The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

I am currently writing some “ghost articles,” short lectures that are intended to sound like college lectures, for an English textbook that tests students' reading level. One subject that I have always found interesting, and that I have choosen to write on, is the question of automaticity. It was the subject of the first short article I wrote for a college newspaper as an undergrad. In it, I discussed Gurdjieff, and his notion of the ”sleep walker,” which I was taken with at the time, as well as the problem of free will in Western Philosophy. 

The topic of automaticity has resurfaced for me as a music pedagogue, as it is one of the things we attempt to teach in Suzuki through something called “overlearning.” Automaticity is also connected to what is called “flow” in psychology, which is an important facet of performance in music, as well as in improvisation. “Flow” also appears to be what is being described in works like Zen and the Art of Archery.

One thing that has been bugging me of late is Wilber's idea of “lucidity in all states.” What does this mean? As I've said before, I'm, beginning to suspect that this sounds like mere reflexive self-awareness. Is such “lucidity” necessary, or even desirable? Is it perhaps even at odds with “flow?”

In this article, which I was reading on automaticity, there is a short tract from Whitehead in which he rails against “thinking about what we are doing” while we are doing it. No doubt the typical New Age anti-intellectualist will chime in and “agree” with Whitehead, and rant about the evils of “over-thinking,” making use of the requisite hackeneyed discourse about “monkey-mind.” This tract, too would appear to be agreeing with this line of thinking by insisting that Gudjieff's “sleep walking” has to do with a confusion between “thinking” and “being conscious.”

But the psychologists in the article are also clear that they are specifically talking about conscious self-regulation, and to me this sounds much like “lucidity.” So the question I ask is this: could this “lucidity” in fact be at odds with the kind of idealized action described in Zen and the Art of Archery?

I find the above article on automaticity interesting because it touches on and connects a number of different issues we have discussed here (e.g. “psychic experience” could be a form of automatic processing). The article also gives a short overview of the three waves of psychology, and identifies the notion of the “causal self” as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the “third wave.” As an offshoot of the third wave, could the “fourth wave” also be dependent upon this notion of a “causal self?” If so what does this mean for transpersonal psychology and its inheritors?

We sometimes hear that “awareness” or “intelligence” (JK) is the causal locus of intentionality, and we sometimes hear of the “utmost importance” of its development. No doubt, in activities such as the Buddhist smrti/sati, or the Stoic prosoche, it is important. And yet awareness also seems to function at times as a useless fifth wheel with no importance at all. Indeed, in some traditions, Advaita and Sankhya, e.g., this is precisely its value: it's utter disconnect from action (kriya; karma; karana, etc.). And in some of the more radical spiritual traditions it is not only a mere, passive witness (sakshin), but it is utterly “without choice” by its very nature — what the Chuang Tzu calls “wu-wei,” or what the Ashtavakra Gita calls “yadrccha” (which is related to the causal theory of ”yadrccha-vada,” the anti-New Age causal theory par excellance, in which nothing happens for a reason).

How can all these strands be drawn together under a single theory? There seem to be several competing ideas at work here, and at least in “excess,” that are not easily reconcilable.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

This is an interesting question, Kela.  In a recent thread on another forum, I had highlighted Wilber's recent definition of enlightenment:

Let’s simply notice that our refined (or “double definition”) of Enlightenment fits perfectly with everything that we just saw about development. To be fully Enlightenment [sic] means to be one with-—to transcend and include-—all states and stages, and that means: All states and stages have been made object of your subject, all I’s have been made me of the next I until there is only I-I, and the entire world is your object resting easily in the palm of the your hand. You have dis-identified with everything and become one with everything, transcending and including the entire Kosmos.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Hi Balder,

My understanding of transpersonal psychology is that it purportedly attempts to describe, understand, and integrate “the farther reaches of human nature,” that is, the “experience” to be found among practitioners of all the various traditions of spirituality and mysticism, etc. I find it interesting that you would not include JK among these traditions, and I wonder if there are other traditions that you also do not find worthy of including :-) …unless your intent is to say that the term “transpersonal” does not include certain traditions.

Personally, I think that the term “transpersonal” is much maligned; it appears to have come to refer, more of less, to the “human potential” movement, and to all things “New Agey,” for lack of a better term. I am also reminded here of a chart drawn by Ken in Spectrum that had various “transpersonal bands” (whatever those are — the lokas of Shabda Yoga? the “Great Barrier” from The Final Frontier?). I wish we could get back to its original sense, which for me correspond to the Sanskrit apaurusha.

You write,
When discussing the awakening of intelligence, he often talks of being “empty” of any ordering or controlling center – of simply “letting the situation act,” or letting insight/action arise as appropriate to the situation….  I do not think he would identify choiceless awarness (lucidity) with conscious self-direction.

I think I would agree. The above description, to me, sounds very much like the description found in the Ashtavarka Gita and the Chuang Tzu. I guess my point is that such descriptions appear to be at odds with other descriptions — often taken for granted, among transpersonal theorists, as universal — that talk about “conscious self direction,” as you call it, as a kind of defining characteristic of “the Path.” In other words, to my mind, contemporary theory has not adequately integrated the above kind of description; it represents, perhaps, a kind of “excess,” as it were, that resist incorporation.

(Elsewhere, I had been reading your queries and reflections about Ken's definition of enlightenment. This post/thread is inspired by them and intended to loosely fall within a similar line of inquiry.)

