Have you noticed how much we intuit rather than figure out?

[OldManCorcoran]

Something that occurred to me earlier while driving and trying to remember something...

You know how sometimes when you've forgotten something and try to remember and can't, then randomly out of nowhere the memory comes to you say, 30 seconds later? What is your mind even doing in the meantime? And when the memory comes back, what exactly is it that comes to you?

Because when you remember what it was you were trying to think of, at the a-ha moment we put words to what is not previously linguistic knowledge before the words were applied. It's almost like a sensation, and THEN from the sensation we are like "oh that's X memory of Y event! I remember now!" and then we can explain in words exactly what it was we were thinking of.

So in many cases the logical wordings etc follows after a more intuitive knowledge which exists more as a sensation, which our mind applies the words to.

I thought that was quite interesting.

[Princess Arabia]

18 minutes ago, OldManCorcoran said:

Something that occurred to me earlier while driving and trying to remember something...

You know how sometimes when you've forgotten something and try to remember and can't, then randomly out of nowhere the memory comes to you say, 30 seconds later? What is your mind even doing in the meantime? And when the memory comes back, what exactly is it that comes to you?

Because when you remember what it was you were trying to think of, at the a-ha moment we put words to what is not previously linguistic knowledge before the words were applied. It's almost like a sensation, and THEN from the sensation we are like "oh that's X memory of Y event! I remember now!" and then we can explain in words exactly what it was we were thinking of.

So in many cases the logical wordings etc follows after a more intuitive knowledge which exists more as a sensation, which our mind applies the words to.

I thought that was quite interesting.

This is another example that shows the power of letting go. When we let go and make space for the Universe to flow through us, things come to us easily and effortlessly. We put up resistance to what is. The script is already written.

[caspex]

It's almost like you tune into a frequency and leave it on until you receive a message

[TheAlchemist]

I know what you mean, sometimes you also realize that you will soon remember it if you just relax, other times you know the memory is "lost" somewhere further away and you have a sense that there is a very low chance that it will come up. What I also find interesting is that often there is also a sense of if it was an important memory or not that important.

Maybe these are a sort of metadata that the mind stores about the memory, even though the actual content of the memory is not in awareness. Interesting to explore this more.

Being in the state of not-knowing is much more fruitful in many cases than trying to figure out with a sort of force..

[OldManCorcoran]

42 minutes ago, TheAlchemist said:

I know what you mean, sometimes you also realize that you will soon remember it if you just relax, other times you know the memory is "lost" somewhere further away and you have a sense that there is a very low chance that it will come up. What I also find interesting is that often there is also a sense of if it was an important memory or not that important.

Maybe these are a sort of metadata that the mind stores about the memory, even though the actual content of the memory is not in awareness. Interesting to explore this more.

Being in the state of not-knowing is much more fruitful in many cases than trying to figure out with a sort of force..

I recently read a book called "No Self, No Problem", it's written by a professor with a PhD in neuropsychology. He discusses, particularly, the differences between the two hemispheres of the brain.

Now this is very interesting... In patients whose hemispheres were surgically separated, the two hemispheres can no longer communicate with each other but they are still functional. So in some studies they conducted, they would cover one eye of the patient and hold up a sign, so that only the right hemisphere would see and react to a sign which read "Stand up". The doctors would then ask the test subjects WHY they stood up. The left hemisphere is responsible for that type of thing, linguistics, logic, whatever... Because it did not know why it stood up, it just simply made up a story like "I stood up because my legs were aching". It's completely wrong but the left hemisphere of the brain works to apply stories and wording to the more automated responses conducted by the right hemisphere. Because it did not know why it stood up (because they saw a sign telling them to stand), they filled in the blanks.

So maybe it's the case that the ego and words, including the voice in our head which talks to us or interprets events, isn't actually doing anything at all. But adding the words on top of something more ethereal (as in, abstract sensations that we can't really describe, like the "sensation" of the will we use to reach out and grab something, which isn't a sensation made of thoughts or feelings or sights or sounds - we just reach out and do it)... So with these lost and recalled memories, perhaps all the action is happening in that same ethereal sense, more right hemisphere working, until the left hemisphere action can actually grab hold of one of the produced senses and turn it into a tangible "thing" we can "understand".

[Ninja_pig]

I think it is important to remember that our brains are extremely sophisticated computing machines, and the process by which they process information and allow us to think is very complicated.

I'm not a neuroscience expert, My personal theory to explain the phenomenon of forgetting something and then 30 minutes later suddenly remembering it again has to do with our brain's process of memory consolidation. We remember details from our experiences and over time our brain must integrate these memories into our general store of knowledge which it can then use to understand the world. During this integration process, our brain will discard seemingly unimportant details to simplify and streamline the newly learned information for more efficient use. I believe the brain does this by severing the connections between relevant processing centers and the memory structure, thereby leaving the remaining memory connections to deteriorate over time and free up the neurons involved available to encode new information in the future. Sometimes we need to recall this piece of information even after the connections have been severed. In some cases, the memory structure is still there but our brain does not have an efficient path to access it. This is how we can have the sensation that we SHOULD remember something, but we don't.

Now for the reason why we suddenly re-remember something after the fact. According to chatGPT: "The default mode network (DMN) is a network of brain regions that is active when an individual is not focused on the external world or engaged in specific tasks that require attention. It was first discovered through functional brain imaging studies and is often referred to as the "resting state network" because it tends to be most active when the mind is at rest and not engaged in directed cognitive tasks." One of these tasks is: "Memory Consolidation: The DMN is involved in the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory, helping to store and retrieve personal memories.". So, while you are doing nothing, the DMN is active and may be trying to rekindle that lost memory. This would explain why you get this memory back when you are driving, as the DMN is also responsible for mind-wandering.

As for being able to put words to the memory, I think it is simply due to the fact that once you have access to the memory again, your brain can work with it again. That includes the language processing centers of your brain.

As for the fact that you become conscious of the phenomenon, I literally have know idea why/how this happens. From what it seems to me, consciousness/god imagines that it's a human, and thus sort of experiences our brain as a whole. I don't know the exact mechanism by which imagined physical phenomena in the brain are translated into subjective experience.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Ninja_pig