One of the mind's principal functions is eliminative. The mind contains a safety feature that regulates consciousness for the sake of sanity. A basic function in our minds screens, evaluates, then excludes most of our potential sensory awareness, and focuses on what we need to survive. The healthy mind sifts through the glut of stimuli, appraises it, and then eliminates most of it. If all of the senses built into our brain, nervous system, and sense organ were reporting all of the stimuli they were receiving we would be so confused that our sanity and survival would be in jeopardy. Autism and attention deficit disorder are some common conditions that represent the fault of not being able to filter out distracting sensory information or to focus attention. Obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and mania are among the consequences of over-stimulated chaos originating from inside the mind.

The existential problem with shutting down too much or staying shut down too long is that you become so accustomed to supressed awareness that it feels comfortably real, normal and safe. Most people remain bogged down at some point of under-exposure for all of their lives and are content to do so. But sometimes someone is exposed to the full flow where they emerge as insane or gifted depending on whether they can handle the full force of reality with positive emotional energy.

Joseph Campbell said that the difference between insane and gifted people is that the insane drown while the gifted swim in the same ocean of boundless consciousness. This ocean of ultra-awareness not only includes stimuli from the regular human senses but even the overpowering awareness of the collective unconscious, the level of awareness that we share with all other conscious beings. Each drop in the ocean is an individual mind that comprehends every other drop as well as itself. Those who drown are the ones that fear immersion in the super-conscious and can't stop it from flooding over them. They can't filter the endless currents to penetrate to a conscious connection and relationship of personal drop-ness to the one body of water. Those who navigate such currents elevate themselves and the rest of us by bringing clues back from the ocean of unrestricted consciousness. The internal warrior (among other explorers of the mind) opens the brain's restrictive safety valve, releasing him into greater, deeper, richer levels and dimensions of awareness--nightmarish if afraid and untrained, the light of grace to the fearless.

Get into super-awareness like you get into a hot tub of water. Dip your toe first, and as you accustom yourself to the heat, dip more and more until you can get your whole mind in.
Copyright 2004 by Jack Livingston