Sorta related to that link I mentioned about sleep and memory but it got me thinking about what someone said about the google AI overview and to not trust it:
When I looked into the links they didn’t really say what the overview mentioned, which I find kinda odd. I make a habit of trying to read the replies and not the overview.
“The studies from the University of Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins University offer evidence that the function of sleep is to allow our brains to “sift through the junk,” by weakening the connections – or neural networks – that hold our memories together. This allows some memories to grow and stick, and others to be discarded.”
It sorta has me worried I’ll forget who I am or something important when I sleep.
Of course it’s far more complicated. Quit bringing your worries here about ridiculous things like sleep causing you to forget yourself. If you are doing that then you have dementia which is a disease. If you are worried about having that then you have hypochondria. Either way you need doctors not social media.
It’s just hard to tell what’s what some times because the first link is about how we forget but it refreshes us. The more recent and thorough one says it’s complicated which I’m likely to believe.
But then I get on quora and read stuff like this:
"When we sleep, if we sleep deeply, we are no longer identified with the story of who we are, which is mainly stored in the left and right cortex.
When asleep, we rely on our reticular activating system (in the mid-brain, pons, medulla, thalamus) to arouse us to waking state at which time we re-identify with our story self or ego.
If this identification does not happen immediately, it can actually be quite nice - I value this time of non-identification and pure awareness, but I can understand that it is disorienting to some.
Your question doesn’t indicate whether or not this is a ‘problem’ for you - seems more like curiosity. I would only be concerned if it is debilitating to you in any way or if there are other times in your life when you feel disoriented."
Which for some reason sticks to my brain more than the reasonable stuff.
The point of the statement was that during sleep the brain sorts out what is important and worth remembering or not. During the original experience a record is created in memory with a chemical flag.
A strong experiential flag creates an “engram” and a permanent memory.
OTOH, when an experience is too overwhelming the chemistry “buries” the experience deep in the subconscious and appears as “loss of memory”, but can be restored with guidance of a psychiatrist.
Well when I googled it turns out the quora post is wrong (shocker), that those regions of the brain are still active in sleep, just in a different way. So we still retain who we are.
For my yoga teacher, who is not a scientist, when we sleep, our body is resting, our mind is resting, and what remains active is our conscience, our true self.
What remains active is homeostasis, the part of the brain that controls the electrochemical functions of the body . but that also includes the electrochemical balance of the brain itself. The state where the system is at most efficient relaxation. And that includes cleansing the mind of random experiences that just take up space.
It could also get boiled down to simply appreciating that you are your brain/body.
It’s like first base before any of the rest of it can make any sense.
Inthedark is another great example of getting lost within one’s own mind and losing sight of physical reality.
Oh yeah, and it also helps for understanding to the point of appreciating - that it is your own body in action creating your own consciousness of the world, that includes all the gods and demons that haunt your consciousness.
Sadly that is cold comfort. As for me seems like my brain invents new ways to be depressed all the time.
Like now how I’m doing wrong by using language because it’s just mediation and reference to experience and not direct experience, and that part of Buddhist practice is how words don’t matter as much anymore. How our notions of self are based on language and it’s not who we really are.
I dunno, likely some warping of Buddhism in all honesty along with bad info.
Instead of constantly focusing inward and examining yourself, why not use your other senses to “experience” the world around you.
To “stop and smell the roses”. Have you tried aroma therapy? Very pleasant and relaxing.
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I like to think, even cold comfort is better than none, because it at least gives us something solid to work with. To muse on, to sleep on, to chew on.
We are stuck in the now, but the future racing to meet us - we live and learn, you may crack that nut, and like Lausten suggested a bit of professional advice might help you along.
All I can add is that I been in some very low places, we can get out, there are new sunrises awaiting you.
Maybe some things I’ve read give me trouble. Like the dream stuff, or wondering how if we brought people back to life would I still be me then? Or whether culture and language are really who we are, things like that and what other people have said.
P. Jose Farmer wrote a serie of books about the theme of Humanity brought again to life on the shores of a very big and long river, circling a whole world, without any technology, without any need to work.
Everyone is brought back in his prime.
Some people change, some don’t, having learned nothing.
Reminds me of other stories I’ve heard including one show I saw but I can’t remember the name of it. But it had the same sort of plot where people in the afterlife were shown at their best.
It did sorta bring be back to my last post about teleonomic matter and subjectivity without identity and I got to thinking that there might be some instances where you can have a subjective experience without identity like in cells but when you get to stuff like humans or animals and plants it gets more complicated.
Though the question of identity is always a tough one so maybe his work doesn’t really explain that well. The guy seemed to think so but I’ve learned to take his claims with a grain of salt.