Month: May 2011

A confession and a concise answer

I have a confession: for at least a couple of weeks after I started hanging out a bunch with SingInst people, I was pretending I knew what an “alief” was. Eventually, I asked, and the answer Jasen gave me was: Your “aliefs” are what your elephant believes. 

Nick has suggested that “cesires” (what the elephant wants) be talked about as well.

These days , I’m more inclined to describe my state by saying, “a part of me believes X” or “a part of me wants Y”, because then I have a better sense of how to continue the internal conversation.

Parts, parts everywhere!

Once I started thinking in terms of the different parts of my mind, I started seeing references to them all over the place in books I was reading. Here are some examples:

“We are compassionate with ourselves when we are able to embrace all parts of ourselves and recognize the needs and values expressed by each part.” –Nonviolent Communication

“As soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time.” –Getting Things Done

“A part of your mind loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference.” –Eat That Frog

“There is a part of Sara that recognizes her choice as a mistake and her current living arrangement as a brand of foolish consistency.” –Influence

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming talks about “schemas”, which I think are basically the same thing: “Schemas with too little activation to influence any other schemas remain unconscious.”