I’m flailing in the shallow waters of the sea of burnout. Occasionally I clutch at the shore. Often I step into unknowing deep hollows and sink beneath the surface once more. All my energy is on preventing being swept out to sea again. Having been adrift for years, it’s not a place I think I will survive again. I think people expect me to be on shore by now, Basking in my new understanding, on the sand, But I’m still flailing in the waters, and the life guards haven’t noticed, and the flotation aides keep bobbing in and out of reach. It’s hard work not getting swamped in the waves.
Just some speculation on consciousness which came to me while meditating… or should I say trying to meditate!
The more conscious our species became the more we lost that instinctive intuition for nature, not just our place in nature but for our true nature, or connection to the nature of existence.
The more conscious we became the more we could think and question that inate knowledge or feeling but the less we could understand it. Because that state is impossible to explain or understand with language it’s can only be understood by experience. But consciousness was leading us to want to explain and categorise everything else in the world. And so leading us away from paying attention to things like our inate inner being.
This may be how religion started. Because we became disconnected from the true nature, but it is a vital part of us so we crave and seek it. Religion with its promises and metaphors sought to explain the unexplainable in order to give solace to that part of us that feels the barrier that consciousness has put between us and the inate nature of being.
It also explains a lot about how civilisation has evolved, and the greed of humanity, even capitalism!
After becoming conscious, the break with the nature of being has left us always seeking what is missing, what has been lost. And so we sought to fill that void with material things, with knowledge, with power. We are now raised as Alan Watts pointed out to always be aiming for the future, if we just achieve and keep striving, we’re told we will get our reward. So we’re told to work hard at school and then at our jobs and that eventually we’ll achieve… somthing. We’re sold the fact that if we just work hard enough we can earn more to buy this or that which will bring happiness, but it never lasts. We’ve traded ‘being’ for ‘doing’! If we just do enough it’ll be ok, rather than finding our contentment in just being! Because what we’re all really seeking deep down, even if we don’t realise it, is that connection to the true nature of being which was severed when we embraced consciousness. We’ve built our whole society around it without realising what it is we’re truly trying to find. And even if we do realise it, we still seek it with the mind! Again via religion or knowledge. At least that’s what I’ve been doing! If I just learn enough about this or that, then I will be able to understand what is missing! But this is never going to work either. Because it’s not actually missing. It’s always there inside us all, every moment!
There are still some hunter gatherer tribes on this planet who haven’t forgotten this connection. Yet we try to lure them to become ‘civilised’ because it’s seen as more advanced. It’s not, we are the ones that have lost somthing, they have retained a better balance, they still know the true ways.
Why do you think psychedelics and meditation are becoming so popular? Because we’re seeking that connection and we’re realising it’s not through work and things and thinking! We’re looking at ways to bypass thinking, consciousness, to reach awareness because we’ve so lost our connection with it.
We can’t access it with the mind. The way is not with thinking, it is through thinking, beyond thinking, by acceptance and awareness. Like Eckhart Tolle says we have to let go of the thinking mind, the thinking mind is the barrier! The only thing you have to do is be!
I’ve had anxiety all my life and worked hard to manage it. I’ve thrown myself into all the treatments and therapies offered and dedicated myself to them. Always with limited results. Now I think I understand why.
All those therapies and techniques assumed my anxiety was the result of an overreaction of my sympathetic nervous system based on perceiving a non threatening modern situation as a life threatening situation in the primal parts of my brain. When asked what made me anxious, I could never give a clear answer, which now I realise was a clue! The important word here is ‘overreaction’ It was seen as a problem, a glitch that could be rewired using the various therapies and techniques to teach my brain that actually I was safe and all was well. Basically training me to ignore what my brain was telling me until it went away.
But with the added knowledge that I am neurodivergent I now see that it never was an ‘overreaction’ but it was a correct stress response to the overstimulation I was experiencing in the modern world. The reason I couldn’t pinpoint a precise situation that caused my anxiety was because it wasn’t the situation nessecarily but a combination of stimulus around me, and often also the result of things that had overstimulated me earlier in the day, or yesterday even, or other factors lowering my tolerance at that particular time and place.
