get it wrong: If a wet sponge is 99% water by weight and I squeeze it so that it is now 98% water by weight, what % of water has been squeezed out? If you put more emphasis on the slower process of reasoning first and forget short-cuts, the correct answer will be found.
Thank you for your comments Kevin. I think your first statement is correct and Prof Chater may well be right about the thoughts coming in the moment, - both up to a point. We may all have experience of thoughts coming into our conscious focus from ‘somewhere’ or from some awareness other than our conscious awareness and thoughts. On the most mundane level I can think of, when I scratch my head to remove something my hand knows where to go and it is only after the event that I become aware of it consciously, particularly when focused on something else. I think intuitive awareness and ‘thinking’ is merely this background process that comes into the spotlight at times. There is also evidence for tacit learning even if it is only from unconscious mimicry. There are probably shades between the conscious and unconscious. Daniel Kahneman, the author of ‘Fast and Slow Thinking and Gary Klein, the man who has researched intuitive decision making of expertise have failed to disagree to a large extent too. I will look for their joint discussion and post a link on the Facebook page. Agreed, there is definitely a balance between to be had between different modes of thinking.
Thanks for your response. I believe the 'somewhere' you refer to is memory, which is not a static database of facts etc, but rather a series of activated patterns of neuronal connection that are triggered by something in conscious awareness. The patterns with the strongest weighting of association appear in our conscious mind, and we then select the nearest fit. The same neurons that form a conscious pattern of association for one thing, will also be activated in countless other patterns. The scale of potential connectivity is staggering, for example with only 7 neurons there are over 2 million possible patterns of connectivity. Given we have 1 billion neurons that's a lot of memory potential. The latency to conscious awareness of a thought following an action that you referred to, is only a few milliseconds and that is the time it takes to delete all irrelevant patterns of connectivity that have been activated of which there is a huge number. I suggest that those unconscious, 'intuitive' actions are well established instinctual short-cuts that evolved millions of years ago. I'm not sure this same latency applies to non-instinctual thoughts.
Excellent Newsletter.
'Certain emotions if overly pre-eminent, such as greed and fear (or the perception of presence of reward and punishment in the situation), depression and even strong positive emotions, can interfere with its operation. They confuse the source of the emotions that would normally be specific to the situation. Also, fixed preconceptions and ‘addictions’, over emphasis of conscious will and groupthink or peer pressure can often seem similar to intuition.'
Greed, fear, narcissism, a need to dominate, a need for recognition and prestige, group think, too much emotion all get in the way of one's intuitive thoughts, what might be also called Common Sense. As a woman, I was always told when young that women were more intuitive than men. Apparently, this is not true and why this misconception grew up has yet to be explained? I see any Intuition I may know have as coming from a balanced view of the world and those around me, perhaps, a sudden togetherness of the right and left brain and other parts of the brain. Is it possible humans will develop a new lobe in the brain which will help this process? We are all ONE, we are here to be of service to each other. We are not in charge. Most human beings do not know where they come from, most humans do not know why they are here, and they do not know where they go when they leave this planet. A conundrum and one to generate fear without some form of Guidance to instruct you. Thanks to my experience of Jews, Armenians, Lebanese when young in the USA and time spent in Turkey in adulthood and with experience of some Muslims and Indians here in the UK, I have often found that they seem to use Common Sense and intuition much more than the average Anglo Saxon type Westerner who is relying on Logic. Is this possibly because these Orientals have not been subjected as much to College and University indoctrination? They rely more on experience, if not a form of micro mastery, stories and possibly the Koran to guide them? There is much good information and meat on how we in the West CANNOT THINK in Rafael Lefort's book The Teachers of Gurdjieff which I have just reread, not just information about how Gurdjieff is now passé.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments Linda. I think the academics in the west are coming round to see intuition as something more positive rather than 'irrationality'. We ordinary people may well be using it more than we are aware of. More to follow on both points...
By definition nothing can be said about the actions or characteristics of the unconscious! That is of course assuming such an entity exists - in his book 'The Mind is Flat' Prof Nick Chater denies its existence and to quote from a review: "Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience, behavioural psychology and perception, he shows that we have no hidden depths to plumb, and unconscious thought is a myth. Instead, we generate our ideas, motives and thoughts in the moment." Also the division between conscious, critical thinking (ie reasoning, assessment, decision-making) and intuitive, creative thinking is questionable. In the same way that Robert Ornstein stated that there is no thinking that does not involve both hemispheres of the brain, I suggest that all thinking is a random interaction between critical and creative thinking. If we have any control over these modes of thought it is in the emphases we place upon them at the macro level (we have no control at the finer level). If you over-emphasise intuition to come up with the answer to this problem you will probably get it wrong: If a wet sponge is 99% water by weight and I squeeze it so that it is now 98% water by weight, what % of water has been squeezed out? If you put more emphasis on the slower process of reasoning first and forget short-cuts, the correct answer will be found.
Thank you for your comments Kevin. I think your first statement is correct and Prof Chater may well be right about the thoughts coming in the moment, - both up to a point. We may all have experience of thoughts coming into our conscious focus from ‘somewhere’ or from some awareness other than our conscious awareness and thoughts. On the most mundane level I can think of, when I scratch my head to remove something my hand knows where to go and it is only after the event that I become aware of it consciously, particularly when focused on something else. I think intuitive awareness and ‘thinking’ is merely this background process that comes into the spotlight at times. There is also evidence for tacit learning even if it is only from unconscious mimicry. There are probably shades between the conscious and unconscious. Daniel Kahneman, the author of ‘Fast and Slow Thinking and Gary Klein, the man who has researched intuitive decision making of expertise have failed to disagree to a large extent too. I will look for their joint discussion and post a link on the Facebook page. Agreed, there is definitely a balance between to be had between different modes of thinking.
Thanks for your response. I believe the 'somewhere' you refer to is memory, which is not a static database of facts etc, but rather a series of activated patterns of neuronal connection that are triggered by something in conscious awareness. The patterns with the strongest weighting of association appear in our conscious mind, and we then select the nearest fit. The same neurons that form a conscious pattern of association for one thing, will also be activated in countless other patterns. The scale of potential connectivity is staggering, for example with only 7 neurons there are over 2 million possible patterns of connectivity. Given we have 1 billion neurons that's a lot of memory potential. The latency to conscious awareness of a thought following an action that you referred to, is only a few milliseconds and that is the time it takes to delete all irrelevant patterns of connectivity that have been activated of which there is a huge number. I suggest that those unconscious, 'intuitive' actions are well established instinctual short-cuts that evolved millions of years ago. I'm not sure this same latency applies to non-instinctual thoughts.