The art of knowing one’s mind is to track its engagements within a challenging situation that is personally significant. The problematic nature of that challenge kindles consciousness in the first place. Once aware of the problem, we can watch our minds wrestling with how best to respond. In this book, I offer curiosity as the desirable approach, trial and error as a workable method, and self-awareness as the overall goal.

In the process, I discover several dimensions of my personal consciousness revealed in sequential order. First comes expectancy, then attention, followed by sensory figures at a useful level of detail. Leading to interpretation of those figures, their understanding within a framework of feelings and values, advancing to judgments based on the foregoing dimensions that culminate in further planning and appropriate action.

The result of this introspective method is awareness of my mental engagement with difficult situations I get myself into at various levels of my mind such as reflexes, habits, ideology, or full conscious analysis. Novelty, surprise, and curiosity promote consciousness; frustration, disengagement, and depression suppress it. Steered by personal feelings and values, consciousness empowers us to make ourselves happen in the world.

Owning up to perceptual mistakes I have made in the past, I take responsibility for the workings of my own mind, producing smoother engagements in situations that make me who I am. I dedicate the book To Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent—to all who are working to make a better life for themselves.

November 9, 2011

That’s me, the original one-tracker. Can’t do two things at once. Anyway, I’m back after a long bout of working on my book. Three titles later (Know Thyself, At My Peril, Consciousness: The Book), I’ll go with the last one because that’s what it’s all about.

    Having worked on this project since 2006, I’ve finally got it in a form I can live with. Not only live with, but celebrate because a lot of it comes together in a coherent narrative about perception, conception, and understanding (and much else)—all based on my personal life experience. Made available to me through persistent introspection.

    No, I can’t write and blog at the same time. Blogging skims off the top of my thoughts; trying to put a book together requires deeper, longer study to make sure it all hangs together. But the rewards are tremendous. Finally, I’m beginning to understand my own mind. That’s one sample out of seven billion, but closer than I’ve ever come.

    My plan now is to give talks on my findings, before any audience that will listen. There are no illustrations in the book (except the map of my mind on the back cover), so I’m putting them into a PowerPoint. I’ll slowly share what I’ve learned in this blog after I’ve made the transition from putting the book together.

    Hope all’s well with you. –Steve

] 

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available at Lulu.com.

60. Effective action in a world we can never know for sure, that is what our individual minds are given us to accomplish—if we can learn enough about our inner selves in time to make that happen. (Introduction, p. xxxi.)

61. In the first chapter, A Mind at Work, I present the stories of eighteen incidents in which the workings of my personal consciousness stand revealed. My hope is that these examples will remind you of incidents when your own mind played similar tricks and you were able to catch your mental apparatus in stop motion during the act of leading you astray. The rest of this book develops themes arising from  my grappling to make sense of these and other everyday incidents. (Introduction, p.

xxxi.)

End of Excerpts

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available at Lulu.com.

58. Each of us regards every sensory phenomenon from the standpoint of whether it is in our best interest or not, so our job comes down to acting in such a way to play up our interests and play down our faults in order to be ourselves to the max without harming others, while encouraging everyone else to do the same as a complement to ourselves. (Introduction, p. xxxi.)

59. When circumstances are against us, we have only our biological values to fall back on. No shirking, no shortcuts. Just working away doing the best job we can with our unique mix of skills and stamina, foibles and finesse—for that is the job we are born to and die away from. (Introduction, p. xxxi.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

55. Making sense of the world takes work because the phenomena we attend to are frequently small, unclear, or ambiguous. This is particularly true if we are tired, distracted, in a hurry,or not paying attention. (Introduction, p. xxx.)

56. The quality of our attention gets shoddier every year as the outer clamor makes ever greater claim to whatever serenity is left in our heads. (Introduction, p. xxx.)

57. If we defer to those who would grab our attention, there is nothing left for us to spend on leading our own lives by simply being ourselves. (Introduction, p. xxxi.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

51. Each of us is a unique specimen of humanity, not a replica of anyone else, nor a model for others. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

52. If we humans are to know ourselves, which is clearly a prerequisite to knowing anyone or anything else, then we must start by looking into ourselves to better understand why we have the wonderfully strange ideas that we do, and follow through on those ideas in making ourselves happen in the world—as we cannot deny that we do every day of our lives. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

53. Introspection has received a bad press as somehow introverted or even narcissistic, but how else are we to learn about our unique selves if not by becoming familiar with the workings of our own minds? (Introduction, p. xxx.)

54. This book is not about mental illness or therapy. It is about the workings of the everyday mind, and of one mind in particular, namely mine, the only one I have access to and concerning which I can claim to be the world’s leading expert. (Introduction, p. xxx.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

48. As I write these words, . . . the news is full of woe and dire predictions concerning the economy, our system of governance, endless wars, social neglect or hostility, over-consumption of natural resources, failure of our systems of healthcare and education, over-population, resulting in a relentless decimation of not only our different cultures but the Earth itself on which all people depend for support. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

49. I trace this ruination of the human world and its planet to intolerance aimed at those whose uniqueness we are not able to understand or appreciate because we don’t know ourselves very well, and as a result have no chance of understanding strangers who differ from us in leading outward and inward lives unique to themselves. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

50. Since I am a unique being, it makes no sense to generalize the qualities of my mental experience to my peers or my sex, much less to all of humanity. I am what I am,myself and no other. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

45. As a species, we seem to find it easier to take for granted that the world we know is the true one, and the one others inhabit is at best a distortion, or at worst a lie to the extent it differs from ours. This results in all sorts of pandemonium and hostility—which passes as the normal state of affairs in worlds based on conflicting realities. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

46. The human tragedy flows not only from failing to honor the uniqueness of our individual perspectives but, too, from each perspective believing itself to be the only true one, all others being dismissed as hostile pretenders to the truth. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

47. Arrogant absolutism is the original sin of our tribe, which all evidence shows is undoing our respective accomplishments through senseless conflict with one another. (Introduction, p. xxix.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

43. The last thing I want you to do is blindly accept what I say as true—that would be no better than accepting the world as true or real in itself. But I do hope you’ll bear with me as I make my case on the basis of my lived experience, and follow along by exploring your own experience as I have explored mine for the past thirty years. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

44. Unique as each of us is, we are in this world together and owe it to one another to be as clear as we can about the reality we supposedly share. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

From KNOW THYSELF: Adventures in Getting to Know My Own Mind by Steve Perrin. Available on Lulu.com.

40. It helps me to remember that such perspectives are a contribution made by the evolutionary descendants of worms, worms now having not only alimentary canals but backbones supporting arms and legs as well, appendages enabling us to stand up and look around at the richness of what our senses allow us to discover and our minds make meaningful. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

41. My first chapter . . . is based on instances when I have misjudged or misunderstood situations that seemed perfectly obvious until I was undeceived, or managed to undeceive myself. The world is what I make of it, not what it is in and of itself. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)

42. How I do that is the matter I deal with in these pages as drawn from my personal experience. (Introduction, p. xxviii.)