Strange dreams

[seekingObjectivity]

jOda, I understand that what I say may not accurately reflect what I mean. I suppose this problem is a lingering remnant of my articulation disorder. Having realized that what I say might be confusing, I'll try to think of another way. Thanks for pointing that out. Given that psychopaths cannot accurately perceive true emotions and myself possibly being somewhat opposite of such, I have a hard time perceiving the thought processes of others. I'll work on it. Hopefully, I can make clear what I mean so that others may understand me and I them. And so that together we may be able to finely tune our "reading instrument."

 

[j0da]

Actually, if one's mind is running wild, thus creating messy thoughts, then trying to accurately reflect those thoughts would result in messy writting. It's my impression that you are doing just fine in expressing what you mean, the problem is that there is so much chaos in your head, that no matter how hard you try to communicate clearly, you'll confuse people. So, the first thing to do in order to be understood is to bring some ORDER to ones thoughts. Again, I encourage you to read Wave and Adventures series.

 

[seekingObjectivity]

I have been thinking about how I may re-formulate what I have said in clearer terms and I thought that it might be helpful if I could read others interpretations of what I have said. I think it would serve as a great reference point to ascertain the inaccuracy of my internal meaning and external meaning. Having been reflected into/upon another's internal thought process and reflected back as a "function" (not to reduce anyone to a function but I think you know what I'm getting at) of said process, it might help me to better understand how my internal to external processing glitch in a possibly new and novel way. If so, I might then be able to assimilate an alternate perception leading to the discovery of more knowledge about the inner workings of my machine. At the same time it may also help others better understand the inner processes of their machine as well.

 

[seekingObjectivity]

jOda, what you have indicated may very well be my problem, but as I perceive it I do not feel that mind is running wild in its thoughts for I have been working on that for some time now. I guess everyone may be the same in that they know exactly what they mean when they write and it is the case for me as well. Therein lies the crux of my problem.

I think I should express why it may seem to appear messy and disorganized. I have a very large story I would like to tell as it has been constantly on mind and clouding my ability to think logically once again. Prior to those experiences I noted previously, I had a very negative view towards life but I was able to think very clearly in terms of the "logic" of my view of the world. I have a degree in Mathematics, Biochemistry, one credit hour away from a Master's in Biochemistry, and I am currently in medical school.

However, after having discovered the true existence of spiritual reality, that is, actually having 100% felt it throughout all of my being and having zero doubt that it exists, I began to have experiences of emotion of a caliber that I had never felt before in my life. Prior to this discovery, I regarded emotional logic as false because it always resulted in leading people astray from the Truth. I had seen it happen so many times that it hurt me to think about it.

I convinced myself that in order to not stray away myself I should maintain an awareness without emotion so that I could see my faults in thinking more clearly. Thus, when an emotion presented itself I tried to ascertain from what it had been generated so that I could bring it back to the zero point. The result was being able to help others deal with their emotions because I could see through its cloud and could direct them possibly better than they could direct themselves.

However, after this discovery I became filled with unexplained emotions. As of yet, I am unable to ascertain the source from which it had been generated. Ironically, emotional logic has led me to this site and not mere logic alone. (How wrong of me to have thought in such a way previously!)

Now I am faced with the difficulty in ascertaining whether or not my emotional logic is true. I don't know whether or not I should attempt to tease it apart once more or leave the cloud in its place. I have arguments for both. In order to function as a citizen of the U.S. requires only logic. If I use only logic then I can do almost anything desired i.e. become very rich from some inventions I have come up with, make loads of money off the stockmarket, have a mansion on the beach with nice cars and a gold-digging wife (j/k!). In other words, using logic alone it becomes very easy to "sucessfully" function within this country. One only needs to hear the two to three word lyrics from a rap song to undertand how easy it really can be.

If I use this newly aquired emotional logic I am faced with many difficult choices because it necessitates one to consider another. It requires one to actually feel for another such that it becomes impossible to respond appropriately without breaking this countrys increasingly ridiculous laws. I am in medical school and even among those students around me I can see right through to their true motivations and it frightens me to
think what this country has done to its citizens.

The school that I attend has a forum from which my fellow classmates and I have discussed issues relating to healthcare reform, economics, politics, discussions about what could be done to resolve such associated probems and with much disgust I have found that many students do
not really care about the well-being of another. They only think that they do because it seems their action almost never matches their words.

