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Conversation with Simon Lewis: How do we make the most of our Consciousness?
Due to enthusiastic responses we are keeping this conversation for two days!
My goal is to find ways to answer this most important question of our time, so others may find their inner selves. Everyone wants and needs maximum mental performance, yet school dropout rates attest to the size of the gap that our adolescents drop into. Why are these solutions a hidden secret? How can we develop an integrated approach to maximize our most precious resource on Earth — our collective consciousness — and nurture it in each of us? Why aren’t measurable repeatable approaches, to bridge the gap from potential mind toward actual mind, widely known and available to all from youth to old age, and how do we make this become a reality?
I hope you join me to discuss these and other questions,
Simon Lewis
More info about the speaker:
http://www.ted.com/speakers/simon_lewis.html
www.simonlewis.us
http://atavist.net/blindsight/
Closing Statement from Simon Lewis
I just finished reading all of your final comments and want to extend special thanks to TED for making this civil, thoughtful and remarkably global forum possible, as well as the INK organization who originally invited me to India in association with TED, and gave a first opportunity to share my ideas before an international audience.
And I want to thank each of you, who spoke or who listened, for it is your contribution that empowers all. I understand from TED that remarkable audience of some 2,000 participated online in our swiftly assembled colloquy, with over a hundred drawn to participate with comments from countries as far apart as the USA, India, South Korea and China.
I wish all of you of the happiness to be found in seeking the hidden path toward actual mind, and I thank you for showing me how much interest and concern there is, how many tangible ideas are offered, from around the world to help achieve this for all societies and ages.
Thank you, Simon Lewis














Cat Anderson
Thank you for your willingness to move through all that you have, so that this moment, right now, and the wonderful way I feel in connecting here, could happen.
Kevin Schmidt
There are several reasons for this. I have found that if you pose this question to 100 so called thinking experts, they will give you more than 100 answers. All of these answers will be incomplete, few will describe the actual thinking processes, which will also be incomplete, and all answers will be needlessly complicated and difficult to understand for all but the highly educated, which are the ones who need to improve their thinking abilities the least.
"How can we develop an integrated approach to maximize our most precious resource on Earth — our collective consciousness — and nurture it in each of us?"
This is a problem I have been working on for the past several years. The answer can be found in the way we define the method of communication between the participants in a collective consciousness endeavor.
If we allow complete freedom of communication, the conversation usually devolves quickly into illogical thinking and angry uncivil behavior towards other participants. Conversely, if we are overly restrictive, such as a town hall meeting conducted under 'Robert's Rules of Order', many of the participants will feel alienated and frustrated by a cumbersome and complicated process that they believe serves to stifle their input. Also, many people enter a problem solving discussion with a hidden agenda, and because of that, they take sides and take ownership of ideas that have not been fully explored. Like a high school debate, their goal is to win the argument, and not to collaborate with one another to find the the best possible solutions with the greatest consensus.
These issues, among others that serve only to limit effective communication between the participants and to stifle collaboration, can be eliminated by using the right system. I explain one possible solution here:
http://Causense.com
Feel free to respond by using the feedback form at the bottom of the page
Craig Patterson 10+
"There is enough for every man's need, but not for every man's greed" Gandhi
However the most damaging aspect of our collective denial revolves around our thinking that the environment is a subset of our economy, instead of the other way around.
Will the last humanoid please turn off the lights.
Alex Mero
Paul Lis
Bringing education to groups of thirty in the community. Active educational networks to ease the cost of materials and supplies. Open source digital educational interface for alternative access (OLPC). Dedicated national funding and resources on priority listing. Backing the system by purchasing a number of neglected buildings. Reclaiming the buildings, and putting it to good use.
This would allow small groups of neighborhood kids to learn life long skills in a more natural and inclusive way. Maybe, think of it as an educational franchise. Thus enabling people to work their way through management, to ownership. Giving rise to autonomous employment and skill acquisition. Self funding education, in essence, for everyone, to learn anything. Making sure resources are unlimited, would allow for the best educated populace in the world.
To cut public funding costs, and reallocate funding from food programs currently active, to teaching the urban populace to grow their own organic produce, and raise livestock and poultry. By franchising, corporation sponsorship incentives spur economic growth by alleviating long term investments, and increasing long term ROI. Thus, providing basic necessities and allowing productivity, morale, health and economic standing to increase.
