Automatic Reflex Quotes

Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.

So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment.

Is the kind of smile she loves best: It’s like a sneeze, a reflex, a twitch, helpless and automatic, and it only happens when he looks at her.

Have you ever sat around while someone held their breath? For a while, it doesn't bother you, but eventually you start holding your breath with them, willing them to breathe. it's one of those automatic reflexes. (Mercy)

In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making.

Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.

Magic is life,’ and that’s not quite right. You think that the study of magic, the understanding of it, gives you some sort of better grasp of life. Unfortunately, even I worked out that this isn’t quite true; it’s a bit skewed, see? We understand this. Magic is not life. Life is magic. Even the boring, plodding, painful, cold, cruel parts, even the mundane automatic reflexes, heart pumping, lungs breathing, stomach digesting, even the uninteresting dull processes of walking, swinging the knees and seeing with eyes, this is magic. This is what makes magic.

These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength. Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life—with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long—and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls. Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm. Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling. Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss.

Thanks for the hint," I laughed. "And thanks for the invitation too. Only I don't know if I can make it - " I stalled automatically, marveling at the strength of my reflex - the never-appear-too-eager one, for of course nothing would have stopped me.

They also taught that our initial automatic feelings are to be viewed as natural and indifferent. These include things like being startled or irritated, blushing, turning pale, tensing up, shaking, sweating, or stammering. They are natural reflex reactions, our first reactions before we escalate them into full-blown passions.

We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. Our own tradition demands that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny, and to consider the proper responses to it. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

By the time we reached the front door of the party house—a total mansion, like Harrison had said—Nathan was far behind us. Well, he’d promised to stay out of our hair. “Wow,” I heard Bailey gasp as the front door swung open for us, though I wasn’t sure if that was her reaction to the freakishly large house or to the drop-dead-gorgeous guy standing in front of us. “Good evening, ladies,” he said, stepping aside to let us enter. Automatically, I found myself standing up taller and sliding my shoulder blades back for optimum cleavage exposure. It was like a flirting reflex. I just wished I wasn’t all sunburned. “Hello to you.” He grinned at me. A cocky, sexy grin. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. He glanced at Bailey then. “Any of us. I’m sure I’d remember those pretty faces.” I swear, Bailey was blushing so hard I could feel the heat radiating from her body. “Oh, you’d remember,” I agreed, tossing back my hair and putting a hand on my hip. “I’m Whi—” “Whitley!” I jumped and spun around involuntarily. Harrison was standing beside me, looking thoroughly delighted. “Hello again, darling. You look gorgeous—and the lack of flip-flops is making my day. Those slingbacks are perfect!” I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the hot guy, but he’d already moved on and was chatting with a group of kids a few feet away. Goddamn it. “Wesley is just so busy,” Harrison said, following my gaze. “You have to give him credit for being a great host. He talks to everyone. Seems like way too much work to me.

We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex.

A Maximus, the Gladiator lies in every human being. When the time comes, your Maximus within you will come out. It is not called destiny, it is an extended automatic self reflex

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present.

A study found that when we feel lonely, we lessen our inbuilt reflex to automatically mimic other people's smiles. Lonely people only reacted to signs of anger or sadness. When presented with faces showing joy, they didn't smile in response. The researchers aren't certain of the cause.

We are taught from girlhood to be nice and to protect other people's feelings, even at the expense of our own well-being. We learn, by example, that we are supposed to cater to everyone else around us. We cater to the men in our lives. We cater to our children. We cater to our friends. We cater to strangers. Does everyone have what they need? Is everyone feeling good and doing great? I address the concerns of others without even thinking, as automatically as a reflex, but when it comes to taking care of myself I have to pause and remember to ask myself, *Wait, do I have everything I need? Am I feeling good and doing great?*