For example: They talk of empathy and believe themselves to be so and/or being here for the right reasons to help another in need. Later, I propose the idea of a form of kenotic economics (an economics based on STO principles) and they seemed to attack me. They use evolutionary principles as a means to explain why it would never work such as "survival of the fittest" being equated to survival by serving self-interest. If
one does serve only others then everyone would be reduced to serving the interests of those who served themselves. I agree with their logic but I propose as a hypothetical situation that such policy was actually instituted and somehow enforced at all levels. They insist that it still would not work because everyone's corrupt and eventually someone would find a loophole and take advantage of everyone.

What struck me was that they could not fathom a reality in which it could work. This only reflected to me a misreading of thought to action, how could it be that they were here to truly help another when they were unable to fathom a reality where everyone truly did help one another as a means to serve self? Such thought processes indicated to me their truly veiled desires as to why they have chosen to become doctors. They want to help others only if it benefits them in terms of either status, wealth, etc. and therefore not to really help others as a benefit in and of itself.


It seems that my decision should be very easy no?

If it only were as easy the obvious I would not be here writing this. The problem I am facing or I am going to face is having the realization that my actions are going to contradict my thoughts in such a way that I feel it would be in direct conflict to The Work. How is it possible to be a person that becomes a Doctor and having knowledge of agendas that are meant to slowly kill people via certain pharmaceuticals of which I may or may not have knowledge actually be a person who is content with themelves? (Strange I just began to cry for no apparent reason.) I became a doctor for what I felt was the right reasons and now being faced with this new realization of reality I cannot become such a Doctor under present policies, laws, regulations, agendas without sacrificing either The Work or possibly any hope to have a career without being sued many times over, possibly have my license taken away or experience massive debt or become unable to provide the help to those who really need it, and help them in the right way all in the name of doing the right thing!

Right now as I sit here typing this, I should be studying for I have finals next week. In fact, if you count the time spent studying versus the time spent on the forum one may realize how badly I need to study. Thus, the sacrifice has already begun. Do I face medicine and The Work head on and not allow contradiction without fear of consequences? Or do I pursue another profession where such contradictions may not be as likely? I have accumulated much debt on my way to get where I am today, if I change professions what would it be? I can't fathom one that will not have an abundance of contradictions.

At this very moment, the thought comes to mind of the C's consistantly telling Laura that all will be taken care of yet she continued to worry about money. It is easy when reading her story, and after having began to more or less trust the C's word, the failure of Laura to see that she was focused on the wrong things. Her emotions as worry and/or fear made her blind to seeing that which was easy to see by the reader, that when upright decisions are made and knowledge applied correctly all will indeed be taken care of.

Thus, I know the decision I should make. That of becoming a Doctor for the right reasons and without contradiction even if hidden agendas take the life of me via stress of constantly not knowing whether the treatments I give or the medicines I prescribe might be the one that slowly kills. I KNOW ALL WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF.


Wow....I made a mess once again of my writing.....but I needed this.....thank you jOda....you have helped me more than you might know....

 

[anart]

I have been thinking about how I may re-formulate what I have said in clearer terms and I thought that it might be helpful if I could read others interpretations of what I have said. I think it would serve as a great reference point to ascertain the inaccuracy of my internal meaning and external meaning.

Are you being externally considerate in desiring such a thing?

Do you take your reader's time and effort into consideration when you write long, rambling, self-referencing posts?

 

[seekingObjectivity]

I understand what you mean. I didn't think about it from that perspective. I, for some reason or another, had only thought about from the perspective that it may help others better understand the inner processes of their machine as well. I'm still in the process of understanding other's perspective in that regard. From my perspective, I would gladly help anyone who asks but only after I have gained the necessary amount of understanding and knowledge to do so.

 

[seekingObjectivity]

Please disregard post #18....I tend to ramble and I should resolve these problems in a more personal manner. Thanks for keeping me in check. I must stumble alot when I sleep ! :)

 

[seekingObjectivity]

Do you take your reader's time and effort into consideration when you write long, rambling, self-referencing posts?

