In the last installment of The Optimum Drive blog, we dissected and pondered the biggest of the big human topics: consciousness and the hopefully resulting byproduct…free will. The truth of the matter is that our consciousness bandwidth, while the greatest in the animal kingdom, is tiny compared to the amount of information we gather ever second, forcing us to filter to the point that, at any given second, we have very little to actually work with. Compounding this are the lifetimes of layering of filters (similar to algorithms) that distort what actually reaches our conscious minds. This makes our reality a bit (or a lot) like a self-created simulation of what our well-meaning subconscious thinks we want to experience at any given moment.
To back all of this “crazy” talk up, there have been countless studies decoding this and actually measuring the delay that we have with all of our senses (hearing is the fastest, followed by touch, then sight, and finally taste). These delays are processing time, which include filtering based on physiology and our particular algorithms.
What is the goal? You’d think we would just want vivid, unfiltered reality at all times, but that is not our base program. The system is designed to keep you alive and sane. It doesn’t always succeed but it is its best educated guess for you, for what you need now (fingers crossed).
Within this system, we have a wide variety of human existence, everyone trying to do their level best with what they have. Wait though, it’s not that, it’s what we think we have. That is where the opportunity exists that created da Vinci, Einstein and Michelangelo, and also a whole bunch of humans who, paraphrasing Brad Pitt in the movie Troy, have existed but whose names will be remembered by no one (cruel but fair).
The idea from all this is to harness free will, to give it tasks that actually improve the efficiency of your processing towards some goal. As mentioned in Optimum Drive, this should be driven by the greatest of human attributes: our curiosity. Some just might be tempted to call this enlightenment(?).
If we don’t do this, we waste our precious consciousness and go through life like, well, a “lesser” animal and live our lives on instinct, blindly trusting the filtering and not improving, which we will conveniently allow ourselves to think is the limit of our potential…and no one will remember our names.
The process that makes this all work is understanding the significance of the phrase “root causes.” It explains that true lasting change is not superficial; you can’t just tack on another algorithm on top of our existing programming. We have to dig all the way down and back to the root of the idea or concept and wholly reconstruct it from the beginning. It must be eradicated, not patched (in Optimum Drive, I provide actual examples and details of how this would work using a racing driver as the example).
Conclusions: Deeply ponder this gift of consciousness and what it really means, what free will is and how best to use it. None of this is easy; that’s exactly the point. Next…is it worth it? You need to decide this for yourself but understand you’ll only get one shot at this life and the clock…it never stops ticking. Will we remember your name?