"SAM HARRIS: For most of us, we wake up each morning and we are chased out of bed by our thoughts and we think, think, think, think, until we struggle to fall asleep later that night. And our lives are largely determined by the quality of those thoughts, the quality of the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. And these stories can be incredibly powerful and negative stories can be profoundly enervating and dispiriting."
"But they're not the most fundamental layer of our experience. I mean, there's just something deeper to our being, moment to moment, than our thoughts and our reactions. Can you let your attention fully sink into the present moment so that you can discover what is beautiful there? What is sacred there? What is self-transcending there?"
"Consciousness is any subjective experience, seeing, hearing, loving, dreading, imagining. If it feels like something, then you're conscious."
Consciousness comprises any subjective experience — seeing, hearing, loving, dreading, imagining — and is defined by what it feels like to be. The emergence of consciousness from the universe's unconscious complexity remains unresolved. Daily life is often dominated by repetitive thoughts and self-told stories that determine moods and behaviors and can become powerful, negative, and enervating. Those narratives are not the deepest layer of experience; a deeper, moment-to-moment awareness underlies thoughts and reactions. Allowing attention to rest fully in the present can reveal beauty, sacredness, and experiences that transcend the self.
Read at Big Think
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