Paul Lis
Wilton Jackson
Wilton Jackson
Simon Lewis
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_lewis_don_t_take_consciousness_for_granted.html
If my talk does interest you, then my book Rise and Shine is essentially an exploration of my consciousness in a very moving story. On Amazon and Barnes& Noble you can read some reader reviews and the first two chapters of the Kindle, I think for free, or order the hardcover, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Shine-Extraordinary-Journey-Recovery/dp/1595800514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262136209&sr=1-1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Rise-and-Shine/Simon-Lewis/e/9781595800510
And the two radio interviews this week also give a chance to hear me speak about consciousness within my life:
KCRW show UNFICTIONAL:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/uf/uf110923its_always_now
KCRW show THE BUSINESS:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb/tb110926a_hollywood_producer
I don't want you to think of this as a burden, and simply suggest you explore some of these links and see if they give you good interesting questions that brighten your day.
Thank you, Simon
James Kindler 20+
I have schizophrenia and live in the present, it's a way of thinking or percieving time and space. People consider me disabled but I don't, I simply don' think like everyone else. I once took a psychological test and the person giving it to me said that was faster and more accurate than my supervisor could do it. I'm well employed and spend much of my spare time in the forest where I feel connected to nature. MRIs and CT scans show a lack of grey matter, but something is clearly working well, any ideas on what that might be?
James
Simon Lewis
Congratulations for finding such good ways to live within time and space that works for you.
James Kindler 20+
Dennis Stacey
Good luck with your book.
Dennis
Simon Lewis
Gerald O'brian 50+
We've got the best brains in the animal kingdom, yet the vast majority of us are living like ants, boring ourselves to death with ridiculously dumb jobs, having consumerism as our only painkiller.
Hiring someone to sit in a bank for 30 years should be considered a crime against humanity.
Benny boy
Orange U
I am not a neuroscientist--just a house wife and mother-- but I have noticed that certain behaviors increase my own self-awareness.
Here is my Recipe:
1. Good nutrition to promote balance in neurotransmitters
2. Regular exercise (especially exercise which increases my heart rate) According to studies by Dr. Servan Schreiber this reconciles imbalances between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. (One such study demonstrated that running was more effective as a long term cure for depression than drugs. If you know someone who is depressed—become their running partner).
3. Regular “mindfulness” practice, such as meditation or “down time observation”— (I call it “making my brain climb into my body”). This is just trying to listen, feel, smell and see simultaneously without reflecting on the stimuli.. I read that the frontal lobes have neural pathways to all other cortical areas and to the limbic system, so practicing these connections makes sense if you want to maximize self-awareness.
4. Make time to day dream time and consider my life’s purpose and plan how to put it into practice.
5. Just Do It--making my plans become actions
What I would like to better understand is this: does consciousness have an evolutionary purpose or is it simply a byproduct or our neural complexity? Can consciousness be separated from the body?
Simon Lewis
Robert Galway 20+
One observation is that we are no longer focused by adversity. Generations back, man against nature was more of a concern than it is today. Food, wars, predators, and weather were all potential threats. Fear from these circumstances is less of a threat. Concern for survival is less of an issue today. Fear as a motivator is diminished. A few generations back, immigrants with no education told children stories of how lucky they were to go to school and have a real chance to get ahead in life by parents who may not have made it through high school. Kids watched their parents struggle and decide they wanted something different, so they were motivated by observation of a struggle. Perhaps the struggle has changed. Kids might be de-motivated by watching their parents struggle with marriage or the constant barrage of negative media, creating feelings of hopelessness and apathy. Kids might be de-motivated by the thought that success through academic achievement is less certain now, as the quality of their lives will on average not match that of their parents. Then there is college debt, and possibly a degree that that has no more earning potential than a high school diploma. These are de-motivational circumstances facing kids today.
The fix is to change the de-motivating circumstances.
Brian Knight
I have advocated starting a program and contacted a company that designs such programming EFFECTIVELY and trains people to deliver the content. It works in about 90% of participants .
I delivered this in person to a public education institution board president over two hours including a Q & A session, and the response was, "It sounds great, but, our bloated budget is in question and though this doesn't really make a dent in that, with the dunderheads that are in charge on the board, it will be a bone of contention and politicized rather than implemented.".