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Dear Kelamuni,  This is a stretch, but impressonistically, seems to fit some of the theme above. The following link is about a kind of flow coming out of structures (including mental “structures”?) and I even make up a little theory called “fractal phenomenology” (I am long on creativity and short on analysis, but it may have some applicability to your ideas above - at least that is what my mind “automatically” sensed). Let me know if the ideas in this link/post match your line of thought at all. And let me know if my ideas were even coherent and understandable. I would appreciate your standing in the “stretch”, like standing in the synapse of a neuron cell - that is, if you feel up to being so “chemical-like”. 
  Here's the link:    Comparison of Ken Wilber's Ideas (from the Integral Approach) and Benoit Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry


   
Here is an excerpt of the post: 
 If the fractal notion is true, then the mind may open up to the presenting phenomena best by working with its own inherent structure, rather than trying to transcend itself by only seeing the phenomena on the presenting situation's own terms. If we learn to trust the fractals of the mind, the mind will eventually open an inner door to an outer event. In effect, the fractal (variation-on-the-theme) structure of the mind is like the fractal antennae that pulls in a wide range of frequencies.    While there is validity to the usefulness of “thinking outside the box”,  it may turn out that learning to think “completely (in a fractally complex manner) in the box (of one's established themes or mind sets)” may take us beyond the limits of thought better than seeking a “truth” which is analogous to Eve's forbidden fruit. The thought outside of the authentic self ends up becoming a source of distortion - of “sin”.   
Darrell

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

A few thoughts:

1. I believe that it will save this thread a lot of space if only a couple of the plethora of terms dropped in here this early on are defined. According the Wikipedia article on automaticity it has to do with not thinking about “low level details.” I think this sets it apart from flow which in my experience, includes automaticity, but has considerably more complexity. For example, when forging steel the automaticity is essentially the learned act of letting the eye rather than the conscious mind direct the exact point of the hammer's blow. The complexity arrives with Newton's third law of motion:
“for every action there is an opposite..etc.” which means that what happens on the hammer side of the steel also happens on the anvil side, or, for almost every blow, in certain operations, one gets what one wants and also what one doesn't want. The latter has to be immediately corrected or the next blow will just compound the problem. This is all done in a race against the loss of forging heat in the steel while moving toward two sequential mind's eye images: 1) how the piece should look at the end of the heat, 2) how the piece should look in its finished form. This requires a concentrated focus on the work (not like preparing a speech while driving a car to use one example of automaticity) but no cognitive thought which only slows the action to a useless pace. So when the flow has finished and the piece looks just right, how was it done? I don't know. I've been doing it for 15 years and I can only speculate that several layers of mind's eye images directs both highly practiced hands (how the off-hand holds the steel is equally important as how the hammer hand strikes the blow) and the eyes. The only automaticity about it is the eye/hammer coordination because, as far as my work goes, I try for an absolute minimum of similar looking elements, so each element is a new and unpracticed design and operation. Therefore: I don't think Balder's use of the word automaticity in regard to JK's “emptiness” or letting the situation act is quite correct.

2. I also have problems with the word lucid. If I recall correctly Wilber has written in praise of “lucid dreaming” (a practice that to me is the ear mark of a control freak) and he might have been generalizing from the dream state to others. Now I did not find the psychologist's use of the term “conscious self-regulation” to be definitive of lucidity. (But if it is, then it would be contra to the Zen archery concept.)  Then to make the word more complex old time Taoist authors used a character that translates into lucidity almost interchangeably with the character for “illumination.” Give the worldly nature of Taoism this often meant a well-honed discernment of all processual elements within one's horizon that created the ability to navigate through the warring states countryside, for example, with the same ease and grace that Chuang Tzu's butcher slipped his cleaver through the joints of an ox. This was much more in line with JK's “emptiness.” Maybe the word “lucid” can be dropped from the discussion unless someone comes up with a real killer definition.  My dictionaries don't offer much.

3. I'm with Whitehead. If it can be done without thinking, just do it and think something else, or not think at all. When I'm doing a something like a regular commute, I rarely think, but just tune in to the scenes I pass and stay open to beauty and novelty.

4. I am not sure Gurdjieff's thesis of the sleepwalker isn't anything more than a slightly near missed metaphor for automaticity. Automaticity has to do with something that is consciously practiced while the sleepwalker isn't conscious to begin with, only imitative, reactive and willing to be herded around.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Therefore: I don't think Balder's use of the word automaticity in regard to JK's “emptiness” or letting the situation act is quite correct.
 
Taking your distinctions into consideration, I would agree with you.  JK is not just talking about 'not having to think about low-level details,' but an intelligent and creative responsiveness which does not require the involvement of ordinary discursive consciousness.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Balder,
“…an intelligent and creative responsiveness which does not require the involvement of ordinary discursive consciousness.”

Nicely described. Do you think that this might be in any way related to Merleau-Ponti's advanced phenomenology we have played around with on the tin can thread? I say yes, because if my reading of the piece is correct, the ability to remain both consciously within oneself while being able to discern the  processual phenomenon within one horizon that includes the play of self as well as all the play around, is an incredibly creative perspective.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Balder, Yes, Nickeson seemed to help clarify the intended meaning of the term “automaticity”, as contrasted to what might be Gordon Allport's “functional autonomy” or Bohm's “reflexive” aspect of conditioned “thought” mascarading as real thinking. Sleepwalking and automaticity are not flow. And yet there is semantic satiation (often in saying a word over and over until it seems strange and novel, suggesting the left brain is numbed out and then opens a door to the right brain which seems to specialize in processing novel situations where there are no, or less, familiar structures by which to process the stimuli). The overlearning mentioned at the begining of this discussion may have functioned as a left brain inhibitor and released creative flow. If that is the case, then the overlearning is serving a conscious advance toward a higher stage of artistic performance, and would seem to be in the ballpark of “automaticity”. Would drinking to relax the nerves and tone down the left brain also aid in musical automaticity? Certainly not if the musician was drunk to the point of sleepwalking, but perhaps if it opened a door to the right brain flow, but without compromising a necessary amount of left brain control. Automaticity would seem to involve balance and integration. As such, it seems a very worthwhile topic for an “integral” life offshoot as this particular forum. 
   Darrell

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Great points Darrell. You should know that I'm extremely biased whenever the term, “integral” is mentioned. As far as I'm concerned, it means, “fuck you”.

Others have come up with alternate words, like “intergraal” and such which has inviting tones.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

BTW Darrell, they are an offshoot of us!

