The Round Table (Rational Pagans Forum)

Do we need to focus on what we are doing in order to experience it? For example, if we are daydreaming while driving, is the experience of driving permanently lost to us? Or is it still available in our memory banks for subsequent access?

The context of the question is ordinary daily living. I’m not interested in whether we can access the information via hypnosis and other such techniques.

I tend to believe the "Zone out" factor is our brain simply choosing not to store something in long term memory. Therefore, when one "Zone's Out" they would not later have the ability to remember something. It would be possible to "rebuild" a memory from bits an pieces but it would not be true recall...

IMnsHO

I dunno--- my experience is that things go on a 'back burner'.

Many times, while doing something else, my brain keeps working on a problem or situation and pops an answer out. I'm not sure everything needs to be played on the screen of our conscienceness for us to be 'thinking' about it. Some stuff works out without our knowing.

Like, at 3am when you finally remember that word you were looking for?

Anyone who has 'walked away from a problem' for a while and come back with a solution would tell you that you do not need to 'focus' all the time to be thinking of it.

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Chloride and Sodium: Two terribly dangerous substances that taste great together!

What do you mean by rebuilding the memory from bits and pieces?

This is not really what I’m asking. The question is not whether we can accomplish things without being consciously aware of doing so, but whether we can experience accomplishing them without being consciously aware of doing so.

I guess it depends--- if you include conscious as part of the definition of experience, then of course not.

But I would think that you could experience something without registering it at the time.

But that's not the same thing as experiencing something as a full experience.

So, I guess, going to a concert, closign your eyes and listening to the music is a 'higher' level of experience than throwing in a CD, reading email and eating lunch is.

But both of them will add to the sum value of what and who you are.

Is that better?

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Chloride and Sodium: Two terribly dangerous substances that taste great together!

From 7th to 12th grade I did not ride a bus to get to school. I walked to two different schools. Many times I would simply walk out of my house and arrive at the school 20 minutes later without actually experiencing the walk. I would zone out. (I really enjoyed that because the walks were quite BORING). Now I could assemble little bits and pieces, scraps of memory, to recall what that walk was like, but it would not really be the out and out memory. Some of the scraps would be inferred memories based on the many, many times I had already done this. Others would be supposition, I arrived safely, so I must have crossed the road at that major intersection with the light...

That is what I mean by bits and pieces. I experienced it. I was there. I arrived at my destination, but I have no recall of it...

If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it...

I would include either conscious awareness of it, or its memory, in the definition of experience. So experiencing something without registering it at the time or recalling it later on wouldn’t really qualify as experiencing it.


It makes sense, but it’s not really what I’m after.

Thanks. That helps.

Zoning out no matter if there is motor type activity or not is considered a form of meditation, in a way I consider this a healthy thing to do, it assists in the economy of daily brain usage. Sleep I consider a good thing in the same respect.

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