When the anxiety alerted me to the fact it was too loud, too bright, too much information, etc, I would practice the techniques I’d been taught. Maybe I’d remove myself from the situation to do so. And yes breathing techniques do work, meditation is helpful etc. But then I’d be right back in the situation that triggered it all, and guess what, my brain would go! Whoa! Alarm bells again, it’s still to bright, still too loud, still overwhelming!
I was being taught to push anxiety away and ignore it, and never achieving that for any length of time. Everytime I failed I’d beat myself up for not trying hard enough. It became a matter of masking and suppressing it instead, in order to convince myself that what I was doing was working, because I wanted so badly for it to work and I thought just trying hard enough would make it work! I needed to prove to everyone around me, the professionals, my family and friends that I was trying to get well, that I was doing what was asked, so they wouldn’t worry.
But this only works for a while, and then it all breaks apart. Because by trying hard I was working against myself. The harder I tried the harder I was working against what my brain was so desperate to make me realise! Ignoring, rather than listening to and heeding the signals of stress my brain was rightly giving me, by forcing myself to continue to socialise, to appear normal, to be managing, I was just compounding the internal pressure until it couldn’t be contained anymore. Trying hard is exhausting even when it actually works, when it doesn’t even work, something has to give. my brain gave me another warning, this time in the form of fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue. It said, if you won’t listen to the anxiety then I’ll make you stop!
Except the same problem was still at the root. And now I’d been taught that you just have to keep trying and push through even when it’s hard! So I did. Until eventually the brain couldn’t do it anymore, nor could the body. The only way it could make me see was total shutdown. What I now know is autistic burnout!
And then finally the ASD diagnosis and then the learning and slowly now understanding of the implications in relation to my past struggles.
And now finally I hear you brain, when I feel anxious, stressed, exhausted, you’re telling me to step away, be aware and realise what you’re telling me. Don’t ignore the message!
It’s too loud in here! Ok I hear you, let’s use ear plugs or headphones.
It’s too busy! Ok we’ll come back another day when it’s quieter.
You need more time to process what was just said, ok we’ll ask for the information in writing and time to process it.
No amount of deep breathing is going to help if you immediately go back into the overstimulating situation and while all the former techniques still have a use in the right situation, they are secondary tools to awareness of what my brain is telling me is the problem.
The real solution is being aware and making accommodations to either create ways to make the situation manageable or remove myself from the situation.
So I’m sorry brain, that I wasn’t listening to you! We didn’t know! And even when we sort of knew we didn’t know enough. And even now we know it’s still going to take a lot of time to learn to hear you and understand what you’re telling me as I’m so used to suppressing and masking your message.
I’m sorry it took so long that it came to what it has, and I know I blamed and hated you for a long time when you were trying to help me understand.
It feels to me like human consciousness is just a quirk of evolution that is being played out as an experiment as all aspects of evolution are.
My recent hyper focuses have included dinosaurs, what came before dinosaurs, how life on earth evolved and it’s looped back to two frequented hyperfocus subjects, human evolution and what it means to be conscious.
From what I understand, life on earth can be dated back more than 3000 million years. Complex life from fish up to complex pre dinosaur land animals existed from about 418-251 million years ago (mya) That’s over 150 million years.
Dinosaurs lasted from around 251-65mya. That’s around 200 million years. Yet as far as we know none evolved the sort of conscious intelligence that we have. While intelligence and consciousness may have helped them survive an asteroid, not having those things ensured they were hugely successful organisms that didn’t destroy their own ecosystem for 200 odd million years. But for an asteroid they could still be going strong! This marks out to me that intelligence and consciousness are not a good long term survival strategy, otherwise in that timeframe, why did nothing evolve it?
In the following 60 million years no other animal that we know of evolved conscious intelligence. Again this is another long time period for evolution not to have as far as we know experimented with this combination of traits. It evolved plenty of convergent kinds of eyes, limbs, teeth, myriad other things
The oldest hominid species we have found is about 4 million years old. It’s only in the last 300 thousand years that Homo sapiens has existed.
So potentially it’s taken 4 million years at the outside guess for our species to become conscious and intelligent, out of 3000 million years of life on earth. All those myriad species that came before us and that we indeed now share the planet with did not take this evolutionary course.
Dinosaurs did very nicely for 200 odd million years without ever needing to evolve this survival mechanism.