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Thanks Nickleson, that clarified what “automaticity” probably is meant to signify -  especially what you said toward the very end of your comment: ”Automaticity has to do with something that is consciously practiced while the sleepwalker isn't conscious to begin with, only imitative, reactive and willing to be herded around.”
While I agree with the odd use of lucid dreaming as involving control (rather than simply awareness), that control element in the dream state is what I understand to be a major criteria of lucid dreaming. Whether that should define it or not is another mater. And whether control or awareness is integrated into the dream state perhaps doesn't matter as much as the fact that lucid dreaming is some sort of integrating of sleep and wake/conscousness states. I agree with the idea that such a hybrid state is worthwhile, that it is a reasonable mind experiment and mind skill that serves the healthy desire for wholeness, or what I call “whole-mind activity” (I prefer response/activity over passive state. Perhaps I too am a control freak, but I don't think true consciousness can be achieved without both mind control and awareness. Without control the mind would shift randomly all over the place and would wipe out any chance of a discernable sort of awareness, or, in S. Covey's lingo, would be reactive and incapable of being “pro-active”. Intention seems to involve at least some frontal lob sort of staying on task or focusing or “control” of the mind. Awareness and control, to me, seem to be in a reciprocal relationship, in a “marriage” which births consciousness. So, control would seem to be at least a significant factor of lucidity, not lucidity per se, but a necessary ingredient.)
None of that would be merely unconscious “sleepwalking”. And would not seem to fit the intended definition of “automaticity”. Alsport's “functional autonomy” would better fit the “sleepwalker” aspect of human functioning, the realm of automatic habits, good or bad. A habit can be “done in my sleep”, but this does not seem to be a conscious taping into the flow and automatic processing style of the right brain. Integration of right brain “gifts” with left brain gifts seems to be a worthwhile thing in terms of evolution/growth/actualization in/of the human mind. 
Thanks again for the clarifying comment(s), Darrell 

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

1. Is it possible to talk about this sort of stuff without getting normative?
2. Is transpersonal psychology a path?

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Steven, yes, I agree – I think there is a relationship.  In Levin's reading of Merleau-Ponty (and TSK as well), one of the metaphors used is “jazz” – a highly creative play taking place in a field of open attention.

Kela ~

1. Is it possible to talk about this sort of stuff without getting normative?

I think an enactive perspective would allow for this.  Zen's ideal (“no-mind”) action, Wilber's lucidity in all states, etc, could be treated as evolutionary/enactive potentials, not 'ultimates.' 

2. Is transpersonal psychology a path?

I think it's too broad and unfocused to call it a path.  It's more like a general orientation – an outlook which aims to include “spiritual wisdom” and “spiritual fulfillment” as legitimate domains of concern in human health and development.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Although a bit of a tangent, here are some definitions of transersonal psychology by some of the 'big names' in the field:


James Fadiman

Transpersonal Psychology is the study, recognition, and use of the full range of human experience. Its central assumption is that humans are physical-psychologicalspiritual beings and that one aspect can be fully studied only in the context of the other aspects. Transpersonal psychology integrates the accumulated wisdom and practices from the major spiritual traditions and psychological schools of thought with the insights from current research into genetic predispositions, cultural conditioning, and critical events in childhood and in adult life.

Robert Frager

Transpersonal psychology is the study of the full range of human experience, from psychosis and dysfunction to creativity, genius, and genuine spirituality. One basic premise of transpersonal psychology is that the Higher Self is at the core of every human being, and the Self is the source of health, wisdom, and higher functioning.

The spiritual quest, to realize the Self, is at the root of all human motivation and striving. Maslow, Carl Rogers, and others wrote that the fundamental human motive is self-actualization, and late in his career Maslow described the fundamental transpersonal process of transcendent self-actualization.

Sean Hargens

Transpersonal Psychology is an approach to the human situation that recognizes the reality and importance of non-ordinary states of Being-with-the-world as well as the capacity for developing more inclusive and complex ways of Being-in-the-world. In its efforts to integrate insights from spiritual traditions with psychological understandings of the human condition, Transpersonal Psychology is committed to honoring the full range of being embodied in flesh, embedded in culture, and enmeshed in eco-social systems. According to Transpersonal Psychology, consciousness is not foundationally an intrasubjective phenomenon; rather, is an intersubjective dynamic that enacts multiple worldspaces, revealing and concealing the multiplicity of Divine Mystery that continues to unfold in the creative advance of Spirit. As such Transpersonal Psychology is committed to the rich diversity of our situatedness in body, culture, and nature and continually embraces the open-endedness of the Kosmos.

Jack Kornfield

Transpersonal psychology is the broadest possible psychology. One that
encompasses the personal and the universal dimensions of life—body, heart, mind and spirit, human and non-human, interbeing and ecological—a psychology open to our sacred place in the cosmos.

Kaisa Puhakka

In my understanding, Transpersonal Psychology is concerned with life that is
connected and whole. The ‘‘whole’’ is limitless, includes everything (physical, mental as well as other subtle worlds) and privileges nothing. “Connected life” means that all beings according to their species-bound capacity, including humans, have direct access to the whole or any part of it that is more immediate and less restricted than the skin-encapsulated or even psyche- or personality-encapsulated exchanges between human beings.

As a field of human inquiry, Transpersonal Psychology employs the methods,
concepts and theories of psychology and other culturally contextualized meaning systems to explore, classify, map and explain its subject matter.
Transpersonal Psychology takes on the challenge of how to bring clarity to our understanding of, and ways of living in, connectedness to the whole without reducing this understanding to the concepts or empirical generalizations of conventional meaning systems and without mistaking egoic functioning for something beyond it. The best way to guard against such a mistake and to ensure the continued vitality of inquiry in Transpersonal Psychology is to consider its theories, methods, and definitions—including the one offered here—as provisional and open-ended.

Frances Vaughan

Transpersonal psychology studies the nature and implications of transpersonal experiences that extend the sense of identity beyond the ego to encompass wider aspects of reality. Transpersonal psychology addresses the whole person, body, emotions, mind and spirit, in the context of community and culture. Multiple epistemologies, including empirical, rational and intuitive, are employed in an inquiry into subtle dimensions of consciousness and their potential for healing and personal growth. Transpersonal psychology does not espouse any particular faith, philosophy or religious belief, being open to multiple perspectives on human development and spiritual realization. Transpersonal psychotherapy seeks to integrate the inner life of mind and spirit with the outer life of relationships and action in the world.

Stanislav Grof

Transpersonal psychology is a discipline that expands, complements, and modifies the conceptual framework of mainstream psychology and psychotherapy in several important ways: (a) field of study and source of research data (uses scientific methods to study the full spectrum of human experience, including an important subgroup of non-ordinary states of consciousness which I call “holotropic”) (b) model of the psyche (c) architecture of “psychopathology” (d) therapeutic mechanisms (e) spirituality.