What do you remember most about what your pai put in his lamb chops?" "I think it was basically salt, pepper, and garlic." He squeezed his eyes shut and focused so hard that not dropping a kiss on his earnestly pursed mouth was the hardest thing. His eyes opened, bright with memory. "Of course. Mint." "That's perfect. Since we're only allowed only five tools, simple is good." "My mãe always made rice and potatoes with it. How about we make lamb chops and a biryani-style pilaf?" Ashna blinked. Since when was Rico such a foodie? He shrugged but his lips tugged to one side in his crooked smile. "What? I live in London. Of course Indian is my favorite cuisine." Tossing an onion at him, she asked him to start chopping, and put the rice to boil. Then she turned to the lamb chops. The automatic reflex to follow Baba's recipe to within an inch of its life rolled through her. But when she ignored it, the need to hyperventilate didn't follow. Next to her Rico was fully tuned in to her body language, dividing his focus between following the instructions she threw out and the job at hand. As he'd talked about his father's chops, she'd imagined exactly how she wanted them to taste. An overtone of garlic and lemon and an undertone of mint. The rice would be simple, in keeping with the Brazilian tradition, but she'd liven it up with fried onions, cashew nuts, whole black cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, and cinnamon stick. All she wanted was to create something that tasted like Rico's childhood, combined with their future together, and it felt like she was flying. Just like with her teas, she knew exactly what she wanted to taste and she knew exactly how to layer ingredients to coax out those flavors, those feelings. It was her and that alchemy and Rico's hands flying to follow instructions and help her make it happen. "There's another thing we have to make," she said. Rico raised a brow as he stirred rice into the spice-infused butter. "I want to make tea. A festive chai." He smiled at her, heat intensifying his eyes. Really? Talking about tea turned him on? Wasn't the universe just full of good news today.

Questioner: I'm unclear on the point about the difference between thinking and thought. Are you proposing that we slide from thinking into thought without being aware that we are doing it? Bohm: Yes. It's automatic, because when we've been thinking, that thinking gets recorded in the brain and becomes thought. I'll discuss later how that thought is an active set of movements, a reflex. But suppose you keep telling very young children that people of a certain group are no good, no good, no good. Then later on it becomes thought which just springs up—'they're no good'.

Ethics has three levels, the good for self, the good for others, and the good for the transcendent purpose of a life.1 The good for self is the prudence by which you self-cultivate, learning to play the cello, say, or practicing centering prayer. Self-denial is not automatically virtuous. (How many self-denying mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: I’ll just sit here in the dark.) The good for a transcendent purpose is the faith, hope, and love to pursue an answer to the question “So what?” The family, science, art, the football club, God give the answers that humans seek. The middle level is attention to the good for others. The late first-century BCE Jewish sage Hillel of Babylon put it negatively yet reflexively: “Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself.” It’s masculine, a guy-liberalism, a gospel of justice, roughly the so-called Non-Aggression Axiom as articulated by libertarians since the word “libertarian” was redirected in the 1950s to a (then) right-wing liberalism. Matt Kibbe puts it well in the title of his 2014 best seller, Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.2 On the other hand, the early first-century CE Jewish sage Jesus of Nazareth put it positively: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s gal-liberalism, a gospel of love, placing upon us an ethical responsibility to do more than pass by on the other side. Be a good Samaritan. Be nice. In

I'm discussing how thought would properly work—and does in fact work in many areas—first, to show that thought is not all bad; and second, because to understand what has gone wrong we should have some understanding of how it would work when it is right. Q: Is this the difference between thinking and thought as you described earlier? Bohm: Thought just works automatically. But when you're thinking, you are ready to see when it doesn't work and you're ready to start changing it. 'Thinking' means that when the thing isn't working, something more is coming in—which is ready to look at the situation and change the thought if necessary. Q: Is thinking an element that's outside of thought? Bohm: It's a bit beyond thought. Let's put it that thinking is not purely the past; it's not purely a set of reflexes in the past. Q: Would thinking be more 'of the moment', more energized, and thought more passive in the past? Bohm: The past is active. That's the trouble. The past is not really the past—it's the effect of the past in the present. The past has left a trace in the present. Q: Then the thinking would be even more energized? Bohm: Yes. The thinking will be more energized because thinking is more directly in the present, because it includes the incoherence that thought is actually making. It may also include allowing new reflexes to form, new arrangements, new ideas. If the reflexes are all somewhat open and flexible and changeable, then it will work nicely.