Because that’s what it seems to me to be.
Hominids we’re small and vulnerable. Only the smartest survived, which led to us getting smarter. Did intelligence come before consciousness? I think so. Other animals are intelligent without having our level of consciousness. (As far as we know, maybe they’re just smarter about how they use it)
Consciousness meant an advantage in being able to imagine. To think about how to do things, to learn from past experience and predict what might happen in similar circumstances. It allowed us to visualise things we couldn’t see, and language then allowed us to pass that on to others who had never seen something, giving them an advantage in future situations.
I think this quirk of evolution is starting to work itself out to its conclusion now in this modern age.
In fact I think it hit its high point somewhere just before civilisations started approximately 10,000-4000 years ago (depending on which theory you go for)
Why do I think this? Because we seem to have traded some natural instinct for living in harmony with our environment for this inventive intelligence. AndI don’t think our consciousness was equipped for it.
Why do I think this is important? Because I think it’s why we’re struggling so much with our mental health and it seems to be an increasing problem. I also think it’s why we continue to destroy nature even though we know what we’re doing and what the consequences will be.
I think human consciousness wasn’t designed to be able to handle the world our intellect has created for us. Without consciousness we would not have stories or art or many other wonderful things. We would not have been able to dream about what stars were made of, or even question what is consciousness. But also we wouldn’t suffer with our minds spinning out of control over past and future, over imagined events that never come to pass. Emotions would be raw, but pure. Anger like a charging bull full of fury but then the moment is passed. Fear like a startled rabbit, who moments later returns to grazing. Language would be simplified yet clearer! A birds repertoire of calls has clear meaning if little nuance! Warning, predator! Marking territory. Calling to attract a mate! We dwell in our own minds, we get lost in them.
I feel that the evolutionary experiment that is consciousness makes the species Homo sapiens an evolutionary dead end.
There are other species that have found themselves using up resources beyond their means for other reasons and become extinct as a result. It is, in the end a natural process of evolution, to try everything and see what works. Even trees did it! During the Carboniferous some trees out completed others by growing taller and having harder bark. This was great until they used up too much carbon in the atmosphere. Their hard bark meant dead trees of this species didn’t rot easily and release carbon back into the system. There was no way these trees were sustainable. They became extinct. I’m sure they took a bunch of other plants and animals with them. As we are doing.
But life recovered and continued. Trees still exist in different forms.
I believe we still have a chance, thanks to the double edged sword that is intelligence and consciousness. If we can get back in touch with that connection with nature, which I believe lies in the true nature of consciousness, and use our intelligence once again for our survival we might have a chance.
I don’t know if consciousness is connected to something bigger in the universe. I want to believe it is, but it could all just be a quirk of evolution.
Either way I think it will play a big part in our species survival… or demise.
It feels to me like human consciousness is just a quirk of evolution that is being played out as an experiment as all aspects of evolution are.
My recent hyper focuses have included dinosaurs, what came before dinosaurs, how life on earth evolved and it’s looped back to two frequented hyperfocus subjects, human evolution and what it means to be conscious.
From what I understand, life on earth can be dated back more than 3000 million years. Complex life from fish up to complex pre dinosaur land animals existed from about 418-251 million years ago (mya) That’s over 150 million years.
Dinosaurs lasted from around 251-65mya. That’s around 200 million years. Yet as far as we know none evolved the sort of conscious intelligence that we have. While intelligence and consciousness may have helped them survive an asteroid, not having those things ensured they were hugely successful organisms that didn’t destroy their own ecosystem for 200 odd million years. But for an asteroid they could still be going strong! This marks out to me that intelligence and consciousness are not a good long term survival strategy, otherwise in that timeframe, why did nothing evolve it?
In the following 60 million years no other animal that we know of evolved conscious intelligence. Again this is another long time period for evolution not to have as far as we know experimented with this combination of traits. There has been plenty of convergent evolution where similar traits evolved in vastly different animals. Like eyes, in insects, squid, mammals. Maybe some species in prehistory did toy with intellect and consciousness but failed.
The oldest hominid species we have found is about 4 million years old. It’s only in the last 300 thousand years that Homo sapiens has existed.
