liberating Consciousness

             Liberating Consciousness and the Self
             What allows humans to become more conscious? One can see that it is not a matter of how one expands his or her consciousness; it is how one can stop constantly restricting and narrowing it. Humans are creatures that already have a wide-open and infinitely interconnected consciousness built into them. The fact that they choose to interfere and refine consciousness affects their state of being. In Zen in the Art of Archery, this exact restriction is what caused Eugen Herrigel's struggle in his to attain the "artless art" of Zen self mastery. The narrowing of consciousness into habits of end-gaining mentalities is also what the Alexander Technique attempts to alter. The technique enables the mind and body to recognize and free itself from unconscious layers of muscular and mental habits. Human restriction of the conscious mind into an "end gaining" mentality resembles the view of consciousness as what Daniel Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater, where consciousness is narrowed !
             to a specific point of experience. In order to attain self mastery as "means whereby" one must abandon the notion of a Cartesian Theater, and view consciousness as an ongoing process of human experience, as that described in Dennett's Multiple Drafts model. By allowing consciousness to become an ongoing process, the mind is able to liberate itself into a state of full awareness of the state of being.
             Cartesian Materialists believe that "unconscious" parts of the brain process sensory stimuli, filling in gaps and clarifying ambiguities, and then present the result to consciousness. It is as if the unconscious processes are preparing a show that is presented to consciousness. It is through the idea of the Cartesian Theater that the mind becomes trapped into the notion of consciousness resembling that of an end-gaining mentality. Viewing consciousness as a Cartesian Theater, all...

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