hi again Aliaksei

>”Looks like if we become mindful then our deepest self starts training out consciousness self.”

I think I would say that if we become more “mindful” or more “present” then what I think you are calling the “conscious self”–the part that has the impulse to control, train, and improve ourselves–starts to relax a bit and then our deepest self can come forth more…

I’m not sure I would say that our deepest self wants or needs to train the other parts of us… it knows we are perfectly okay just the way we are…

>”For that we need to train our consciousness self to see external wishes but do not replace our deepest needs with them, do not allow external wishes to control us.”

I think you put this beautifully: we need to recognize external wishes (like your examples of new smartphone, cultural pressure to be rich) as just that–external. Assuming that meeting those external wishes will meet our deepest needs is one of the things that gets us into trouble.

> In the meantime, if your deepest self wanted to feel satisfaction, and if you were listening to it and following what it REALLY wants and needs, you would simply do something that gives you—and your deepest self—satisfaction. That would feel so good, it would be a gift from you, to yourself.

Looks like if we become mindful then our deepest self starts training out consciousness self.

> To live truly satisfying lives, we would look only to our own deepest self for guidance on how to behave.

Here you speak about conscience. And it does not fill satisfaction. It says us what is right even if it hurts us. For example when we say truth that we ate all sweets.

And as I understand, our deepest self uses conscience to communicate with our consciousness self.

> Marshal B Rosenberg

Yes, I also advice his book to people who are ready for it.

> I hope I have not made the whole thing more complicated!

Nope, you made it clearer.

A few thoughts about this subject:

> When our deepest self does not want to do what we think we SHOULD do, we have to give it a carrot. Then we have bribed it, and for a while it may do what we want because it does like the carrot, but sooner or later its going to feel dissatisfied again because you have not met its deepest need, and then you will have to give it another carrot. Probably a bigger carrot. And then another, even bigger carrot.

If we do light running every day – we feel satisfaction.
If we watch TV all evenings – our back is not satisfied.
If we do what is the best for us – we are in good shape and we are satisfied. Otherwise we suffer.

Our consciousness self can ignore deepest self of feed it with carrots because it is easy influenced by external wishes ( tasty fried food, new smartphone, cultural pressure to be rich).

> If you are an individual trying to live a good life, if you are a parent trying to give your children the best start possible …

For that we need to train our consciousness self to see external wishes but do not replace our deepest needs with them, do not allow external wishes to control us.

I hope my opinion is make sense.
And thank you for books.

I totally agree, Erika. Thanks so much for adding your thoughts, especially your points about how a gift mentality is our natural state, but things like school grades and social media train us to distrust it.

🙂 Hi Aliaksei,

Your deepest self knows that it does not need carrots in order to feel satisfaction. it knows the difference between:

– carrots (which are conditional on certain behaviors or performance, just the same as all carrots we received while we were growing up and all carrots we still receive as adults from ourselves when we try to control ourselves, and from others when they try to control us)

– and gifts, which are freely given and received for the simple purpose of pleasure, enjoyment, and enrichment of your own or another person’s life

your deepest self also knows that it does not need self-training. Self-training is another word for self-control. Control—of self and others—is something we have become obsessed with, and when I write more on this topic I will explore how this happened (it would take WAY too long here). Seeing how it happened, we might then begin to see ways that we could learn to gradually let go of control.

In the meantime, if your deepest self wanted to feel satisfaction, and if you were listening to it and following what it REALLY wants and needs, you would simply do something that gives you—and your deepest self—satisfaction. That would feel so good, it would be a gift from you, to yourself. No control or self-training needed.

But this is almost impossible for many of us to do, because we are so busy instead training our imperfect selves to do what we think we SHOULD do according to some “authority figure.”

When our deepest self does not want to do what we think we SHOULD do, we have to give it a carrot. Then we have bribed it, and for a while it may do what we want because it does like the carrot, but sooner or later its going to feel dissatisfied again because you have not met its deepest need, and then you will have to give it another carrot. Probably a bigger carrot. And then another, even bigger carrot.

Note that what I am calling an “authority figure” is either a real, outer authority (teacher, parent, policeman, boss, etc) or an imagined inner authority that plays the same role but is for control of self, not control of others.

To live truly satisfying lives, we would look only to our own deepest self for guidance on how to behave.

Since our deepest self wants only to gift enjoyment and satisfaction to itself and others, if we looked only to our deepest self for guidance, we would not need “authority figures” such as policemen, and we would not need any self-training (self-control).

But to live without “authority figures,” we would have to do two things:

– learn how to let go of self-control (giving ourselves carrots to make up for not giving ourselves real satisfaction) and instead give ourselves what we need

– and learn how to live our lives in ways that give the gifts that meet the needs of others so that they don’t have to use control measures (various forms of violence, subtle or otherwise) on us to get what they need. Then we would no longer need policemen and other outer “authority figures”

with everybody’s needs thus met, the necessity of control, or training, (of self or others) goes away.

Yes, we still need to learn things. But this is also another huge topic – that we can learn in ways that do not involve “training”—self-training or training others—that is not FREELY CHOSEN by the learner. Too big of a topic for right now!

to be very, very clear, carrots are used for control just as sticks are, because they are used to influence or manipulate someone’s (or your own) behavior.
Carrots look better and taste better, and yes, they are better than sticks if you are using them because you want to move away from the violence of sticks. But any form of trying to control or influence anyone’s behavior against their free will—in a way that they would not give freely as a gift—is still a form of violence.

Carrots are just a more subtle form of violence than sticks.

These are very, very difficult ideas for us to understand. If you are an individual trying to live a good life, if you are a parent trying to give your children the best start possible, if you are a teacher, if you are any kind of human being at all in our current, modern, “advanced” culture, these are critical, and critically difficult, concepts to sit with, to ponder on, to experiment with.

Here are some books that might help:
– Non-Violent Communication and all other books by Marshal B Rosenberg and by anybody who has trained with him in Non-Violent Communication

– Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn, and other writings and videos (try YouTube) by Alfie Kohn

– The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein

– Transformational Weight Loss by Charles Eisenstein

Aliaksei, I hope I have not made the whole thing more complicated!
I hope my answers are a little bit helpful.
And thank you, THANK YOU, for the gift of your beautiful questions!

Hello Kate 🙂
What if our deepest self wants to give a gift because it wants to receive a carrot (satisfaction)? And the situation is unconscious self training.

Thanks for your support 🙂

Thanks for commenting, John. I liked your list of motivations. I think I would put curiosity into the “gift to self” category. Little children have no trouble gifting themselves all the time in the world to satisfy their curiosity.

I’m not sure what you mean by “fore brain motivation or something hardwired”?

Thanks for your comment! I know I’m singing to the choir here 🙂

Yes, I did mean blessings and gifts to the self as well as outwardly into the world. This, I think, is for some of us the hardest of all — to be kind to ourselves for no good reason.