So potentially it’s taken 4 million years at the outside guess for our species to become conscious and intelligent, out of 3000 million years of life on earth. All those myriad species that came before us and the many that we indeed now share the planet with did not take this evolutionary course or not to the extent that Homo sapiens has taken it. (Because Elephants, whales, primates, birds etc and indeed all animals have both intersect and consciousness to some level)
Dinosaurs did very nicely for 200 odd million years without ever needing to evolve this survival mechanism.
Because that’s what it seems to me to be.
Hominids are small and vulnerable. Only the smartest survived, which led to us getting smarter. Did intelligence come before consciousness? I think so. Other animals are intelligent without having our level of consciousness. (As far as we know, maybe they’re just smarter about how they use it)
Consciousness meant an advantage in being able to imagine. To think about how to do things, to learn from past experience and predict what might happen in similar circumstances. It allowed us to visualise things we couldn’t see, and language then allowed us to pass that on to others who had never seen something, giving them an advantage in future situations.
I think this quirk of evolution is starting to work itself out to its conclusion now in this modern age.
In fact I think it hit its high point somewhere just before civilisations started approximately 10,000-4000 years ago (depending on which theory you go for)
Why do I think this? Because we seem to have traded some natural instinct for living in harmony with our environment for this inventive intelligence. And I don’t think our consciousness was equipped for it.
Why do I think this is important? Because I think it’s why we’re struggling so much with our mental health and it seems to be an increasing problem. I also think it’s why we continue to destroy nature even though we know what we’re doing and what the consequences will be. We don’t understand our place in nature anymore dispute our supposed superior intellect. Our conscious mind is trying to make sense of a modern complex world with the brain that is still a wild natural animal, and it’s stuck in the middle unable to make those two harmonious.
I think human consciousness wasn’t designed to be able to handle the world our intellect has created for us. Without consciousness we would not have stories or art or many other wonderful things. We would not have been able to dream about what stars were made of, or even question what is consciousness. But also we wouldn’t suffer with our minds spinning out of control over past and future, over imagined events that never come to pass. Consciousness was designed to do this, but not designed to do this in the crazy chaotic frenetic modern world. No wonder we feel overwhelmed and stressed and depressed. We dwell in our own minds, we get lost in them.
Without consciousness we would return to our more animal instincts. Emotions would be raw, but pure. Anger like a charging bull full of fury but then the moment is passed. Fear like a startled rabbit, who moments later returns to grazing. Language would be simplified yet clearer! A birds repertoire of calls has clear meaning if little nuance! Warning, predator! Marking territory. Calling to attract a mate! This way of existing has been successful for millions of species for almost the entire history of life on earth. Evolutionarily speaking it’s a winning formula.
Humans have used intelligence and consciousness to feel superior to other creatures, indeed we often even forget that we are animals ourselves. But actually the way things are going, I’m sure there will be more species that survive and thrive with that winning formula that doesn’t require intelligence and consciousness long after our species peters out.
I feel that the evolutionary experiment that is consciousness makes the species Homo sapiens an evolutionary dead end.
There are other species that have found themselves using up resources beyond their means for other reasons and become extinct as a result. It is, in the end a natural process of evolution, to try everything and see what works. Even trees did it! During the Carboniferous some trees out completed others by growing taller and having harder bark. This was great until they used up too much carbon in the atmosphere. Their hard bark meant dead trees of this species didn’t rot easily and release carbon back into the system. There was no way these trees were sustainable. They became extinct. I’m sure they took a bunch of other plants and animals with them. As we are doing. Due to our intellect we’re managing to do it in especially spectacular style! It doesn’t seem to smart to me.
In the Carboniferous life recovered and continued. Trees still exist in different forms.
I believe we still have a chance, thanks to the double edged sword that is intelligence and consciousness. If we can get back in touch with that connection with nature, which I believe lies in the true nature of consciousness, and use our intelligence once again for our survival we might have a chance.
I don’t know if consciousness is connected to something bigger in the universe. I want to believe it is, but it could all just be a quirk of evolution.
Either way I think it will play a big part in our species survival… or demise.
Chubby Spud the young sparrow was in the bird feeder when I went to fill it up this morning, we surprised each other.
Then Robin came and had some of the vole and shrew seed by my feet. Yesterday he sat on the cherry tree pot and pipped at me enquiringly.
