What’s the Difference Between Your Imagination and Unconscious Mind?

what's the relationship between the unconscious and the imagination it's a very good question um the boy the dream is how the implicit structure of your perception and values and value hierarchy reveals itself to you now I'll have to unpack that but so the the dream the the implicit structure that guides your attentional focus and constitutes the structure of your value hierarchy reveals itself to you in the dream so let's unpack that it took me really like 40 years to figure this out so it's hard to unpack it's very hard to unpack what the hell are you up to and the answer is you don't know why because you're really really complicated and yet you you can see the world which is a very difficult thing to do because there are a lot of ways to see the world there's an infinite number of ways to see the world and the fact that you can see it one particular way is nothing short of a miracle and you certainly don't know how you do it as far as you're concerned you just look at the world and there it is and there's a lot going on to make that happen I mean half your brain is devoted specifically to visual processing and the other half is integrally involved so for example when you do something like look at a bottle you know you think you think you think you see bottle you think bottle you evaluate Bartle you pick up bottle you know that's the order of perception to action sensation perception emotion action or sensation perception emotion thought action that's how we think we think that's just not true at all when you see a bottle the the motor grip you would use to pick it up is automatically primed by the perception so even your motor cortex that governs your actions participates in the shaping of your perception almost everything you see in the world is a usable object or a pathway or an obstacle you don't see things because there's an infinite number of things you don't see things and then overlay a value structure on that that the value structure is implicit in the perceptions the value structure is implicit in the perceptions and then the people who've made much of implicit bias sort of know that although they're not smart enough to think through what they accidentally discovered and so that's a big problem in our society at the moment because you can be accused for example of unconsciously viewing the world through an oppressive racist hierarchy of presumptions you know and there's a bit of Truth to that because you're probably a little more racist and sexist and I don't know how many flaws don't you have like zero you've got all the flaws to some degree and so you know we're kind of where all of us are ethnocentric most all of us prefer our kin even though we might not like even them and you know you've had Christmas with your family and foreign a drunk relative particularly if you're drunk so remember that next Christmas so you know we see the world through uh a Priory structure of value and we don't know what that is and we dream it we dream about it and then we aggregate those dreams into stories you know that's what a novelist does novelist uses imagination let's say no novelist worth is salt knows what the hell is going to happen when he starts writing the book how dull would that be the writers keep writing because they want to know what happens next you know and if they really want to know so will you when you read it and so and they're using their imagination or it's using them that that's a perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it that's that's what would you call it divine inspiration Guided by the by the by the by the soul of divine inspiration that's a real thing it's the most real thing in in fact there's not a lot of difference between imagination and dreaming and that's useful to know Dreaming or imagination is is a bit more systematized it's generally directed more towards a goal but Carl Jung thought we were dreaming all the time no we see the literally see the world through a dream but that the sensations of the outside world blind us to the dream that's occurring while we're while we're awake I think there's every reason to assume that that's correct one of his questions this is a great question what dream are you living out or here's another way of looking at it what Dream Is possessing you or what story is possessing you or what Spirit Is possessing you those are all the same questions and you might say well it's me nothing's possessing me all that means is you all that means is you just don't know what you're talking about that's what it means even if you're a hedonist you know an impulsive hedonist the dream that's possessing you is the dream of pain and cost free instantaneous gratification and if that's not a dream man that's a delusion that's how dream like that is it's no one with any sense at all who thinks for more than a second and so you don't if you're an impulsive hedonist no one who thinks for a second ever thinks that's going to work you know you might think you can get away with it you might dream you can get away with it something's operating in your imagination you can use your imagination like you would use a dream that's extremely useful that's what you do if you meditate or if you pray and those are the same thing so I can give you an example of this it's very useful to learn so I have this program online called future authoring and it helps people develop a vision for the future and you need a vision because the people perish without a vision a vision gives you it identifies the tools and the obstacles and it gives you a pathway forward it stops your anxiety and gives you hope no vision you're hopeless fragmented disunited and anxious you have to have a vision it has to be a guiding Vision it has to be a uniting guiding vision and you and you might say well how do I develop a vision like that and there here's how try this if if students do this for 90 minutes it decreases the chance they'll drop out of University by 50 percent so that's how well this works that's quite something okay so here's the here's the game so it's not an easy game but but you can do it badly and it'll still work so so that's a good game so the first part of the game is give yourself the benefit of the doubt for the purposes of the game imagine that the Universe would not grind cataclysmically to a halt if something is horrible and wretched as you had an okay time so it's hard for people to grasp that because you know you might think of people as selfish and self-centered and out for themselves all of that most people aren't like that there's about four percent of people who are like that and like look the hell out for them and their online trolls by and large and um the clinical evidence for that's very clear by the way and they're they're there it's pretty much them