However, it is essential to emphasize that transpersonal psychologists strictly differentiate spirituality based on personal experience from the activities involving organized religion. While it is possible to study transpersonal experiences with scientific rigor and incorporate the findings into a comprehensive worldview, it isimpossible to reconcile the dogmas of organized religions with science, traditional as well as “new paradigm science.”

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Thanks Balder. Those definitions certainly help me with my problem here.

Having reread your intial response, I'm assuming now that you are not saying that JK should not be a object of study in 4th force psychology, but merely that his notion of choiceless awareness is not in accord with the notion of a “causal self as the center of action.”

I'm searching for greater clarity on this notion of a “causal self as the center of action,” not necessarily from you, but in general.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Having reread your intial response, I'm assuming now that you are not saying that JK should not be a object of study in 4th force psychology, but merely that his notion of choiceless awareness is not in accord with the notion of a “causal self as the center of action.”
Yes, exactly.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

The Unbearable Automaticity of Being: Yes, exactly.

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

In relation to your question, the following may or may not be helpful.  It's part of an essay on enactivism I posted earlier, entitled Consciousness After Postmodernism, by Ralph Ellis.

~*~

“In the modernist framework as applied to psychology and cognitive neuroscience, consciousness was supposed to be caused by, or to result from, something that happened in the brain. Perceptual consciousness, for example, was supposed to result from stimulation of the occipital lobe and V4 visual areas, which in turn resulted from stimulation of the nervous system by incoming sensory data (i.e., patterns of light). But this “appendage” theory, as Thomas Natsoulas (1994) has called it – this notion that consciousness is a byproduct of a physical cause and effect mechanism (in which consciousness itself is an effect but does not act as one of the causes) – has led to certain anomalies. For example, when the occipital lobe is activated by incoming visual data, there is no perceptual consciousness of the object until the parietal and frontal lobes are active (Farah 1989; Luria 1980; Posner 1980, 1990; Posner and Petersen 1990); yet the activation of the parietal and frontal lobes is not caused by the activity of the occipital lobe (Aurell 1989). We know this because of a curious but consistent finding: The parietal lobe, which is almost immediately adjacent to the occipital lobe, and which must be activated in order for a consciousness of visual images to be formed, does not become active until about a third of a second after the occipital lobe is activated when a novel stimulus is presented (Runeson 1974; Srebro 1985; McHugh and Bahill 1985). So the question arises as to why it would take a nerve impulse, which normally travels about 100 miles per hour, a third of a second to travel only a few millimeters. If the imaginative activity of the parietal lobe were really caused by the nerve impulse which travels to it from the occipital lobe, the impulse should be delivered virtually instantaneously. Whatever is happening during this third of a second that is also needed in order for consciousness of the object to occur cannot be caused by the passive receiving of the nerve impulse to the parietal lobe from the occipital lobe, which in turn receives it from the incoming stimulus. Thus it appears that the response is not caused by the stimulus.

This paradox arises only if we assume that the parietal lobe (which is active when we are conscious of visual images) can only be activated as a result of prior occipital activity, which in turn results from prior optic stimulation originating from the environment. But recent research shows that this is not the case. Instead, what happens is that, prior to occipital processing of the visual stimulus, the parietal lobe has already been activated by the frontal lobe, which in turn is activated by the midbrain, which is the focus of emotional-motivational activity as triggered by thalamic arousal by the stimulus only if the stimulus is generally felt as possibly emotionally important for the organism's purposes (Luria 1980; Posner 1990; Damasio 1994). The needs of the organism as a whole must first motivate the asking of questions about what kinds of environmental stimuli might be important for the organism's purposes; at this point, the frontal lobe becomes active. As these questions are formulated with the help of the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe then begins to entertain vague images and/or concepts of the kinds of emotionally important objects that might be present in the environment. If and when this frontal-limbic-parietal activity, once having been developed, finds itself resonating with patterns of activity in the occipital lobe (which reflects sensory stimulation) – only then does perceptual consciousness occur. The one-third-second delay does not result from any slowing of the incoming nerve impulse as it 'travels' from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe. The parietal lobe (which is active when we are conscious of visual images) is not activated in response to the occipital lobe's activity at all. Instead, the organism must purposely activate the frontal and parietal lobes to 'look for' emotionally important categories of objects which the thalamus has already alerted the organism might be relevant, and this 'looking for' activity has already begun the forming of visual or conceptual imagery (including proprioceptive and sensorimotor imagery) prior to any occipital activity's having any effect on our perceptual consciousness (since at this point the impulse has not yet 'traveled' from the occipital to the parietal lobe). Rather than the frontal-parietal system's being a response to an occipital stimulus, the frontal-parietal activation must already have taken place before perceptual consciousness is possible, and the frontal-parietal pattern is what determines whether any given perceptual input will even register in consciousness, i.e., will be attended to.

The organism must act on its environment in order to be conscious of it; consciousness cannot result from a mere passive reaction to incoming input. Thus the model of the mind as a passive receiver of causal work done by stimulus inputs and other mechanical computations places the cart before the horse. The organism must first purposely act, and only then can consciousness of the environment result. It is this fundamental shift in the direction of causation which is now sometimes referred to as the 'enactive' view of the mind – a term coined by Varela et. al. (1991). Rather than a stimulus' causing a response, it is the response which must occur first, and then act on the incoming afferent signals to produce a stimulus. We might call this enactive approach the current 'Copernican revolution' in cognitive theory and neuroscience.

Perhaps the clearest and most thoroughgoing expression of this kind of theory has been developed by Natika Newton (1982, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996). According to Newton, every perceptual consciousness is preceded by an act of imagination, which creates a subjunctive based on a motivated act of action planning. The action motivated by the action planning process creates certain 'expectations' as to environmental feedback, and these expectations, whether fulfilled or not, constitute mental images of a subjunctive nature. Then, if the expectations are fulfilled as expected, the result is not a mere mental image (of a non-present object or state of affairs), but a perceptual image of an object or state of affairs as actually present in the environment. The expectation, however, must precede the effect of the incoming data from the senses on our perceptual consciousness. Subjunctive ideas are thus prior to perceptual input, and action planning guides the process of 'looking for' instantiations of the subjunctive category (e.g., the image) as actually instantiated in the environment.

