Are There Five Streams of Consciousness That Run Us?

You probably know Home sapiens come with a switchboard between our left and right brain to process new sensory information. Remember its name and you win a
prize – Corpus Callosum (Latin for firm body). You and I hold conferences and Q&A sessions with one or more of our five (5) Section Chiefs in order to problem-solve make important decisions, reading and thinking.

CC

The Corpus Callosum translates what the right hemisphere learns through pattern
recognition (spatially), how we feel emotionally (intuition and viscerally – gut reaction), and our Nonconscious instincts – hardwired from our genes.

CC text messages all this nonverbal information (facial expressions, motives and feelings) to our left hemisphere (brain) for analysis, synthesis and summarizing (thinking) for problem solving and decision-making, planning, speaking and remembering. CC works both ways – information from left-brain to right too.

Why? To talk out potential solutions in our Mind’s Ear using mental movies,
past conditioning, together with past human and environmental experiences.

Hear Them When You Read, Listen, Think

Call it Self-Talk, Internal Dialogue, and Stream of Consciousness or brain chatter, this the fundamental core for all our judgments about people, ideas and our own behaviors. These Interior Monologues creates our beliefs, states of mind, and working behaviors to run our lives, relationships and experiences.

Dialogues

These are the same still, small voices we hear when we are reading and thinking,
listening and writing. When does self-talk shut up? Dreaming? Nah. Meditating? It snoozes 50% and comes back stronger.

At any given hour, one of five voices is Dominant while the other four are hanging our in the background waiting to put in their two-cents. There is a continuous Conflict and Resistance between these five War Lords causing anxiety, depression and stress, or pleasure, relaxation, happiness and joy. It is all about human conditioning.

Conditioning

From birth to death, specifically ages one to eight, humans are being conditioned
(changed, trained, educated) by our parents, siblings, peers, experience and the environment about how to think, react, and feel. The media, your relatives, and your company (organization) all have a vested interest in how you act, vote, perform and use your brain. They use your Vision-Auditory-Kinesthetic senses to train you to do it their way.

The environment and your experiences use Cause and Effect, (a dog bite, hand on the stove) and Stimulus/Response (nonverbal facial expressions or a raised
voice) to remember how to react in a future encounter.

We are being programmed (conditioned) 24/7 by our society (culture) with their code to control our Central Processing Unit. The environment and our relationships are in on the game, but only 5% of us even know it is occurring. A silent conspiracy of control of our nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is the result.

Robot

The origin of the word is Czech for slave and Latin for agreement, to-say (what I want). Remember these other words for the human condition: bionic ($5million man), cyborg (cybernetic organism), golem (mechanical zombi), android, and automaton. Are we puppets?

Wait. Conditioning (self-programming and hetero-programming) is the law of
Association of Pleasure or Pain (rewards or penalties) to create specific behaviors,
attitudes, states of mind, reactions and habits. It is their power over us.

We can condition/program ourselves for personal growth, success, learning and
improved skills. You and I can change from a frowning, procrastinator to a smiling
and happy producer. Society, your significant other and management can use
rewards and penalties to keep us in a their favorite box. Stimulus and Response.

How?

1. Fear Reactions (Google: amygdala – seat of emotions) are stimulus
and response by past conditioned experiences. Our amygdala has memories of past experiences and their results. Are we Hardwired by the past? Indeed. Can we change? It is also called conditioning.
2. Attachments: love of family, satisfaction with career, familiarity.
3. Resentments: we hate who the government tells us is our latest enemy. We do not question or care why we have negative feelings
to countries or groups including races. It feels comfortable.
4. Prejudices: 90% of us vote like our father, marry partners who
look like our mother or father, and think like our economic class.
5. Coping Mechanisms: we overeat instead of punching out our boss,
or Significant Other. Alcohol and narcotics help us cope with life.
Study, learning and new skills are self-coping mechanisms.

Five Separate Dialogues

a) Inner Child
b) Inner Mom
c) Inner Dad
d) Inner Persona (Ego)
e) Inner Anima (Echt – genuine, real, authentic Self)

What is Our Inner Child

Let’ make it baby-easy – can you remember back to when you were 8-years old?
I recall it because of the birthday party and my first big-boy two-wheeler. For most
of us it seems a lifetime ago and a forgotten dream.

The thing of it is we never really grow out of our 8 year old Inner Child and his/her
needs, desires and thinking. It remains an intricate part of our body/brain and tries to influence, persuade and convince what to do for the rest of our lives.

Where is it located? Point it out! The kid lives in our Nonconscious Mind. It is part of our Nervous System, Basal Ganglia and Brainstem. He/She hears through our Primary Auditory Cortex, sees through our Primary Visual Cortex, and feels (kinesthetic) through our Parietal Cortex (and amygdala). It is real, right?

Inner Child mentally (silently) speaks using our Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas together with our Larynx – Voice Box. It activates our Amygdala (emotions) and Hippocampus (memory), both located in our Limbic System. We cannot ignore Inner Child. We hear it when it reads to us (subvocalization – Sub-Vox).

Inner Child Wants to Have Fun

The Inner Child is different than your Adult Self because he/she is always thinking
about pleasure, wants to laugh, scream and dance, and punch out your enemies.
You are aware that he/she must be reined in or folks will know you for a freak,
irresponsible and a useless fool.

Did you know the #1 fear of folks is Rejection and dismissal of our thoughts and ideas? Why? Survival. We want Bonding so someone protects our back, and to avoid Distancing, being deserted and no one caring about our survival and protection.

The thing our Inner Child remembers most (8 years old) is being told No! Do Not
do that, go there, say that. We were last in the pecking order without rights. Parents
told us when to sleep, what time to awake, and teachers what to think, and whether we were Good Enough to pass their damned tests. Dominance was never us.

Think back, we had no money and they fed and sheltered us as they chose. No power, no control and of little value. They controlled (conditioned) us from year 1 to 8 - one hundred percent of the time. We had to live up to the expectations of others.

No One Apologizes

Folks rarely if ever said – I am sorry I hurt you! Sorry we forget about your feelings! Sorry we ignored your input, took you for granted, and treated you
like a demented misfit! Oh yeah, sorry we kept telling you to Grow Up! so much,
and wanted you to act your age and stop wanting to have fun and play games.

It was not all bad – your Inner Child got some Unconditional Love from Grandma
and Grandpa. At least they ask us what we wanted, thought and needed. But in school the teacher threatened, punished, blamed and nagged.

What about criticizing and complaining about our work habits, character and
hand writing? Somehow we could never meet the teacher standard, and she
treated us like dirt. Do you remember it like it was yesterday? Forever more.

Endwords

If you could read and remember three (3) books, articles and reports while your
peers can hardly finish one, would that be a competitive advantage for career
success? Contact us for a free speed reading report. It can improve your life.

copyright © 2010 H. Bernard Wechsler: www.speedlearning.org
hbw at speedlearning.org

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Author's Bio: 

Author of Speed Reading For Professionals, published by Barron's.
Business partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating
2 million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents:
Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Carter