and not you if you're in interaction with them it's all about them but most people are the opposite of that most people are better to other people than they are to themselves you know most people are harder on themselves than they are on anyone else and you know there's something admirable about that because it means to some degree that you're looking out for other people but there's something that's not admirable about it because it means that you're not treating yourself with the respect that someone with your intrinsic worth must have to flourish and so and the problem is of course you know more than anyone else how what the full range of inadequate inadequacies what your full range of inadequacies most precisely is you also know all the stupid things you've ever done um and that's a heavy burden and it's hard to look at yourself knowing what you know about yourself and then think that you deserve anything other than suffering for your sins and so it's really hard for people to treat themselves like they would there's some something else I learned from Carl Jung you know there's this biblical injunction to treat to love your neighbor as if he were yourself but that sort of presumes you love yourself most people are better at loving their neighbors but there's a It's actually an equation that rule it's like so the first part of the equation is you should act out the proposition that it's incumbent upon you just strive to put your life together so the best possible thing could happen to you you should strive to take care of yourself as if you're taking care of someone you love that's hard because you know you're trouble so that's the first part of the game is you have to play it's like okay let's admit for a second that it wouldn't be the end of the world if I wasn't being roasted over a slow fire all the time for my iniquities I'll give myself a break okay now so that's the first that's hard you gotta you gotta think that through you know you got to open yourself up to the possibility that the Earth wouldn't crack open and swallow you up if you dared to imagine that things maybe could go okay for you if you did the right thing and then the next thing you do is you got to ask yourself a question ask yourself whatever that means it's like how can you ask yourself and get the answer if you don't know the answer and why do you have to ask the question if you could come up with the answer so you're not really asking yourself whatever that means I don't even know what that means I thought it up well how how do you think things up you don't know thoughts just appear in the theater of your imagination they just spring out of the void and there they are you might think well I thought that up it's like have it your way but it's not an explanation it's a theory it's a dream that it's you so imagine you ask yourself question now the first thing you're doing is admitting that there's something you don't know so that's humility there's something I don't know that I need to know that I could learn if I was willing to learn so what don't you know here's the question five years from now you could have what you need and want but you have to specify what it is now you don't have to specify it perfectly because as you move towards it you can improve you know you're going to learn along the way but you got to get you got to be aiming in the right direction vaguely and then you have to move in that direction to learn what you need to learn as you move in that direction so then you think and you have to ask yourself this and then you have to imagine it's like okay I get to have what I want a need what would that look like and maybe you're just stumped then you know because it's such a big question and you've never really asked yourself that and no one else has ever really asked you that either and so you don't even know where to begin because you're that lost in the desert that's a good way of thinking about it so in this online program this future authoring program we break it down into seven questions for people my clients used to come to me my students too and say well I don't really know what to do what should I do and my answer was I don't know what the hell you should do it's like you're you I'm not here to affirm your identity or do you deny it I'm here to help you figure out the pathway forward but if you don't know what to do well here's some guidelines don't just do nothing because you can't if you do nothing you just get old and that's something so there's no doing nothing so you should do something what well why don't you do what other people do if you don't know what to do you start with that so what other people do where do people find meaning in their lives well here's a bunch of different domains most people want an intimate relationship and if you don't well you got to ask yourself what the hell is going on you know are you better resentful cynical terrified betrayed hurt traumatized or you might be a misanthrope and you're one of those people who's extremely introverted maybe you're extremely introverted and creative and you just want to go the hell out in the woods and not see anyone and do your creative thing and it's like okay you're one in a million you get it passed but for most people that's just complete bloody rubbish and so they people want to have an intimate relationship okay so you admit that and then you think well if I could have that relationship and it was the one I wanted what would it look like you know and that can get very detailed how would you how would your family conduct itself if you were sitting around the dinner table you know it's like a Norman Rockwell painting you know that famous painting of Thanksgiving it's like if you could have or maybe you're just having an intimate candlelight dinner with your wife or your husband and you get to have it and it works what does it look like who are you how are you dressed how are you conducting yourself what are you talking about who could you be if you if you could have what you wanted well you can imagine and you could and your imagination will provide you with an answer and then you can write that down and think well that looks like that'd be a good deal that'd be worth making a sacrifice for and then you say well what else do people need well family well that might mean children might mean repairing the relationship with the children you already have might mean your parents if you're fortunate enough to still have them or unlucky enough depending on the parents and maybe you should fix that relationship you know and how do you fix it well you try to find out what you can be grateful about that your parents delivered to you and and then everything left over you see if you can work it out with them and then you think well if I had a relationship with my father that I would want to have what would that