Losing Oneself

Tag: consciousness

  • default mode network

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    If you start reading about consciousness, the brain and mindfulness practices you will come across the term Default Mode Network or DMN. It refers to network of brain structures responsible for the “inattentive wandering of our minds” (Williams, 2014) that was first described by Marcus Raichle in 2001. The term is relevant in Losing Oneself…

  • paying attention is ceasing to do something

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    It seems generally hard to get a handle on words like perception, attention and sensation, and especially so in nonduality: When paying attention who is the subject doing the attending, and what is the object that is being attended to? Here’s Sam Harris from his Waking Up app on how choice happens: When we focus…

  • the sensing of a sensation

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    In one of our conversations post movement (on 2 February 2024) I ask Katye: Are we expressing sensation? Can you talk more about sensation and movement? You say “sensation then movement”. What is this thing called “sensation”? I then wonder out loud if sensation is different from sensing. Once Katye and I have worked through…

  • the ordinary self and nonduality

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    To the ordinary self, NDA appears as an object of sorts, something one might want to experience or as a capacity one might want to have. To NDA, however, the ordinary self and its constituting processes, to the extent that they can be phenomenally accessed, appear as contents within its space.[1] – Josipovic and Miskovi In…

  • consciousness

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    I’ve been mentioning consciousness quite a lot on this blog. But what is it? Annaka Harris is a editor and consultant for science writers and the author of a lucid introduction to the nature of consciousness research called Conscious: a brief guide to the fundamental mystery of the mind (2019). She writes: And even though,…

  • the paradox of choice

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    In the middle of a guided Waking Up meditation I hear the following words: Observe that you don’t actually choose the next thing you notice; whatever it is. Everything is simply appearing, including acts of attention. You don’t know what you will pay attention to next. See if you can drop back into that position…

  • interpretations of sensory signals

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    Anil Seth is a cognitive neuroscientist who thinks and writes about consciousness. He is known for describing perception as a form of controlled hallucination. The third and most important ingredient in the controlled hallucination view is the claim that perceptual experience – in this case the subjective experience of ‘seeing a coffee cup’ – is…

  • experience and consciousness

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    Wherever there is experience, there is phenomenology; and wherever there is phenomenology, there is consciousness. – Anil Seth (2021) Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. London: Faber & Faber

  • the body tends to efface itself

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    Simon Ellis
    in

    Normally, the body tends to efface itself in our world-directed activity. However, it appears as an object of conscious attention, particularly when it is inadequate for a task to be performed, be it by a lack of capacity, fatigue, illness or numbness, and whenever it becomes an object for others to whom I feel exposed.…