Newton is a prime example of a vanguard of current neuroscientists who believe that consciousness plays an active, 'pragmatic' part (in the sense used by Dascal 1987) in bringing about many kinds of information processing, and is not just an epiphenomenon or 'appendage' to a basically non-conscious computational process. Building from a traditional foundation of 'Gibsonian affordances,' (i.e., that we understand and identify an object by imagining how it would be possible for our bodies to act in relation to the object), Newton uses recent neurological work (for example, Damasio 1994; Posner1990; Farah 1989; Luria 1980; Cytowic 1993), and a just-emerging knowledge of the workings of mental imagery (as related to the 'mental models' developed by Johnson-Laird 1991) to show how action planning grounds our understanding of objects, and ultimately of language, concepts, and logical relations. An infant identifies objects in terms of whether they 'afford sucking,' 'afford throwing,' etc. Similarly, as adults, when we anticipate how we might act in relation to an object or situation, we execute the rudiments of a subjunctive conceptualization. For example, to anticipate that 'If I throw a ball at something (under appropriate circumstances) it will knock it over,' is very similar (linguistically, neurophysiologically, and phenomenologically) to believing that 'If I were to throw a ball, it would knock something over.' Thus anticipations of the future ground our understanding of subjunctives and thus of abstract concepts. In Newton's approach, the key to this 'foundation of understanding' is the process of action planning. To make this case, Newton relies on extensive neuroscientific evidence (the details of which would be beyond our scope here) – for example, the finding discussed by Ito (1993) and by Damasio (1994), that the brain mechanisms underlying abstract thought are identical to those underlying action-planning in the context of body movement.

Notice the eschewal in this approach of each of the modernist biases mentioned above:

(1) Because the organism must anticipate actions toward its environment in order for consciousness to occur, consciousness is not merely passively caused by incoming stimuli or unconscious computations performed on incoming stimuli. The body's organization of stimuli occurs prior to the reception of the stimuli, and if the body does not actively seek to appropriate and rearrange the physiological substrata for its own desired patterns of conscious activity, this consciousness can never occur.

Since consciousness is a higher-order process which must actively seek to appropriate and rearrange lower-level processes which are needed as substratum elements for its motivated pattern of activity, such a higher-order process cannot be explained as the causal result of the discrete actions of its own physiological substrates. It would be as misleading to explain consciousness as passively caused by the discrete mechanical interaction of particles of brain matter as it would be to explain a sound wave passing through a wooden door as being caused by the actions of the particles of wood in the door. Instead, it is the sound wave, originating elsewhere, that causes the particles to vibrate in the pattern they do – a fact we would overlook if we were to content ourselves with explaining the pattern of the wave as being caused by the discrete movements of its substratum elements.

(2) Another modernist assumption that also must be rejected with an enactive approach such as Newton's or Varela's is the notion that consciousness plays no significant role in information processing – i.e., the epiphenomenalist notion that consciousness is merely the tip of an iceberg which consists of unconscious computational brain processes. Instead, consciousness directs much of this activity, and much of it would never take place without the direction of consciousness; yet it is important that consciousness itself is embodied – not in computational cerebral processes, but rather in emotional and motivational activities of the whole organism. It is the emotionally motivated process of action planning that directs the focus of conscious attention, not a computer-like computational process.

(3) This implies the rejection of still another set of modernist biases – the presumption that representational states (thoughts and perceptions) are clearly distinguishable from non-representational ones (feelings and emotions), and the corollary presumption that subject and object are clearly distinct. The emotional purposes of the whole embodied organism direct conscious attention, which in turn influences in a necessary way what we perceive and think. We can be consciously aware of this whole process through 'proprioception,' and much (if not all) rational processing results from what Newton calls 'proprioceptive imagery.' I.e., we proprioceptively imagine what it would be like to throw a ball (when forming a subjunctive concept of such an event), to move our bodies rhythmically (for example, to the rhythm of a certain pattern of logical inference such as modus tollens or hypothetical syllogism). But proprioceptive imagery is directed toward something that is neither clearly subject nor clearly object – my embodied self.

An enactive approach to consciousness leads to very different analyses of the relation between physical causation and conscious intention from any that were possible in modernist atomistic-reductionism, which viewed reality as fundamentally reactive rather than consisting of patterns of activity which appropriate their atomistic components. Beyond the one just discussed, the failure of the modernist conception of causation as completely passive led to still another anomaly in the philosophy of mind, whose solution also requires a rejection of this atomistic conception of the nature of causation.”

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

“But proprioceptive imagery is directed toward something that is neither clearly subject nor clearly object – my embodied self.”

That's my take as well Bruce; the embodied self is everywhere, eg., ”How Can We Have World Peace?”

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Balder,

Thanks for posting this; I do see how all of those elements combined are part of the tuning in process.  The structure of the brain can be realized when one can feel certain energies stimulating different ways of feeling or thinking.  One can also recognize the imagination as a tool for more of a planned reception. 

Another aspect that was offered is the preparation of the body – physically, one must adjust to the degree of energy without hindrance.   This energy in the many forms that it takes is probably the most difficult to translate, the structure that must proceed it in my mind anyway would be almost a separation of body and mind.  My other thought is that this energy may not be for reception with understanding and may in fact be creating the structure.

I think that one must act before one can become conscious of the environment is also true, this is never limited by time so we cannot miss an event.  What it seems that we can miss is our responsiveness in “time” to stimulation.  I am referring to “responsive” as an action; this action is initiated by the environment but received because one is receptive.

The other point that is made regarding structuring the body in accordance with that which consciousness can receive seems more like the “flow”, it was described like rhythmically moving while throwing a ball.  I think we could apply this to all forms of conscious awareness, once it is navigated properly the flow begins.  Thoughts and emotions in balance would suggest this flow.

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Annie, This is a fascinating statement you made:  ”My other thought is that this energy may not be for reception with understanding and may in fact be creating the structure.” I will groove on it and think about it for awhile, as it rings true to me. Especially in my hobby/value of trying to “think like energy” (shifting away from thinking like matter). Thanks. 
   Darrell

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Thanks for posting this Balder. I went to the original and note that Ralph Ellis wrote this. As I was initially reading the above, I was under the impression that you wrote it, thinking, hmmm heady stuff. :-) I'll give this a closer read. I seem to remember reading something about Derrida's argumentation that makes use of the idea of proprioceptive imagery being directed toward something that is neither subject nor object. I was researching “the phenomenology of inner time consciousness” and came across the idea. Something that has always interested me, which has not really been fully explored, is how Derrida's analysis of time vis a vis Husserl approaches that of the Madhyamikas vis a vis the Abhidharmists.