About the self-referencing posts thing:

After reading many of the threads throughout this forum, it seems that alot of people know each other. I felt like I needed to tell my story of how I came to find this site. It had been, and still is, an exciting experience for me involving strange occurrences, experiences, coincidences, new levels of emotion, and sleep paralysis (starting when I was 4). So I guess you could say I have the nervous jitters of a rookie just chattering questions/comments away to anyone who'd listen. I'm the waterboy who looks up to and wants to someday have the knowledge of the pro. I really am an amateur (sub-amateur) when it comes to knowing left from right about the spiritual. So not knowing, I've just been running around opening and closing all kinds of doors trying to figure out if there's a You Are Here Map but no matter where I go there I am!

Realizing the absurdity of running around and going nowhere and that time is tight for most of us, I'll take a break from barking my garbled non-sense and finish reading In Search of the Miraculous and those other books suggested for me to read.

Must one have to feel hurt to progress?

I guess there's only one way to find out....I'll be back soon!

 

[anart]

Realizing the absurdity of running around and going nowhere and that time is tight for most of us, I'll take a break from barking my garbled non-sense and finish reading In Search of the Miraculous and those other books suggested for me to read.

I don't think you need to take a break from the forum, for what it's worth. I was just trying to get you to consider that a part of external consideration is to work quite hard at writing in as clear and concise a way as possible - with your reader in mind.

Of course you can share your background or how you came to be here, but if you do so in a way that makes it easier on your reader to understand, it makes quite a bit of difference. What I mean by that is that if your reader has to put in more effort to understand what you've written than you put into writing it (because you basically just 'let it flow' in a stream of consciousness, here is everything I can say about this, way) - then, external consideration is missing.

As far as having the 'knowledge of the pro' - that is not necessary here either. Really, all that is necessary is sincerity and a thirst for the truth. Perhaps, before you begin to write a really long post, you could ask, "is this beneficial, relevant and adding to the growing body of information". It can be personal and do that - it doesn't have to be 'impersonal' to add to the body of information - the two aren't mutually exclusive - but - it should be as concise and clear as possible. fwiw.

 

[vinny]

hi seekingobjectivity,

just to add to what anart has said: I've found that the extra effort and thought that can go into a post, when truly 'external considering', makes you (the writer) have to clarify things in your head, and it is funny that often, making this effort for the benefit of others, it can definitely be more educational for oneself as well. you really can get more of real value out, the more energy you put in - that seems to be some universal law or something!

 

[Ruth]

The result was a "locally internal" progression in understanding outside world "causes and effects" being validated via observation. Such “locally internal�� validatory processes might have then become a/the means to internally explain "the unknown". Understanding might have then become a formulation of a “locally internal response�� weighted by observation, both internal and external, of “cause and effect�� . Such relations in assimilation contrasted with/against observation, though, may have or may not have been necessarily an accurate representation of True reality and required of me cognitive realization of its inaccuracy. In the case that an inaccuracy was realized (an emotional response), my awareness shifted providing me a force from within to seek observation without shifting the balance of my assimilated world-view in relation to its emotional, intellectual, and most recently spiritual resolve.

Having this newly acquired cognizant “bank�� of knowledge gathered by doubly reflected observation (i.e. “locally internal�� and “Non-locally internal�� ) and seeking to minimize pre-inversion frustrations I must have developed within me a pattern to disregard most other people's apparent explanations to the "why" of mostly everything, albeit, without confrontation. I became, for lack of a better term, an inverted psychopath inasmuch as disregarding most any “outside�� or “other�� intellectual (non-emotional) views of reality might apply to such a term. Rather than having a cold relentless pursuit to power with the purpose of control, I had (have) a relentless pursuit of knowledge as power to control my emotional state of mind. [Though with the recently realized spiritual reality I do not disregard but externally consider] Thus, I must have assimilated “understanding�� as merely an internal reflection of knowledge or a relation of “local-self�� to “non-local self�� . I must have felt that others do the same and developed within me a rebellious nature to intellectual authority.