Womble Shrew was boldly teasing vole yesterday, womble shrew is much faster and was scurrying around vole. Womble Shrew had already had all the best bits as it had arrived early.
Womble Shrew just arrived and is taking the suet I put out for robin.
Last Wednesday I ripped the back off the kitchen cupboard and found 2 more potential mouse holes. I filled them with aluminium scourers and expanding foam and then left some delicious bait in the cupboard to see if there were any takers. Then I released Surprise back into the mouse viewer once again!
As of Saturday the bait hadn't been touched so I'm relatively sure I have blocked the entry hole and that there are no stragglers left in the kitchen! (Tho what happened to The Fugative, I may never know!)
Today I saw a mouse in the mouse viewer, the first I have seen in there for a long time! Imagine my surprise to find it was Surprise! His clipped fur is growing back but it was definitely him! :)
So that's good, he's in the mouse viewer where he should be, not in my cupboard! I think most of my other mouse viewer visitors, probably Martha included have been relocated to the country home after their invasion of my kitchen. But it was nice to see Surprise again, on the right side of the glass! :)
I came down to find a mouse in the pitfall trap this morning. Surprise, surprise, it was Surprise, my marked mouse. He just couldnt resist the bait of a ginger biscuit! XD'
I think Surprise might be my favorite mouse. He's got a lot of character, he always comes out of his nest box when I move the tank to see whats going on, and he's not shy at all. He likes apple slices and ginger biscuits.
Tomorrow I'm going to try and find the mouse hole and seal it up. Then I'll release Surprise in the garden again. Hopefully I'll only see him in the mouse viewer from then on!
In addition to the mouse invasion, after it rained all day, I'm now under siege from the great slug invasion! Tonnes of tiny slugs are everywhere, mostly heading for my veg patch! I'll be surprised if I have any veg left tomorrow! I just hope Pog, Hoggle and the frogs eat lots of them!
On wednesday night just before midnight I heard the pitfall trap trigger and caught a big mouse who joined Tiny in the mouse hotel. I never got the chance to even take a mugshot of mouse no.8 as I went camping that afternoon, and my mum took Tiny and Anonymouse as he shall now be called to the release site. I came back from camping today very much hoping the camera trap revealed no more mice! And surprise! What should I find but Surprise, the mouse I marked by trimming his fur, had found his way back in! The only good thing about this is that now I know they are getting in still. But now I have to dismantle the cupboard to find out how. As for the mouse that escaped before I could put it in the hotel, theres been no sign of it!
Crikey what a day! The boss was poorly so she asked if I could mind the shop today tho I wasnt meant to be going in today, but I said yup.
So I rushed round trying to get organised and found 2 mice in my traps! One in the pitfall one in the bought trap. I went to move the pitfall mouse to the tank and it somehow scampered up the tube and bounced away to hide under the fridge! Not a good start to the day! >_< I managed to get the other mouse safely into the tank. Its quite a small one and was very alarmed and bouncing about everywhere!
The bought trap seems to catch small mice very well, I'm not sire if its cos they are smaller or if its due to inexperience.
Anyway there was only porridge in the house so I decided to treat myself to a maccy d breakfast since I knew it'd be a long day. But it took ages to get served, so I had to get take out and run. Then I stopped at the boss' house to collect the till, and my paremts house to collect some hedgehog toys for the window display. Then of course there was no free parking in town and I ended up in asda!
I did get the shop open on time by the skin of my teeth! And I had to eat my breakfast after opening, but fortunately it was quiet. Just browsing customers.
I actually sold some stuff, advised customers and took orders. I also sold some furniture. On top of this I finished painting the corner cabinet and finishing coated some of it. And made a sign for an order.
Then at the end of the day I had to deliver a cupboard I'd sold.
So really I did ok for an emergency shop keeper!
Mum helped by hanging out the washing and washing up while I was at work. But I had to put that away when I got in, and clean out the mouse tank cos it was stinky. Tiny mouse stayed in its house while I dud that. I assume its in there, its much shyer then Surprise.
Anyway, fed the pigs, put pogs food out, had a dinner of rice crispies lol and now well past collapse point!
Its been quite an enjoyable day tho, but how people do 9-5 jobs day after day without collapsing I dont know.
