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~Imaginations
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From my substack post “consensus-ism part 2”
Layer 1 is the core, foundational layer of experience. It’s made up of your senses, your vision, sounds etc, and also your bodily awareness, the feelings of excitement or fear or nervousness etc, and also of “primary thoughts”, as it’s not that I’ve stopped thinking, but I feel like I only have genuine thoughts rather than the self-referential, like, “thinking about thinking” thoughts in reaction to my core thoughts.
And then layer 2 is the mind’s reaction to layer 1. So like, my core lived experience (layer 1) at the dinner table was of not having anything to say in that moment, and of not wanting to say anything. And then layer 2 would take that and go “WOAH BUDDY DOES THIS MEAN XYZ???”.
So that’s what was going on when I wrote part 1 - I was much better at noticing my consensus, but still had a lot of anxiety about following my consensus, like “oh I don’t want to socialise at the intentional community tonight, I have no desire to, I want to rest (cool, layer 1, real shit) → “OH NO IS THAT OK DOES THAT MEAN I’M REALLY DISAGREEABLE EEEE AAAAA” (layer 2).
I mean, that’s a pretty dramatic example, a more lowkey one would be like “it’s a Saturday, I feel like going for a walk → eeeee but what about xyz other options”.
Diagrams from Rivalvoices/Guy/@nosilverv
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- Perceptions = layer 1
- Imaginations = layer 2
- From imagination-foregrounding life to perceptions-foregrounding life
Do Nothing meditation = stop engaging in layer 2
Eckhart Tolle
- Reminds me of the David Foster Wallace line from This is Water re: “the mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master”. And then of course Ian McGhilchrist’s left vs right hemispheres