Since I have made a point to be more ‘aware’ of my thoughts, to attempt to stop and dissolve negative daydreams, I’ve had a few thoughts that seem a little more proactive than usual. Hmmmn, maybe if we’re not busy with mental masturbation we spend more time in some mental version of getting a life instead. Random thoughts, insights, and wonderings for the moment.

Observation: Nearly all my daydreams are negative, if not in nature then in context. I have now got them in four categories:

1. My Glory, in a negative framework (I am more powerful, more smart, more strong, etc. etc. than another person / group / situation), also known as Me-The-Hero

2. My Glory, in a positive framework which requires a negative context (I am savior, healer, etc. but alas this requires someone or something needing that doesn’t it, which means I am still creating the negative as context in that case), also known as Me-The-Savior

Also:

3. My Action Plans, meaning an idea for something I would like to do or be.

4. My Having Plans, meanig an idea for something I would like to have or acquire.

The last two are much briefer and less embroidered than the ordinary types of daydreams in the first two. The latter are more like a rapid, casual “review of potential and probability” for something. I think these probably should not be called daydreams — since when they become so they usually move into one of the first two categories. I actually think that #3 and #4 are a basic of life that I have just not paid much attention to before now.

Observation: If I make a point to document ideas, musings, insights, any ‘good’ things like synchronicity, manifestation, etc. it is possible this will be a good thing and will encourage those energies as I am focusing on them. So I want to do that.

Happy chance: We wanted to go see the movie New Moon but didn’t have transportation. I thought Tuesday night would be ideal but didn’t want to bother my dad to ask for a ride (as we’d done something Monday), so planned Wed instead. We did things we wanted in the evening and just as we were done (ideal timing) a friend called saying they were coming into our city to see the show and would pick us up if we wanted to go. So that worked out well.

Insight: I was observing that my attempt to encourage ‘protection’ of my 13 year old when she was taking a small plate out of the microwave — my suggesting she put a paper plate under the plate that she could use as something larger and cooler to grab hold of — seemed, to her, very uptight. I realized that to her, my ideas and reservations about her plans — though she had in fact cooked this before and it hadn’t burned her then, so she wasn’t worried — seemed, to her, very… old. I realized that since I myself KNEW she’d done it once and been fine, it was odd that I would still be so hesitant, so concerned.

I thought to myself, “Why is it that as people get older, they get so much more conservative?” and into my head came a “thoughtball realization” as an answer.

Pain and fear create small physical changes in the nervous system, intensity and result varying by degree of experience. This is hardwired biologically. It is designed to function in support of human survival.

At high levels, it is a neural shortcut-mapping, such as in PTSD. (This refers to combat/repeat-issues not just ‘trauma from a single bad experience’. – P) At low levels it functions more like “filters and filter-sets”. These are aggregate; they are cumulative in each person.

Note that this “filter” term is used as a concept function-model. It is not a literal-model, biologically.

Every time you have hurt yourself when taking something out of a microwave, a filter has been applied to better protect you from future experience. (Usually this functions as an ‘avoidance’ or ‘plan ahead’ or ‘be careful’ effect.) As a mother your filters are applied to the projected future of your child.

You have many years of collected “filters” so to speak. Enough in number that these even override other intellectual knowings that might otherwise make them seem moot; this collection causes you to be “more careful than is actually necessary for that situation.” Even when you know that something is unlikely to hurt you, often you plan ahead protectively anyway, to avoid any potential of pain or mishap.

As people age, their filter-collection as we are calling it, grows, not only in variety, but it cumulates in some areas, ranging from “human relationships” to “cooking,” in this example. The added filters and filter-sets gradually make a person more inhibited, more careful, more “conservative” as you call it.

But she (daughter) at age 13 has not had the same experience-set. She is less careful because she is less worried. And she is less worried because she has fewer filters on the experience or situation warning her to be so.

I found that interesting. I had a few “wondering questions” in response to that thoughtball, which resulted in the following additional info:

Verbally warning someone, often with great drama, is an attempt to manually create filters. It is a natural inclination particularly of parents, to share the RESULT of experience vicariously, to prevent that actual experience being necessary.

and

‘Awareness’ reduces the creation of filters by avoiding many of the experiences which create them in the first place. You have often been ‘unaware’ when going about your daily life. Your focus has often been in your work, your daydreams, or simply “diffused” or “outside the body” as you call it, or “20 minutes into the future” as you say. You have in this case hurt yourself on many occasions due solely to inattention [subthought: pain can be an attempt to bring your attention back to the here-now [subsubthought: all pain is a plea for attention from some part of the Self]].

This has created additional ‘filters’ in your body on the experiential-context of taking food out of the microwave. These were not necessary. They did not provide any new information that you did not already have, nor any new filters for situation or context that you did not already have. The pain, and the resulting fear of pain, simply added to the cumulation of filters on that experience overall. Now, you are not merely cautious, you are over-cautious, even when you have sufficient information to know that you (or your child) in a given instance do not need to be.

This changes your behavior; it changes a small aspect of what you might call your personality. This is one [subthought: of many] side-effect of living with less awareness.

What you might think of as being “more open” or “more free” or “more relaxed” or “more flexible” particularly in what you think of as “old age”, relates to the protective filters the nervous system has accumulated over the course of a person’s lifetime. The less ‘aware’ the person was, often the more trauma (both physical and emotional) the person has experienced [subthought: referring to the above example of creating more layers-of-filters even when unnecessary [subsubthought: ‘more awareness’ has other effects such as changing the understanding or framework of experience which can also greatly reduce the fear/pain auto-response of the body]], resulting gradually with age in a “personality” which is hesitant, afraid to take risks or try new things. [Subthought: this is why you once observed that mystics seemed more ‘free’ when elderly than the average person; they have fewer ‘inhibitive-filters’ due to living with more awareness in previous years of life.]

Children are less hesitant, less afraid, and more inclined to take risks, because they do not have those protective filters that greater experience builds.

What you sometimes call “learning the same lesson the hard way, repeatedly” has a more lasting effect than merely the experience at the time. Failing to modify decision or behavior so as to avoid having the same pain-based experience, brings multiple layers of filters on the same situation. This can result in what you might call inhibition, or in more developed cases eventually, neurosis.

Well. I asked, I guess!

P

PS [edited later] Pretty sure this was the Private Oracle.