Slip Stream Consciousness

The content below is an excerpt from my summary of a new consciousness theory presented by Dr. Andrew Budson, which features a brief Q&A. Read the full piece here

For context, Dr. Budson's theory posits that our consciousness is the backseat driver to our unconscious action, and that consciousness itself functions as a memory system more than anything, acting secondary to the unconscious directions of the mind. 

My expansion of this idea, which I regard as Slip Stream Consciousness, below. 

At first, I approached Dr. Budson’s theory by way of the aforesaid analogy: we’re the back seat drivers to our unconscious mind and, if we yell enough, we can bear some influence as to where we’re going. 

But I still couldn’t account for the more exceptional outliers beyond the firefighters that run into a burning building because of their conditioning or the nay-sayers to ice-cream fixations, examples referenced in Dr. Budon’s paper; and there was still something intuitively missing from an all-encompassing angle, something bigger at play.

The monks, the freak-level elite athletes, the anomalies of the world; the inexplicable exemplars of spooky actions at a distance; neuroplasticity, genetics, evolution, morphic resonance, quantum entanglement. 

The over-riders of consciousness and the intuitional but inexplicable functions of our conscious operation — some of the fringe-saddling dots remained frustratingly unconnected. 

Then I stumbled into the one thing that could unify things a bit, not because it was missing until now but because it was constricting interpretation maybe a bit more than it ought to have.

Time. 

Suddenly, I realized that it didn’t so much matter as to who’s situated where inside of the [un]conscious vehicle — it’s the road itself that may hold some underlying clues. 

While Dr. Budson‘s theory accounts for the over-ride function of our conscious capabilities and discusses the variable degrees of control we can gain from combining our differing spheres of perception, it seems to quantify everything from a perspective of linear progression through time with a relative manner of immediacy between our conscious and unconscious interaction. 

For those who have sought to reinforce the connections between surface- and sub- consciousness, and for those who have explored the murky underwaters of their psychological dynamics, it’s obvious that there’s an entirely different schematic at play with regards to time — a schematic that need not subscribe to a linear progression model of immediate self-reactivity. 

The way that our consciousness, sub or surface, flows around and moves us through reality is curiously transcendent of (or immune to) temporal consideration (time) — it’s more so a dance than a march, a rippling pirouette of cause and effect. 

In other words, things don’t always necessarily move a singular way from point A to point B; they shuffle around, bouncing off of or aligning with the various impressions that are formed, like slipstreams and currents that push and pull our consciousness along greater patterns and repercussions at play. 

It’s [un]fortunately not so black and white when we just zoom out a bit: we see that conditioning of the unconscious mind by the conscious self (or vice versa!) isn’t as formulaic as it may seem.

Think chess, not checkers. 

And time plays a critical role in the functions of consciousness, no matter how we really look at it. Regardless of how distant or impending, the past and the future hold an immense grip over the present, not to mention the ways in which they impress upon one another. 

Events of yesterday can surely effectuate the actions of tomorrow and those of tomorrow can always retrospectively contextualize yesterday.

We should — no, we need — consider this bilateral dynamic of time, and we should stretch it as far as imaginatively possible.

Consider someone who has recovered from a debilitating addiction — someone who had once lost everything to a vice and had then successfully mastered it — such a person will allow the prior conscious decisions to direct their future unconscious actions even decades later. Consider a prisoner who’s preparing for a potential parole qualification in two decades’ time. 

As such, we should consider that conscious intention needs not have an expiry date — it can last forever, not just minutes or milliseconds. We need to temporally stretch the schematics of consciousness to account for the inexplicable dots that lie farther out than the outliers do. 

In this way we can see how some individuals achieve the kind of unbelievable mental feats they achieve; we can see how the differing levels of consciousness can effectuate tangible physiological changes; how our dynamic conscious self can be, simultaneously, directive and adherent to its deeper (or higher) self over a lifetime, not just over a bowl of ice cream. 

We should thus consider all prior experiences, all future considerations, transcending a linear model of time as much as fathomably possible.

The mind can imagine into the future, be motivated by the past, introspect across boundaries of all kinds. And to the mind, time is much more circular — perpetually cycling, so long as there’s propulsion ahead (in the form of a deeply dedicated self-awareness or intention), bringing the conscious mind into this slip stream dynamic.

We can calibrate our unconsciousness to such a degree that our conscious action follows through in the ways we want it to, affording us more control so long as we ride the currents of our intensive intention.

Accordingly, we need not lack so much control, we need only employ some faith in the beautifully enigmatic and unquantifiable relationship between our surface and sub levels of consciousness.