Unconscious Thoughts After Reading the Instructions for

Unconscious Thoughts After reading the instructions for this project, I closed all the windows and doors to my apartment, and set the stopwatch on my phone for 10 minutes. I composed myself, and then sat on my couch. It was nighttime, so that there were no audible sounds except the hum of the refrigerator and my own breathing. I closed my eyes and began to meditate. To help me do so, I inhaled slowly and deeply, before exhaling in an equally deliberate way.

I attempted to concentrate solely on my breathing and to keep my mind bereft of other thoughts. My hands were on my side; my feet were firmly in front of me. I sat in the same position for the duration of the time. I experienced various feelings during this time period -- both a drowsiness and alertness. There were several thoughts that invaded my mind, despite my best efforts not to have them.

When I heard the alarm of the phone ring, I got up and turned it off, and then began to write the reactions section of this document. Reactions There were several reactions I made during this 10 minute stretch, both as they related to my internal processes and y external activities. After the first three or four minutes, I was no longer conscious of my breathing. I think this was a result of the drowsiness I was feeling.

It was around this time that thoughts began to unwillingly come into my mind. First I found myself thinking about an uncle who has been unkind to me for the past several months. I was talking to my mother about him earlier in the evening and the sort of deteriorating relationships we seemed to be having. When I became fully conscious that I was no longer singularly meditating, I tried to reassert my focus on breathing and involuntarily shifted my feet.

At this point, I think I induced the opposite effect because then I became hyper aware of myself and of my surroundings. I again became conscious of my breathing (which was no longer as pronounced as it once was). I also became aware of my arms and had to keep from moving my hands, and I became aware of my back against the couch. Additionally, other thoughts came into my mind. I began to think about some of my schoolwork, as well as other activities such as playing musical instruments.

I ended the last several minutes struggling to meditate and thinking about such thoughts. Relationship of Findings to the Readings The reading I did for this assignment (after I conducted my independent research) related to my results in a number of different ways. What I was doing in my research was trying to control my mind consciously. However, involuntary (or perhaps unconscious) thoughts did not allow me to completely clear my mind of thought -- which is what I was trying to do.

My inability to control my thoughts is akin to the concept of Strate (2009) that "there is no way to get outside of the system" (p.64): this particular system being my mind. James (1892) discusses this same concept by referring to an "awareness" that is typically present in thinking (p. 177). Involuntary thoughts and actions are a reality, and proof of the limitations humans endure as a result of their consciousness.

My involuntary thoughts and actions were part of the phenomena that is associated with hypnosis, which is an altered state of consciousness as related to thoughts and actions (Kirsch and Lynn, 1995, p. 846) and which is in essence what I was attempting to induce through my meditation. Moreover, I think the main thing I learned from my research as related to the readings is the fact that in order to completely control one's conscious or unconscious mind, one would need to totally master it.

Doing so is exacerbated by the fact that consciousness actually presents multiples "selves" of an individual and his awareness (Baars, 1997, p.142). The assertion of one's will in which an individual can make real some desire of his (James, 1892, p. 415), is not always possible with the mind.

As the preceding references to involuntary actions and thoughts indicates, such mastery may be beyond the realm of human capacity for the simple fact that as a person functioning via the means of a mind, one "cannot completely understand" such a "system from within" (Strate, 2009, p. 63). Therefore, the complete control of and cognizance of consciousness may be elusive for humans, as was the case with me during my research.

Yet there are other characteristics of consciousness or unconsciousness that my research helped validate which inherently pertain to the nature of the involuntary thoughts that took place in my experiment. For the most part, those thoughts were continuations of thoughts and concerns which I was preoccupied with during the day. The stray thoughts I had about my uncle can be traced back to the conversation about him I had had with my other earlier in the day.

The thoughts to my music and schoolwork were also descended from ruminations about these subjects I had earlier, if not every day. Past actions can create emotions which "consciously" (Furuya, 2007, p. 2) remain in one's memory and affect one's thoughts. The propagation of previous, conscious thoughts to ones that directly correlate unconsciously is a key property of the consciousness.

The variation in my unconscious thoughts and their links to thoughts earlier in the day are explained by James (1892) in his listing of three (of four total) key traits of consciousness: that its various "states" are mutable, that those changes are "sensibly continuous" and that the mind "rejects" some previous thoughts while focusing on the most eminent ones (p. 152). James elucidation of these aspects of consciousness explains a lot of the findings in my research.

It accounts for the fact that despite my efforts to concentrate on only breathing, I inherently encountered other thoughts. Furthermore, these thoughts were continuations of those which I had incurred earlier in the day. As such, there is significance in the fact that my meditation was interrupted by my unconscious mind which was preoccupied with things I had perceived as unmet goals.

Implications for Understanding Human Experience and Professional Practice Both the readings for this assignment and the research I conducted for it indicate that the mind -- human consciousness -- is active all the time. Moreover, it can assert its autonomy during times in which an individual's volition may wish for it to do otherwise. Practitioners, then, can use the knowledge of these facts to their advantage by attempting to utilize information gleaned from both the conscious and unconscious thoughts of practitioners.

As Baars (1997) points out, there can be "fortunate" lapses of consciousness that aid people (p. I CAN'T SEE THE PAGE NUMBER, ON THE FIRT PAGE).