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Ooo, yes, I can see how you'd get that impression; I just went back and added in the proper attribution…

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In short, being inseparable from our environment, and synchronized in concert with it, we and our environment (using the resources at hand–history, material needs and momentary events) jointly make ourselves up as we go along. No homunculi, no essences, no causal self, only shifting patterns of energy that are fully adequate to all contingencies. Each action lays still another yellow brick in that sublime road to entropic stasis.

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Dorothy: [has just arrived in Oz, looking around and awed at the beauty and splendor] Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.

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Hi Steven,

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Balder, I loved that comment. I didn't have time to get all the way through, but about half way through I thought “the marriage of sense (occipital) and soul (frontal+limbic, especially right frontal)”. This upper right quad viewpoint does, in my opinion, shed light on the interplay of intention and consciousness. There is a marriage going on - and integration of Luria's “functional systems” of sensory and action/agency/implimentaion/”operating” (as in the postmetaphysical's emphasis on identifying the set of operations, or frame, with which one's awareness is taking place).
   If you have time check out my comment looking at the interplay of awareness and action (and at other factors such as “low resistance” thought). I sense that some of the ideas I put forth there do “resonate” with the scientific stuff you brought to the table above. Thus, my perception of your above ideas (images of them?) might not have that 3 second delay. Our constructions of reality (and our vessels of awareness) are close enough to avoid the “3 second rule” (oh, that is about getting food off the floor quickly, but what the hey!). 

Darrell

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Balder,
Good round-up. From my perspective, having spent 11 years of my life with a transpersonal psychotherapist and her occasionally famous and infamous circle of colleagues, Frances Vaughn gets it right in going down to the ground. All the rest seem a little bit airy.

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Dear Kelamuni, I enjoyed processing your ideas about automatic flow which at times seems independent of “awareness”. It helped me dig deeper into my own thoughts and writings and valuing of awareness (I do give it priority over action). You point out a legitimate anomaly to the assumption of the primacy of awareness, offer a null hypothesis. And what does that null hypothesis serve? Ironically, it serves…  well, it serves awareness. There are apparently other dimensions/factors to awareness than simply observing or “noting” (noting would be more like identifying/classifying sort of “thought”, perhaps an initial stage of identification and classification, but the beginning of “note taking” nonetheless, and note taking involves an organizing of information). I recalled an idea that “lowering resistance” seemed to be a factor which closely interacts, or contributes to, “awareness”. This lowering of (mental/psychic) resistance would also seem to be involved in another mental dimension - “wholeness”, or what I call “whole-mind activity”. To me, a whole-mind activity would spread the mind out and more-or-less automatically lower resistance of the individual parts of mind we call “thoughts”. A spreading out and lowering of resistance of thought would also seem to be required for (or at least significantly involved in) David Bohm's notion of “proprioceptive thought” - a kind of thought that is not merely reflexive and habitual, but is aware of itself, in the manner that the body is aware of itself in relation to its various body parts and in relation to the space those parts occupy. Bohm thought of proprioceptive thought as being thought that is more self-aware than regular thought which is largely a robotic habit. Proprioceptive thought would allow for both awareness and action/flow at the same time, at the cost of “identification”. I think that my “whole-mind activity” and Bohm's “proprioceptive thought” and the idea of “lowering the mind's resistence” (in which the mental activity is seen as having a physical aspect of being like energy, or electrical,  and electrical current can have higher or lower resistance), dance closely together or, in terms of the statistical method of factor analysis, “co-vary”.  Thinking of each of these ideas (“awareness”, “whole-mind activity”, “lowered resistance”, “proprioceptive thought”) as being mental factors (or, in my book, The Marketing of Virtue, I call “doors” - from Aldous Huxely - to the whole-mind state, to awareness, to spirituality, and to the mind-as-tool which fashions all other tools - “the master tool”) may help make sense of the apparent discrepancies between “awareness” and “automatcity”. The awareness which is most useful/applicable/functional to being fully human seems to be of a soft thinking variety which is formed from a comming together, an “interaction', of the above factors (and probably additional factors, or doors, as well). 

Here is an excerpt from The Marketing of Virtue which deals with the relationship of awareness and action (action seeming to be more in the automaticity realm), and with the role which a lowering of resistance may play in the marriage of action and awareness (giving birth to “choiceless action”?). 

Low Resistance and Whole Mind
    There are definite advantages to whole-mind activity. But whole-mind activity does not mean a pasting together of all the isolated parts of mind. Such forced integration would lead to confusion and to an inability to differentiate. Attempting to become whole, or to have whole mind activity, while in a higher resistance action mode would create forced integration, or pseudo-integration. The whole-mind activity that is effective must be a low resistance form of activity that rests in a state of potential, yet is readily accessible to regular action.     The familiar mental state of dreaming while asleep seems to be one of lower resistance, in which the “thoughts” are more fluid, transparent, overlapping - in a sense “softer”. Perhaps one key to lowering mind resistance is to achieve a wakeful state that incorporates the dreaming state. There is a Spanish saying that “Life is a dream”. This saying may be an indication of the effectiveness of carrying the sleeping, dreaming, mental states over into the waking states, such as by learning to maintain deeper, synchronized, brain waves as a base (the “rock of ages”?) from which the de-synchronized beta waves of normal wakefulness can be conducted.     This mind skill may analogous to a runner adding anaerobic speed runs (interval training) to his/her aerobic base of distance runs. Normal waking states may be a kind of higher-resistance mode similar to sprinting. Those who take care to place the “sprinting” of normal consciousness upon a solid base of synchronized, integrative, and regenerative mind states (analogous to a runner’s base of aerobic training) may do life better, fuller, in the “long run”.        Awareness is a low resistance mental state, whereas action and thoughts are higher resistance. If action is not sufficiently counterbalanced by the whole-mind (low resistance) “activity” of awareness, then action (including the mental action called a thought) tends to fragment the mind - puts blinders on us. If a sufficient amount of awareness is maintained, it remains open to action without being biased to a particular action or thought.     We are not talking here about the highly vigilant, and highly identifying, sort of awareness often revered in western culture. The awareness we are talking about here is relaxed, neutral, not quick to identify, is more “phenomenological”, and is closer to the “mindfulness” of the philosophy and practice of Zen.     The highly vigilant form of awareness (which is a partial, or false, awareness), tends to be laced with fearful edginess, and tends to make the mind a slave to action. In contrast, true awareness can serve action or thought, but is never a slave to action or thought. 

