I thought I would share this idea and see what others have to say about it:

"There are two styles of consciousness. One uses symbols (sings, words, pictures, song, language, etc.), the other does not."

It's exceedingly simplistic, put that way ... but, it seems to perceptually make sense... especially when you allow that the either/or of it actually posits two ends of a single continuum.



Totally separately, persons just beginning to explore altered states of consciousness might find the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" (http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right ... 0874774241) useful. It was written by an art teacher that spent decades learning how to get students to see. It turns out that left brain (symbolic) thinking gets in the way of that big-time, and so she designed a way of teaching people to force themselves to shift into right-brain-mode. (It's actually not forcing.... you do certain exercises and the left brain simple says something along the lines of "The heck with that! I'm not doing that! There's no labels or names!"

-Montana

I like this book and lady Montana, thanks. If the Bookcases for Children goes well we (my mouse and I) will start a Bookcases for Adults with this book as one of the included books to get them going.

I like where I read her say that the executives and other staid folks at her workshops had their own drawings to use as evidence of what she is saying which was something they could not ignore or explain away.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Don't forget that Tom has spoken of this before, the division between the so called left brain and right brain thinking. There is still this spectrum of types of thinking as we exist as IUOCs where there is no such thing as bilateral symmetry and no left or right so you are not using the left or right 'side' of your mind. The spectrum is roughly from logical and intellectual to intuitive and possibly mystical as the right term. And there are some as Tom notes who do both in a balanced way. That probably includes Tom, spanning this spectrum, and he somewhere commented on me being balanced in this way as I remember.

Ted

Who could forget that Ted? :)
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Yes, of course, this is not new: In fact, the first tape in the TMI do-it-at-home series introduces a "focus Three" which I believe is hemispheric co-ordination.

What is nifty about the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book is that she has worked out a series of techniques that teach a person to A) identify these two sides experientially and B) To willfully move from one state to the other. Nice and tight. For folks that haven't yet made these observations or learned how to do that, the experience quite "But...Oh!~ ...Why, Of course!"

-Montana

That sounds like a fascinating book Montana. I can vouch for the principle in my own experience. I have always tried to focus on the intuitive side of my nature, but I was classically educated more in the hard sciences of math, physics, chemistry etc with a lot of self-study in photography. After graduating from college I began to take art and design classes which forced me to develop my right hemisphere more. As this progressed I felt a literal shift in my mind which seemed to open a whole new level of richness in my experience of the world and an increased fidelity in a whole new channel of communication. This was not a hard and fast approach of exercises that it sounds like this book more neatly lays out, but possibly a similar end result. I will have to look for it. Thanks for posting the information.