Consciousness: What is Consciousness? Part 1

"What raises us above other known sentient beings is our ability to be conscious of our own consciousness. But what does this mean, scientifically?" We are largely unaware of the traffic of 'thoughts' within our heads including those that guide most of our living actions. The primary actions that keep us alive, such as breathing, seeing, hearing, touching and even tasting, take place without our conscious participation or stopping to think about them.

It is interesting to note that most of our purposeful behavior happens without the aid of consciousness. We even solve most of our routine problems unconsciously. It is when a purpose or result can be achieved by alternative means that consciousness is called upon. In other words, at the routine level of existence, we do not employ consciousness except when we are altering our actions or thoughts from the routine, for a purpose.

The Game of Persistence!

Persistence: As writers, we all think that our storyline, sentence structure and grammar is the best and it is only when we come up against an editor or critic that we are told that what we have written is either an illiterate mess, or amateurish and not to give up your day job. So if you are convinced that this is not so then who has the right to decide that which we have spent hours researching and correcting is unfit to be published?

One of many guides to Meditation

Meditation is proven to be one of the simplest and most effective ways to handle stress, and it's easy enough that anyone can do it and begin enjoying the benefits immediately.  In fact, most people find that regular meditation helps them prevent stress from building up in the first place. If you have ever wanted to start a meditation practice but kept putting it off because you didn't know how to get started, you'll be pleased to know that it's probably easier than you think.

Are You Living in the Present or in the Past? by Stephen Lau

The human body is just a physical form that expresses the mental energies generated by the human mind. That is to say, when we experience something good or bad, our minds intrepret it according to our different perceptions based on our senses. These perceptions are always "in the past" becasue the human brain can react only through the senses, and such reactions always put the perceptions in the time frame of the past. In other words, you are always living in the past, rather than living in the present, because what is happening to you right now, when perceived and interpreted by your mind, has already become a thing of the past. Your sense of immediacy is only an illusion of the mind—one of the many illusions of the human mind.