Meta-Self-Awareness
May. 20th, 2013 06:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trickykittyI've been thinking about the idea of being overly self-aware. Particularly, I've been contemplating the idea that one can be TOO self-aware, which ends up bogging the person down while chasing one's own tail. It stems from the first few sentences in Alan Watts' Still The Mind video that I found and posted many moons ago.
"A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts I mean specifically chatter in the skull, perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning and calculating."
That's what happens to me. It's so easy to get bogged down in the illusory world in my mind and lose touch with reality. This is especially true when I start to over-analyze myself and try to change myself.
This morning I was going to start reading Cleolinda's recaps of the Hannibal episodes, as I haven't read them yet. I decided to go back one extra entry, for whatever reason, and came across this statement: "Being aware of your limitations is a funny thing--do you have an honest, helpful idea of what you can and can't do, or do you let your own perception of limits hold you back?" It was nice to see someone else pondering the same sort of thing I'd been pondering recently.
The idea of general self-awareness is simply being aware of yourself, how you are, who you are. To me, being overly self-aware is a matter of trying to change yourself. Is that even possible? How much of the snake's tail can be eaten before the snake can no longer eat itself?
As an aside, the Ouroboros is a symbol I came across recently while watching Hemlock Grove, so it's prominent in my mind right now, but I also have M.C. Escher's Dragon as my Gmail icon.
There's a point somewhere in there if you can find it. It's still too early for me to be as coherent as I'd like, and this was merely quick ramblings from my mind after coming across that statement in Cleolinda's journal. Everything she states after that is relevant to my own mindset as well, but again, it's too early in the morning for me to delve that deeply into it. Plus, I still have to go get ready for work. Whoops. I'm now running late (as usual).
*The word 'altogether' reminds me of a recent conversation brought up to me about how some words like 'a lot' and 'all right' are separate, but 'altogether' is, in an ironic sort of incongruence, run together as a single word.
"A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts I mean specifically chatter in the skull, perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning and calculating."
That's what happens to me. It's so easy to get bogged down in the illusory world in my mind and lose touch with reality. This is especially true when I start to over-analyze myself and try to change myself.
This morning I was going to start reading Cleolinda's recaps of the Hannibal episodes, as I haven't read them yet. I decided to go back one extra entry, for whatever reason, and came across this statement: "Being aware of your limitations is a funny thing--do you have an honest, helpful idea of what you can and can't do, or do you let your own perception of limits hold you back?" It was nice to see someone else pondering the same sort of thing I'd been pondering recently.
The idea of general self-awareness is simply being aware of yourself, how you are, who you are. To me, being overly self-aware is a matter of trying to change yourself. Is that even possible? How much of the snake's tail can be eaten before the snake can no longer eat itself?
As an aside, the Ouroboros is a symbol I came across recently while watching Hemlock Grove, so it's prominent in my mind right now, but I also have M.C. Escher's Dragon as my Gmail icon.
There's a point somewhere in there if you can find it. It's still too early for me to be as coherent as I'd like, and this was merely quick ramblings from my mind after coming across that statement in Cleolinda's journal. Everything she states after that is relevant to my own mindset as well, but again, it's too early in the morning for me to delve that deeply into it. Plus, I still have to go get ready for work. Whoops. I'm now running late (as usual).
*The word 'altogether' reminds me of a recent conversation brought up to me about how some words like 'a lot' and 'all right' are separate, but 'altogether' is, in an ironic sort of incongruence, run together as a single word.