To Act or Not to Act
    On the other hand, awareness is not a slave to inaction either. Inaction, once put in place, is really a kind of inhibitory action. This is why the southern school of Zen, led by  Hui Neng, was opposed to the idea of trying to reach enlightenment strictly by means of emptying the mind. The southern school called the meditative practice of emptying the mind “mirror wiping” because it was like the act of wiping a mirror clean. But Hui Neng understood that the effort to “mirror wipe” was actually another action that tends to get in the way of whole-mind activity. Awareness, or mindfulness, is no more a slave to inaction than it is to regular action. It is as open to acting as it is to not acting. Stated differently, awareness leaves the mind free to act, or not to act.      
Since you also touched on the meaning and implications of “intention”, I will also share an excerpt which speculates about a relationship between intention and authentic “being”. From a chapter called “Doors (The Master Tool, Part 2)”: Over a period of time I’ve done quite a few personal mind “experiments”. During many of these experiments I was not necessarily highly aware. I was often stabbing in the dark. But the experiments began to reveal a variety of mental practices that appear to activate whole-mind states, or spirituality. They are techniques one can use to grasp the master tool.    The following are some cue words which are associated with those mental practices: symbolic, flow, journey, receptive, low resistance, deep, wide, still, transparent, buoyant, here-and-now, with. Not only do these cues correspond with specific meditative practices, they tend to more-or-less directly trigger certain mental states that open a door to whole-mind activity. This triggering effect seems particularly pronounced once the techniques have been practiced a few times.     Wayne Dyer, in his book Power of Intention, refers to his own discovered set of cues to spirituality as “faces” (of “intention”). His cues include: creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance, and receptivity.     Speaking of Wayne Dyer, it just occurred to me that his use of the word “intention” may represent a third mind function that bridges awareness and control. According to another spiritual author, Thomas Merton, there are three modes of spiritual expression: seeing, being (verb sense), and doing. What Merton called “being”, seems to be closely related to Dyer’s “intention”, which is a kind of “be it before you become it” sort of process - perhaps a kind of “pre-being”. Stated differently, one can let his/her heart to go there first.     After seeing a better way, then a person can let himself or herself begin to be, or intend, that manner of existence. Then he/she can employ the doing of mental action or control, in order to develop and maintain that way of being.     At other times, the doing might take the lead, by providing a specific way to shift the mind toward whole-mind activity. To use a computer analogy of the mind, once a new program is clicked on, a whole new perspective and mode is opened up. There appear to be several “icons” (cues) to “click on”. The cues are subcomponents of mind action/control.     Again, I will call the cues “doors”, a preference partially inspired by Aldous Huxley’s paper, The Doors of Perception (included in R. Ornstein‘s anthology, The Nature of Human Consciousness, 1971), and partially inspired by the biblical passage “Knock and it shall be given unto you.” Thanks for helping me dig deeper into thought and into my archives of thought put down on paper. Consider the sheer volume of this response as an indicator of the effectiveness of your post. You really got me to thinking. Is that bad?  Or good? My best shot at answering that is that “it all depends” (on how hard or soft the thinking is overall). 

      Darrell

Re: The Unbearable Automaticity of Being

Hi Darrell,

“Here is an excerpt from The Marketing of Virtue which deals with the relationship of awareness and action (action seeming to be more in the automaticity realm), and with the role which a lowering of resistance may play in the marriage of action and awareness (giving birth to “choiceless action”?).”

I would like to visit with Becky and you for awhile. While it would be great to get to know the both of you better, I could also give my undivided attention to marketing your book, “The Marketing of Virtue”. I see no reason why it wouldn't be a #1 best-seller.

I am almost broke ($200 in my checking acct), however I have no debts. I have some personal possessions though that I think I could sell fairly quickly to fund the trip over there. Also, I have a complete set of camping gear presuming there is a campground or suitable space near your home.

For development purposes, I would need a small space in your home, a table, electrical outlets, and an internet connection. I could bring my PC and related components.

Please let me know whether or not these ideas are of interest to both Becky and yourself.

All the best,
Mark

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On second thought Darrell, I'll explore some local options first.

Thanks,
Mark

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Mark, Local options would be best, because Becky is in some ways my compliment, and she is much more reluctant to go out on a lark or whim, such as sharing space with a man she only knows to be a very good pen pal of mine. Interesting that Becky and my personality types seem to fit our astrological signs - she a water sign Scorpio, and I a fire sign Leo. She likes to savor things and treasure them quietly, whereas I process outwardly, like running a circus. I can't speak for her, but I am pretty sure she would feel defensive about opening up that much with a relative stranger. I am sure she would feel differently once she got to know you, but for know it would be too “wierd” and uncertain for her. And, although I chat like a loose explorer ready to forge into new frontiers, my frontiers are more in the are of thought/conceptualization. My lifestyle is fairly conservative and “square”. How I think and how I do are two different things, and Becky lives with how I do day to day life. She never married a Bohemian, nor even an adventurer, but a dreamer who verges on being Walter Mitty. She loves the exploration, but only the slow and measured applications of that thought. You and I together would scare her because we would be moving way too fast for her sensitivities and sensibilities. I think it would backfire. 
  But this brings up an important issue, how can she be exposed to these big ideas without distrusting them? I try to bring the proposed projects down to earth and frame them as business ideas which might help both market and develop my writing products and (I hope) gifts. She is very supportive about my effort to translate dreams and talents into cash, and to give my two year sabatacal from full pay (retirement pay is lower than when I was working) a chance to develop an income via writing. But slow and practical and informed seems the most loving way I can work with her. I will pray that I unfold a way that works both for the business scheme you and I are developing, and for my marriage that has been a real treasure to me (and I intend to keep it as a treasure!). 
   Thanks for considering these nuances. Sometimes the little things end up being very important as regards success or failure. “The devil is in the details” sort of thing. 
   I really like the way you implimented the forums on the Emergence-Sea site. We seem to be making some reasonably good differentiations to the whole body of our pooled energies there. Thanks for your vision and interventions. As for the book, bestseller seems a bit of a pipe dream to me now, although there are times when I appreciate the large amount of  (and, to me, good) ideas/thought that are in the book here and there. So I am wait and see, before getting my hopes up too high. But thanks for your encouragement, coach! 
     Darrell
    

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Kela gave me the nuances Darrell. I'm not a coach; just trying to keep up with you all…

…and here's another compassionate lead from Robb and others at Integral+Life.