look like and then there you go you got some just you got some work to do right there you know Tammy did that I don't know 10 years ago 10 15 years ago well so what do you do with your family what was your vision I wanted to improve my relationship with my father how'd that go as soon as I laid it down and wrote it out it was right there in front of me and it just happened does your dad like you yeah right yeah even though he's he's old and he's he's not there all the time now no he's old and he facetimed me the other day my sister facetimed me and I answered she said dad wants to know when you're coming to visit I said well I'm coming to visit on his birthday so my sister said do you want anything else dad nope that's good yeah yeah that's good he's thrilled to see you yeah he trusts you that wasn't always the case well it was more I didn't trust him that too yeah yeah yeah right and your sisters they're good I don't say anything to them I just listen it works really well yeah right because you used to fight when you talked well I'd say what I thought that never went very well right so you just shut up yeah then they started talking to you then they start one of them told me that I'd never done anything myself that my parents had given me everything that had been spoiled and didn't go out on my own and I just let her talk and I thought I don't know who she's talking to but let her talk and at the end of that she said you know Tim you're a really good mom yeah thanks and then she got along with you for about like two years yeah and then she did it again once once but less so yeah and you know she laid out this whole story about who Tammy was that was so Preposterous that it wasn't even insulting because it had like nothing to do with Tammy as far as we could tell and it was so interesting watching her do that because you could see that as she said it she conjured up this story when she was like 14 and this is like like 30 years later never really Revisited it and when she told the story it was even obvious to her that yeah no you know and the next the next time too you know she came out with this Litany of of criticisms of you and then and you just shut up and you didn't say anything or get irritated at the end she complimented you the same way so you're a good mother yeah I know it was so amazing yeah it was a good thing too because after that Tammy's sister got very ill and and you know she's mostly gone now and yeah if she hadn't got that put together when she did it would have never happened and that's one thing you don't want to have be the case with the people you love she came on tour with us she did for a little while yeah yeah so we had some good time with her so you know you could put your family relationships together and of course the more cataclysmic they are the harder that's going to be but boy if you can put together a really fractured familial relationship you've really got your act together so it's a big challenge but but once yet once you solve that problem a lot of other problems look much easier than they did before so and then probably you want to have some friends you know and hopefully ones that like you and then so you kind of kind of got to think through what that means what friends do you want to have no people never ask themselves that question they sort of take random friends and and I'm not saying that you should be arrogant and picky but you should have something like a philosophy of friendship and here's here's a good start pick people that you can tell good news to okay and pick people that you can tell bad news to you know and if you can tell them good news then something could happen to you and they're celebrating the fact that something good happened to you and maybe you'll be able to return the favor and that's part of what friendship is and so that's a good thing because they're not going to be jealous and bitter and spiteful and resentful and try to drag you into the cooking pot with them just because you've managed to clamber out you know and then on the bad news front well you tell someone bad news and it's time for them to shut the hell up and not tell you about how something happened to them five years ago that was even worse and they offer you a certain amount of comfort or at least at least they listen at least they listen which isn't nothing that's for sure and then you can return that favor at some point in the future as well and is not a good deal you know and and so you want to have some friends you want to figure out how often you want to see them and how you want to treat them and what maybe needs to be straightened out on the Friendship front you know and then well you're going to have a job or a career and you might want to figure out how you'd like that to go you know I've had lots of people come up to me this is something I love doing with my clients you know I meet people after the shows and people say I had a pretty wretched job three years ago of course I was drinking and doing all sorts of stupid things at the same time and I was pretty bitter but I decided I was gonna you know give it a shot for a while and now I make three times the money and you know I have a job I don't have a job I have a career and The Horizon is kind of unlimited and and then we have a little joke which is well that seems to be better you know is that better it's like yeah that's better it's like hey man there's a huge industrial organization literature that shows that if you write down your goals for your life so that's the vision of your life there's nothing you can do that will make you more productive than doing that well why well you're working do you have a reason and if the answer is no well you're not going to work very hard are you because why would you toil away for no reward and then you think well what's your reward well what's the reward you want how about you get to have the life you want there's a good reward well what is that well I don't know it's like well I'm not hiring you you know you're all over the place and any obstacle will stop you and you have no hope because you actually experience hope in relationship to a goal that's what hope is for it's to show you that you're progressing towards a goal no goal no hope the highest goal hey the most hope that'd be a good deal you know like you shouldn't name so high that you got no chance of hitting it because that's just arrogance but like you do with a child you say well here you are you could easily hit Dot and take a little work to hit that why don't you try hitting that you know maybe you've got a 70 chance at it 100 percent that's too much you already did that zero no that's just futile 70 percent or 55 percent you know depending on how tough a game you want to play well that's optimally challenging too and it's optimally challenging because it moves you towards the