It seems to me that this 'logicalising' or 'mechanicalising' of the problem is not getting to the heart of it. Neither is ignoring, supressing or shutting out emotions (and I'm not saying you do that all the time, but this can be an unaknowledged - maybe even 'secret' goal that some people who are having a hard time of it, have). Neither should a person ignore the likely hood that 4D STS is very much interfereing and attacking, mainly through your dreams, but also via people around you. The question you maybe should be asking yourself, is 'how much do you "like" it?' If you have convinced yourself that the 4D STS interference if 'good' (on any level), then you have fallen into a trap. Hitting it over the head with a good dose of Gurdjieff won't 'do the trick', imo. Your decision to fight these monsters must come from deep inside the soul and you must be VERY adamant about it.

Therefore, it seems that from the perspective of my being, my soul, or my essence must have chosen to have this inverted psychopathic experience. Unfortunately, for this particular experience I negated spiritual reality from the beginning as it only recently has been assimilated into my world-view as an explanation to my perturbed emotional state. This perturbation, however, had not (and has not) been completely resolved. My emotional state prior to realization had been consistently negative in its nature because I tended to always disregard others thoughts on most all issues. This lack of resolve from not having been ascertained by me of the existence of spiritual reality led me to further my quest by seeking to understand this “hidden�� realm of knowledge to see if this was the answer to my general unhappiness to life. Unfortunately, I quit many times entertaining the possibility that, indeed, a god or God did not exist.

You exist, therefore God exists....:D I really believe you need to re-evaluate your emotions as this is the source of the problem. Seeing 4D STS use human emotions (especially negative ones) as food, you can tell why they want to give people a 'hard time', they are afterall the most highly evolved parasites in the universe. The question is, how much of them are you prepared to put up with? If I were you, I'd be getting them to work a bit harder for the 'priviledge of 'using' you.... with the end goal being getting rid of their interference all together!

At that time I had a girlfriend and her behavior suggested from both my Non-local view and local view of self to love me intensely. I, also, within one of these views of self increasingly became “in love�� with her as well.

And she 'proved' it by trying to emotionally blackmail you using the pity ploy and threatening suicide. The girl obviously needed professional help which you would have been unable to provide and you needed to study for exams which, because you were being 'controlled' by this person's behaviour, you were unable to do. An all round lose, lose situation, I'd say. Perhaps if you'd listened to your 'intuition' instead of any form of self importance, you would have avoided this person, who seemed to have been put in your path by 'accident'. You would have seen this coming and been able to avoid it. See, being 'logical' doesn't work all the time, sometimes you just have to be a bit cynical because the world we live in.

However embarrassing it may be for someone to admit such a thing, I met her while drunk at a “hole-in-the-wall�� bar on the “campus corner�� of the university I attended at that time. I had just gotten out of a four year relationship (approx. 4 days) when I met her. As we started to see each other more and more “bad�� things seem to always happen:

Yep, that's because she was 'bad' for you and you weren't seeing it. Damn!

I told her the reasons for talking with my ex as she was currently failing all of her classes and I was doing the best I could to help her to become motivated once again for the right reasons, that her current emotions were clouding her ability to reason,....

Good grief, there were two of them working you at the same time! Imagine that. You are 'trying' to help both of them at the same time (and probably having your sense of self importance reinforced). Bit of a trap wouldn't you say? Both of them appear to have needed some sort of professional help - help that you were unable to give. And all of this would have been distracting you form your studies. Not a good use of anybodies energy or time and unfortunately you 'fell' for it.

However, she began to tell me of a dream she had of an almost dead, grayish looking hand that had been wrapped around my neck and as soon as she said this my entire body tingled from head to toe as though a huge surge of energy was able to come back into or through my body. Not to mention that I had been having a pain in the back of my neck for sometime (this I never told her before as much as that my mind is able remember). We talked for sometime before she went to sleep next to me on the couch of which we had been sitting.

Its called being under attack. And you can bet that the Lizzies will use anything and anyone to achieve this. They will try and 'con' you into being a victim too...

All of these fours without explanation! When I got home I decide to look to see where I had placed the flower in my enzyme mechanics book previously. At the very beginning of chapter four! It was all too surreal! It definitely got my quest wheels moving!

Would have prefered to see those 'protection' wheels moving first...
All these little coincidence 'tricks' may just be tricks and tricks only. Ask yourself, how 'easy' are they to get and have? Are you just chasing dreams and becoming Lizzie lunch at the same time?