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Thanks Darrell. My post was written rather off the cuff, and I regret not spending more time on it and pondering the ideas presented in it more intently.

Some concrete examples for now. I'll return with a deeper and fuller consideration of the questions we have raised here later.

Two days ago, I was practising a tune that was nearly learned, and I was focussing intently on the kineasthetic (or proprioceptic?) manner in which I was using my fiddle bow and placing my fingers on the finger board. I call this “the conscious process” to my students. I see it as essential to really learning a tune well, so that the “gremlins” — those systematic “mistakes” that suddenly appear 2 months later, as if out of nowhere — do not make their unwanted appearance. Many of my students have problems concentrating on the task at hand, and one of the things I try to teach them is to concentrate fully, and with ease, while they practice. The other thing they do is try to play the tune too quickly before the tune is really learned. This kind of practising, ie playing a tune too quickly before it is really learned, I have found, tends to facilitate the later appearance of “gremlins.” In any case, a collegue of mine had come into my studio while I was focussed, and he simply stood their watching me practice. I was not aware of his presence. When I stopped, I looked up and he said, “Dude! You were in the Zone! I didn't want to interupt.”

Yesterday, I was “practising” another tune, one that I already knew, only this time I was not focussing on what I was playing, in terms of technique, but was allowing my mind to think about other things. I was looking around and pacing the room, etc., and generally wondering what had happened to my absconded student (late June is always bad for attendence). The same collegue came into the room and said, “Are you in the zone? Can I ask you a question?”and without stopping, I said, “No, go ahead.” In music pedagogy, we call the latter practice “over-learning” and it is valuable in two ways. First, its apparent automaticity allows the musician to focus on more musical things like phrasing and expression, rather than technical matters like hitting the right notes. Second, it is valuable when things like stage fright suddenly make their unwanted appearance and concentration is disturbed. 

A third category of mental state would seem to be actual performance itself, which could perhaps be described as the first two combined, where technique has become automatic and we are focussed on expression. However, as the great pianist S. Richter used to say, musical expression needs to be spontaneous — it is never “thought out” before hand or even as we are playing, so it is not so much a matter of being intent on what we are doing, though we are clearly absorbed in what we are doing. In those moments, one seems to lose oneself, or stand outside of oneself in a kind of ecstasis. But this kind of “spontaneity,” it would seem, requires the two aforementioned stages I have described above as its basis. In other words, it takes a lot of prior “work.”

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The garden, the knowledge of… (good and evil and other “things”), and the Tree of Life.  Those mythic depictions seem to be of stages of mastery, whether of collective mind's mastery/evolution, or a fiddler learning to be a miestro (sp?). 
   The richness and nakedness of the music zone while first practicing seems like the garden stage. The overlearning stage seems like “knowing” (as opposed to exploring) and fine tuning (as opposed to riding the wave, the inspiration, of the moment). If the garden and the Tree of Knowledge are then integrated …  wah lah - a perfected zone that is the Tree of Life. 
   I think of right brain in the novel, garden, stage. I think left brain in the overlearning stage (where the mind is thinking about multiple things while practicing). And then the fragrance of the garden comes back if the overlearning has been sufficient to turn the thinking back into automaticity, and to get it more-or-less “out of the way” and allow the right brain to dance with the left. 
  Just some “off the cuff” thoughts. You never have to feel bad about writing off the cuff around me! My picture is beside “off the cuff” in the dictionary! 

Darrell

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As a former competitive “performance” dancer I understand the above. The performance before judges and a crowd changes the entire dynamic and one feeds off of the audience to create a unique dance within that context. Same dance routine, same partner, different day, different judges, different audience, different performance. And yes, one reason performing is addictive is due to the ecstasis of becoming someting much larger than oneself. Plus there's the adulation of an appreciative audience. Little do they understand how much they were a part of creating that performance.

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“Plus there's the adulation of an appreciative audience. Little do they understand how much they were a part of creating that performance.”

I think historically that is correct Edward. It appears to me however that perception is radically being altered as we speak. E.g. I am a huge fan of you and I'm confident I am not alone in that perception…

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Dear Kelamuni, Whether my understanding of “automaticity” is precise or not, the impression I had of it, and the thinking about it, contributed significantly to one of the better songs I have ever written. You were looking at a postitive kind of automaticity which helps bring flow back into an art performance, but the conversation also reminded me of literature in the early stages of theorizing about sex offenders (I worked in that field prior to retirement). Groth, in Out of the Shadows noticed that many sex offenses occur in the context of a “trance” like state in which the individual acts out in a shadow world which may be well hidden from thier “pretending to be normal”. And this acting out “trance” would not be unique to sex offending, but possibly to any acting out which is an unhealthy way to feel the “flow” which may be lacking in the suppressed atmosphere of the daily grind, etc. Also, working as a counsellor in prison, I heard many a two-timin, tale from male inmates, about how they had a night life while trying to also maintain a regular love relationship. Of course, this lifestyle usually ends up causing complications and regrets. It is often too difficult to maintain two lives at once, and the shadow life is fraught with higher risks. So, I wrote a song from this perspective, about a “bad habit” of a double life, but how this becomes such a habit, so automatic, that the narator “only sees what he knows”. After awhile, my prison clients seemed not able to really see a different way of living. This would be the dark side of automaticity, if I am even using the word right. 
Here is a link to the song posted at Folk Alley. I'm not sure if you can play it from there without signing up. I think you can. The song speaks well to a destructive, maladaptive side of automatic behavior, commonly known as bad habits turned lifestyle. The song is called “Naked on the Shore” (in reference to sensing that the person will have to hit bottom before change is possible, before breaking the automatic behavior and thought and feelings/addictions): naked on the shore

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I believe that psychologists distinguish between two forms of “automaticity.” One is associated with things like stereotyping. So yes there is a negative side of automaticity.