Let’s take the normal thinking and see what it does to semantic memory.
Your frontal lobe generates the same sort of signals your senses do, and your semantic memory registers those at the same time it has to process your sensory experience itself. It has to produce one coherent memory, otherwise it would cease being able to route any new experience, cognitive or sensory. Your entire brain would become paralyzed or catatonic, only the most basic signals still occurring with any reliability.
I ponder “frames” and “grounds” and “objects” in those grounds. The objects need their grounds. Yes, indeed. It becomes a matter of survival to mock up what doesn’t have space to occur naturally in the brain.
So the semantic memory begins to create what we would call a self image that blocks whole portions of sensory experience as well as imagination, and strives very hard to preserve its own integrity all the while being subject to intense pressures both from the cognitive mind and from the instinctive sensual mind. Crucifixion between the sensual and the imaginary. It’s not a question of if it will break down, just a question of how fast.
It sounds like to live an authentic life we need to think of it as a work of fiction and not biographical, ironically.
It seems that in some persons, the imagination wins out — regardless of the sensual experience (objective?). I think those are the ones we see as visionary, the rare leaders. The leaders we look up to have a great story to tell that captures the imagination. In telling their stories, great leaders change our semantic memories? They do, yes.
So to finally bring this to change, there are no problems of thought. That’s the source of all our problems really. There are only problems of response, problems of exchange in every moment of our waking life and every moment of our dreaming life. They aren’t separate. We are engaged in what amounts to a dialogue. It’s how the body heals, each part chiming in with every other part, and the biggest portion of this occurs in the brain.
Yes. The “other” is an imaginary notion. No separation.
To resolve the trade embargo between the sensual mind and the imagination, we have to realize the presence of the semantic. Our body mind precedes our cognitive mind, causally as well as evolutionarily. Our imaginations are subject to input from the semantic mind, but we are trained to dismiss it because it doesn’t fit with the learned patterns of thought. Our semantic mind structures images, intuitive patterns in our minds, in an organic way.
All along you have been saying “semantic….” but do you mean “somatic”? No, I mean semantic, and I will explain, but the somatic is included.
Semantics (from Ancient Greek) is the study of meaning. Ultimately, we are beings of meaning. That is the root of the entire process. Our bodies change according to perceived meaning, so do our minds, and meaning is rooted in the moving mind. All motion and intentional behaviour is structured primarily in the thalamus. Everything we experience is defined by how it moves, how it moves us, how it moves those around us, even how it moves relative to other things. That’s what creates differences, say, in colour or sound. There aren’t a wide range of unconnected languages we deal with, it’s all one language and ultimately one vast fractal pattern.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~