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The Radiance of Being: Complexity, Chaos and the Evolution of Consciousness

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Book by Combs, Allan

351 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

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Profile Image for Clif Brittain.
134 reviews18 followers
February 9, 2013
Why am I reading this book?

Favorable mention from The Mind's Eye by Jimmy Joy The Mind's Eye: The Evolution of the Athlete's Skills and Consciousness.

What do I hope to gain?

Better understanding of how the mind/brain/spirit/body combine to provide pleasure through rowing (or eating or biking or drinking or conversing, etc., but specifically rowing because of it's endless and cyclical motion).

As of page 69, how am I doing?

Much of interest, but so far unable to tie it much into rowing, except that it has raised more specific questions about the rowing. E.g. Why are habits so hard to break? Why is unlearning/relearning so hard, yet approximate learning so easy?

Concluding paragraph of Chapter 3, about the building of memory systems in the brain:

Speaking experientially, each combination of state and structure, or schemata and stage, constitutes an entire world. As such, it in turn supports the elements, the subsystems, of which it is formed. Seen in terms of conscious experience, this cyclic, self-resonant, aspect of reality could not be otherwise, for it is this tendency of the whole experience to support its constituents, and for them in turn to create the whole, that gives consciousness its stability.... 


Of course it could not be otherwise!

I am now going to exercise on the erg and see if I can induce some small part (subsystem) of the stroke - the release - to stabilize my consciousness. My hope is that by concentrating on this subsystem I can groove it (is self-resonant same as pleasure?) to become a permanent part of my consciousness, at least while rowing. I'll get back to you.

Gave up on it. It just wasn't pulling me back.
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