goal and it transforms you well you move so that's a good deal so intimate relationship family friends um job education plan you're probably interested in something find out what it is get good at it you know maybe it's you want to you want to figure out how to wire your house that's a good one you you want to know how to repair the plumbing you don't want to know how to uh fix what do you call that regrout regrout bricks it's not grit grow mortar what do they call that when you fix the brick tuck pointing what tuck pointed she's she's done a lot of Renovations by the way so or maybe you could be a better Carpenter or you have abstract interests you want to read or you've got artistic interests or you know get better at something get good at something get really good at something then you learn how to get good at something then you can get good at some other things that's a good deal um consider the space of Temptation in front of you you know what are you doing stupid on the alcohol drug and promiscuity front that's screwing you up you know and and maybe that's quite a good time and you don't want to give it up but if you had something better to do maybe do that instead that's the best way out of alcoholism for example hardly anybody gets out alcoholism with some without something approximating a religious transformation that's been known even by extremely secular researchers for like 60 years there's almost no alcohol treatment programs work in fact I don't think there's evidence that any of them work they can they can get you through withdrawal but almost everybody relapses but what works well lots of people quit on their own but if you investigate that it's because they have something like a spiritual transformation and if you investigate that you find out that they found something better to do and so and in that you know it's a crucial point because especially if alcohol for example is a good drug for you it's release relieves anxiety it improves positive emotion it makes people more more social and it decreases self-consciousness so you can do impulsive hedonic foolish things and enjoy them in the moment that's a pretty damn good deal except that there's tomorrow and so why give that up especially if you have nothing and the answer is well you won't give it up if you have nothing but if you have something better to do you might think I'd rather do that you know I mean I like to drink I drink a lot when I was a kid I started drinking when I was like 13 I used to sit with my delinquent friends behind the fence and Fairview Alberta we're 800 miles north of the American Border 20 bloody below when it was warm in the winter and you can still go outside at minus 20. it's minus 40 things go up chilly and we drink you know vodka we put in the freezer and have a perfectly fine old time and there was plenty of drinking up north that's for sure and I really liked it I I was very frequently the last person at the party and uh why'd I quit well I got married and that was better and I was writing this extremely difficult book my first book maps of meaning I just couldn't write that and do the research I was doing as a graduate school student I couldn't do that and be hungover it it was one or the other you know and it was interfering with my relationship with Tammy too not tremendously but I could see that it could easily be a problem and there's no damn way I was going to be drunk with kids like no so I just stopped just and you know that was a really good idea but I wouldn't have stopped if I didn't have anything better to do like why would I stop it was a blast I'd a riot you know so dionysius man see if you don't have another God he's plenty of fun around the campfire you know at three in the morning so well here's another thing you could consider you know what responsibility of have you adopted on the Civic front I know do you belong to a a community of any sort if you don't you're probably Lonesome and you know a sports club a businessman's club chess club a reading group it was a pretty local a neighborhood association uh a party you know you wonder how can those politicians be so you could list the adjectives you know after that and the answer is because the people who aren't like that aren't doing that and maybe you're one of them you know if you're so smart why the hell aren't you shoulder near Civic burden and you know and you think well I'm cynical politics you know I haven't got time for that it's like fair enough but you're going to take what you can get then aren't you and and then also you have zero in this country you have zero grounds for being cynical and why do I say that well first of all there isn't a better country as far as I can tell and you know and that's that's damning with faint praise because I'm comparing you to other actual countries into in instead of who you could be and but as far as when you stack yeah yours your country's up you're at the top of a dismal pile and so [Applause] and uh so this is about as good as it gets and then you have these political parties and you know the last said about them the better you could say but I know perfectly well this is 100 true that every single ever both political parties at every single level are dying for competent people it's certainly the case that the Biden Administration did not have enough competent people to fill the roles it had to fill and I I'm not just that's not just a casual criticism I know this I've talked to people who tried to staff the positions they know perfectly well that many of the people who are filling the positions aren't the people for the positions so why are they there it's like well they took what they had so and I'll tell you something else about being involved in the political party and I I know this to be true as well if you join one and you work if you're reliable and careful and you know willing to start at the entry place you will move so quick that it will traumatize you because you'll think oh my god you're kidding I can move that far up that quickly knowing how little I know it's like yeah so so you might want to think about that you know here's a rule I didn't write this in my book all abdicated responsibility is vacuumed up by tyrants and used against you right so if you're not involved politically then you're at the whim of those who are and that's that

Channel: Jordan B Peterson Clips

Views: 265,922

Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanbpeterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, selfauthoring, neuropsychology, jordan peterson clips, jp peterson clips, jp clips, jordan peterson podcast clips, jordan peterson live, jordan peterson livestream, jordan peterson shorts, jordan peterson tiktoks, jordan peterson motivational clips

Id: XHRW0DPHdNg

Length: 31min 20sec (1880 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023