 

[seekingObjectivity]

After having given some thought pertaining to external consideration that dealt with “time� investment, I decided to see just how much “time� I was investing into mine as well as the associated energy to do so. As you will most probably see the objective “time� it takes me to compose a response may cause one to think that those thoughts are not the result of a random “streaming flow of consciousness� , rather, it is the result of an arduous amount of objective “time� superimposed onto a brief amount of subjective “time.� I never realized that my perceived passage of time was so out of sync with the objective passage of time. So much so that I am at a quandary of how I should proceed with regards to external consideration inasmuch as it might deal with the “time� investment of another. What do you all think would be the best course of action? Should I consider only my perceived passage of time in such an assessment or the actual passage of time? If I consider perceived time then I will have to invest much larger amounts of energy so that my thoughts do not appear to be so convoluted. But if I consider the actual passage of time then asking another to help further my understanding of other’s thinking processes by reading my convoluted posts could be considered valid from the perspective of externally considering another. What are your thoughts on this?

Are you being externally considerate in desiring such a thing?
Do you take your reader's time and effort into consideration when you write long, rambling, self-referencing posts?

I don't think you need to take a break from the forum, for what it's worth. I was just trying to get you to consider that a part of external consideration is to work quite hard at writing in as clear and concise a way as possible - with your reader in mind.

just to add to what anart has said: I've found that the extra effort and thought that can go into a post, when truly 'external considering', makes you (the writer) have to clarify things in your head, and it is funny that often, making this effort for the benefit of others, it can definitely be more educational for oneself as well. you really can get more of real value out, the more energy you put in - that seems to be some universal law or something!

By the way, I'm left-handed:

Post # 12:
time: ~ 9 hours Perceived passage of time
(Though subjective, I’ll be as honest as possible): 30 minutes
word count : 4,154
words/min. : ~ 7.7

Post # 14: time:approx. 2.5 hours Perceived passage of time: ~ 5 minutes

word count : 534
words/min. : ~3.6

Post # 19: time: approx. 2 hours Perceived passage of time: ~ 3-4 minutes

word count : 1443
words/min : ~ 12

Total time : 13.5 hours Total Perceived Time: ~38-39 minutes
Total words : 6131 Mean words/perceived time: ~157 words/min.
Mean words/min. : ~ 7.6
Total energy used by Brain: ~13.1 W Total perceived use: ~0.63 W

Average typing speed: 50 words/min.

According to Guinness Book of Records, Barbara Blackburn holds the record of fastest typist with a recorded speed of 212 wpm

The brain makes up 2% of a person's weight. Despite this, even at rest, the brain consumes 20% of the body's energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this making the power of the brain 20 W.

Based on a 2400 calorie diet (Adapted from Yang)

2400 "food calorie" = 2400 kcal

2400 kcal / 24 hr = 100 kcal/hr = 27.8 cal/sec = 116.38 J/s = 116 W

20% x 116 W = 23.3 W


Possible reason for my convoluted thinking:

There are many theories on how being left-handed affects the way a person thinks. One theory divides left- and right-handed thinkers into two camps: visual simultaneous vs. linear sequential.

According to this theory, right-handed people are thought to process information using a "linear sequential" method in which one thread must complete its processing before the next thread can be started.

Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a "visual simultaneous" method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were a thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person — using the linear sequential processing style — would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This seems to suggest that left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more creative stems due to this ability to multi-task.�

Right-handed people process information using "analysis", which is the method of solving a problem by breaking it down to its pieces and analyzing the pieces one at a time. By contrast, left-handed people process information using "synthesis", which is the method of solving a problem by looking at the whole and trying to use pattern-matching to solve the problem.

 

[seekingObjectivity]

Temporal processing and the Brain:

IQ Brain Clock EWOK
http://www.iapsych.com/iqclock2/map.htm

Auditory (Ga), speech,and language prominence in temporal processing

Temporal information in the range of tens to hundreds of ms is fundamental to many forms of sensory processing. Motion processing is a ubiquitous example in the auditory, somatosensory, and visual domains of a task that requires temporal information. However, it is arguably in the auditory domain that timing is most prominent, owing to its importance in vocalization and speech recognition.

