I am not a neuro-scientist. I feel that my conscious “I” exists separately from that hunk of meat that is my working brain. My conscious “I” makes decisions.

“I” tend to be impatient. After reading Schwartz’s book “I” started to recognize my bursts of impatience as a neural network that could be changed. “I” stopped letting myself get impatient. The more I step back and deny the brain its way, the more patient I become. I have revalued these outbursts and retrained my brain.

The same is true in language learning. If the “I” wants to learn another language, thinks it can, trains itself by listening and reading a lot, it gradually does learn.It is the attitude of the “I” rather than ability that is the most important quality.

I agree that our brains are better at recognizing patterns and associations than absorbing logic and theory. The is why meaningful language exposure is more effective than explicit grammar explanations and meaningless exercize, since the latter tend to diminish the desire of the learners “I” to learn.

Anyhow, I had always felt blocked by various impulses of the ego (or Id more accurately if you’re Freudian, but I’m not really). Smoking and other bad habits are/were out of my conscious control and providing a constant boogie man reminding my consciousness of its inneffectiveness.

So I picked November for another push. Going to bed with no more than a headache from my various smokes, I had plenty of motivation for today. Reading your post has inspired another piece of the puzzle.

Often times I read something mystical in nature and I “get it” to some extent, but it remains inapplicable. The nature of most of this stuff is that it uses contradictory language to break paradigms and open a door to understnading, but its still a dificult process. I often relate to the meaning of a Lakota word (I don’t remember the actual word) meaning “I know but do not understand.” Its very frustrating to attempt to apply this type of knowledge to my life.

Sometimes, I will come across a bridge of sorts, something that connects the rational and the irrational worlds and blesses me with a complete understanding of something. Like yin and yang they fuse to form a very complete knowledge.

The idea of conscious intent, has been clarified in this way by your post. Thank you Steve, I feel not only empowered but prepared to deal with the challenge ahead.

I like the reference to Epictetus in an earlier response. What we do as human beings is prepare our minds to recognize patterns and act on them. If the pattern never occurs we will never be able to act. It sounds simplistic, but pattern recognition in the mind is not cut and dry and operates on many levels. Our ability to record, report, generalize and theorize are hardwired into us and leads us to recognize patterns in the strangest of circumstances. It ain’t no Secret, its anatomy.