Very predictable.
There is no will to deliver this sort of content that would actually unlock the secret to self actualizing students and great school scores among the administrations of public schools in America.
That's a huge reason why it isn't widespread, because our traditional and institutional methods of knowledge transmission are not concerned with the quality of knowledge transmitted by them as much as "looking god" and "trying" as a play for funding, no emphasis on results or quality of process.
As far as some kind of "God Consciousness"
I think God is the concept "that there is something that works and something that doesn't work" and that you as a singular entity may know the difference and experience a universe where that is so rather than universal entropy. Seen as a whole, the universe may appear as entropy with pockets of order, those pockets allow consciousness to exist in them as a byproduct of the existence of order. That doesn't mean we exist as any accident, it doesn't mean anything at all. However, here we are, and we may as well invent and live a life worth living in the present since we exist on a razor's edge of the illusion of time. How that works with the talk, anything is possible, even recovery from this traumatic injury.
Simon Lewis
Brian Knight
I'd like to introduce you to a friend whose foundation is about this very issue that you bring to our consciousness. He can be found at : http://www.foundationalchemy.org/Mission.html
Thank you again, I hope you may both benefit each other in this work and bring this even more to light. It really needs to be a much more public and heard conversation.
Bruno Barroca
Also, to be considered natural should not be reasonable to be some kind of symmetric process such as: "From Potential Minds to Actual Minds, and from Actual Minds to Potential Minds"? Or is this another individualistic line of thought?
What is collective consciousness? If it is really consciousness, should not the collective actually realize that? Or perhaps you just realized that we have some kind of collective inconsciousness, and then just called it collective consciousness?
So I guess, I will put the same simple question as you did: Is it possible to unleash the unbounded energy of the self and multiply it in a global common goal, so that when divided by everyone can recover each one's energy loss with immense joy and fulfillment?
Yes, because after all, we are just tourists here...
Simon Lewis
Brennan Hooper
Truthcontest.com
Brian Knight
Brennan Hooper
Simon Lewis
Love is all powerful, yes. At the same time, the research shows up to 30% of children have learning difficulties that are not self-correcting with love alone, and that with screening and detection and targeted therapy and stimulation it is possible to avoid academic failure and maximize children's future. I hope your definition of love might expand to include a society that loves its future by using science to nurture the consciousness of all. This is something more than love and caring; it is love accompanied by effective intervention and action.
Brennan Hooper
Lynn Howard
funmi nathan-marsh
Brian Knight
Simon Lewis
Conor O'Higgins 20+
"Why aren’t measurable repeatable approaches, to bridge the gap from potential mind toward actual mind, widely known and available to all from youth to old age, and how do we make this become a reality?"
That is an interesting question. One possible answer is that mainstream Western culture has looked down upon the consciousness and thought it less valid than the material world. The scientific method led to a worldview in which all that exists is matter and the mind is an unreliable, irrational instrument to be overcome. If this is your worldview, then you neglect training your consciousness, and instead focus on rearranging the physical world around you. This Western, scientistic worldview has been extraordinarily successful at rearranging the physical world according to human whim and - I think few will deny - has been equally unsuccessful at cultivating happy and high states of consciousness.
This trend is already reversing. People are taking more and more interest in their consciousness and in all kinds of mental training. Maybe one reason is that scientific theories (specifically Einstein's) started to include the observer's consciousness about 100 years ago; common sense seems to catch up with science after about 100 years. Another reason is that with neuroscience, faculties of consciousness like concentration, compassion, or whatever, now have physical correlates, which make them more valid to materialist worldviews.
SANTHIP KANHOLY
Mike Goldstein
The divine is grateful that a piece of it (us) is conscious to experience this world. Our correct mental posture is some mix of "THANK YOU" and "YOU'RE WELCOME."
As far as what you're asking about "developing an integrated approach..." etc. Here's my idea:
Dissolve boundaries and continue dissolving boundaries. Cultural, educational, social, relationship, emotional, physical, political, spiritual. All tension has its source in some kind of separation.
Simon Lewis
Simon Lewis
Brandon Santangelo
Only you know how to unlock your full potential. I believe it can be achieved through philosophical thought about your own mind, personality and actions in which you discover all the things that hold you down, and let them go. Reaching some sort of intellectual nirvana.
Apple Lynch
Tim blackburn 30+