The temporal structure within each syllable and phoneme also contributes to speech recognition. Specifically, temporal features are fundamental for phoneme discrimination. These features include voice- onset time (the time between air release and vocal cord vibration), which contributes to the “baᾠ × “paᾠ discrimination (Lisker & Abramson 1964), the duration of frequency transitions (e.g., “baᾠ × “waᾠ; Liberman et al. 1956), and the silent time between consonants and vowels (e.g., “saᾠ × “staᾠ; Dorman et al. 1979). Additionally, prosodic cues such as pauses and duration of speech segments are used to determine semantic content (Lehiste et al. 1976).

Owing to the multiple levels and scales of temporal information in addition to spatial information, speech is one of the most complex forms of pattern recognition and requires both spatial and temporal processing (Shannon et al. 1995,Tallal 1994, Doupe & Kuhl 1999). Various lines of evidence have revealed the degree to which speech recognition relies on temporal information. Indeed, in some cases it can rely primarily on the temporal structure.

Given the importance of temporal information in speech and language it would be expected that deficits in temporal processing would produce language deficits. Indeed, it has been suggested that certain forms of language-based learning disabilities may be caused by generalized sensory deficits in temporal processing (Livingstone et al. 1991, Eden et al. 1996, Tallal & Piercy 1973; for a review seeFarmer & Klein 1995).
However, even if some forms of language-based learning disabilities result from generalized sensory deficits, it is not yet clear whether those deficits are specific to timing or to more general features such as complex stimuli or rapidly changing stimuli.
A recent study published in the journal Neuropsychology suggests that left-handed people are faster at processing multiple stimuli than righties. Coren says there may be a link between left-handedness and spatial abilities, and points out that many lefties fit the profile as divergent thinkers, with very "quirky" minds.

 

[Bo]

Possible reason for my convoluted thinking:

There are many theories on how being left-handed affects the way a person thinks. One theory divides left- and right-handed thinkers into two camps: visual simultaneous vs. linear sequential.

According to this theory, right-handed people are thought to process information using a "linear sequential" method in which one thread must complete its processing before the next thread can be started.

Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a "visual simultaneous" method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were a thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person — using the linear sequential processing style — would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This seems to suggest that left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more creative stems due to this ability to multi-task.�

Right-handed people process information using "analysis", which is the method of solving a problem by breaking it down to its pieces and analyzing the pieces one at a time. By contrast, left-handed people process information using "synthesis", which is the method of solving a problem by looking at the whole and trying to use pattern-matching to solve the problem.

Hi SO,

It is not your left or right hand that describes how ones thinks or analyses, that is I think another illusion for giving yourself a reason of why your thinking is like that.

By understanding other people's thinking procces you first need to understand your own thinking procces,
do what I did, trow away everything get a pencil and some paper, write down all the names of all the people you have ever met and the good and bad experiences they gave you, try to write down all the strange dreams you had try to see if you see some pattern , analyse it observe it and then something will ''hit'' you and then you will ''see'' and then you won't have too open every door to see what is behind it, but instead you will be looking for the doors that actually do matter.

It seems to me that you have A LOT on your mind and to be able to go on, you need to trow it all ''away'' first, and I hope by doing what I did will help you aswell.

 

[vinny]

Possible reason for my convoluted thinking:

There are many theories on how being left-handed affects the way a person thinks.

heh! you don't get out of it that easily ;) I'm a left-hander too.

I don't think 'time' is really the issue, so much as consciously focussed attention.

It is very easy to spend inordinate amounts of time going absolutely nowhere, because of completely mechanical/automatic thinking that simply drives itself. To rein-in the runaway mental processes, and to focus consciously, to be fully aware and in the 'driving seat' of these processes, is another thing altogether. in fact it is almost impossible to sustain for any length of time at all.

I get the impression (which may be wrong), that you are suffering from a 'runaway' intellectual energy which is simply going 'where it will', and giving you a lot of 'mental clutter', if you like. This is very common, especially in western man, where the intellect is over-exercised, and the emotions/intuition are almost completely numbed. I'm not criticizing, just observing what I see. You might be surprised to observe yourself from outside too: just look back at how many posts you've made in a short period of time, and how the direction changes, like a leaf on the wind.

you might find it interesting to read some of the 4th-way material (esp. 'in search of the miraculous'), regarding 'self remembering', and the use of energy by different 'centers' of the body.
(edit: ah just noticed you already mentioned that book. nevermind, ignore me ;) )