Well, it’s the inevitable “Coke versus Pepsi” dichotomy as to which is more important, which influences the other more in terms of our actions. And of course it turns out that, as with most dichotomies of behavior, it’s a false one. They’re utterly intertwined, and intertwined on a neurobiological level. For example, if you think of something terrifying that happened to you long ago, emotional parts of your brain activate and you secrete stress hormones. Or if you have an aroused emotion—you’re in an agitated, frightened state—and suddenly you think and reason in a way that’s imprudent and ridiculous. We often make terrible decisions when we’re aroused. The two parts are equally intertwined. We assume that as creatures with big cortexes, reason is at the core of most of our decision making. And an awful lot of work has shown that far more often than we’d like to think, we make our decisions based on implicit emotional, automatic reflexes. We make them within milliseconds. Parts of the brain that are marinated in emotion and hormones are activating long, long before the more cortical rational parts activate. And often what we believe is rational thinking is, instead, our cognitive selves playing catch-up, trying to rationalize the notion that our emotional instincts are perfectly logical and make wonderful sense. We can manipulate the emotional, the automatic, the implicit, the subterranean aspects of our brains unawares, and it changes our decisions, and then we come up with highfalutin explanations—that I did what I just did because of some philosopher I read freshman year. No, actually it’s because of this manipulation that just occurred.

When my lips touched her face, my grandmother’s hands quivered and a long shudder ran through her whole body – possibly an automatic reflex, or perhaps it is that certain forms of affection are hypersensitive enough to recognize through the veil of unconsciousness what they scarcely need the senses to enable them to love. Suddenly my grandmother started up, made a violent effort, like someone struggling to hold on to her life. Françoise was unable to offer any resistance to the sight of this and burst out sobbing. Remembering what the doctor had said, I tried to make her leave the room. At that moment my grandmother opened her eyes. I hurriedly thrust myself in front of Françoise to hide her tears while my parents were speaking to the dying woman. The hissing drone of oxygen had stopped; the doctor moved away from the bedside. My grandmother was dead. A few hours later, Françoise was able for the last time, and without causing pain, to comb that beautiful hair which was only slightly greying and had thus far seemed much younger than my grandmother herself. But this was now reversed: the hair was the only feature to set the crown of age on a face grown young again, free of the wrinkles, the shrinkage, the puffiness, the tensions, the sagging flesh which pain had brought to it for so long. As in the distant days when her parents had chosen a husband for her, her features were delicately traced by purity and submission, her cheeks glowed with a chaste expectation, a dream of happiness, an innocent gaiety even, which the years had gradually destroyed. As it ebbed from her, life had borne away its disillusions. A smile seemed to hover on my grandmother’s lips. On that funeral couch, death, like a sculptor of the Middle Ages, had laid her to rest with the face of a young girl.

According to the [evolutionist explanation of the instinct of animals], instinct is the expression of the heredity of a species, of an accumulation of analogous experiences down the ages. This is how they explain, for example, the fact that a flock of sheep hastily gathers together around the lambs the moment it perceives the shadow of a bird of prey, or that a kitten while playing already employs all the tricks of a hunter, or that birds know how to build their nests. In fact, it is enough to watch animals to see that their instinct has nothing of an automatism about it. The formation of such a mechanism by a purely cumulative . . . process is highly improbable, to say the least. Instinct is a nonreflective modality of the intelligence; it is determined, not by a series of automatic reflexes, but by the “form”—the qualitative determination—of the species. This form is like a filter through which the universal intelligence is manifested. . . The same is also true for man: his intelligence too is determined by the subtle form of his species. This form, however, includes the reflective faculty, which allows of a singularization of the individual such as does not exist among the animals. Man alone is able to objectivize himself. He can say: “I am this or that.” He alone possesses this two-edged faculty. Man, by virtue of his own central position in the cosmos, is able to transcend his specific norm; he can also betray it, and sink lower; "The corruption of the best is corruption at its worst." A normal animal remains true to the form and genius of its species; if its intelligence is not reflective and objectifying, but in some sort existential, it is nonetheless spontaneous; it is assuredly a form of the universal intelligence even if it is not recognized as such by men who, from prejudice or ignorance, identify intelligence with discursive thought exclusively.

While attachment has its source in the personality, in what the Buddhists refer to as the 'desire nature,' commitment comes from the soul. In relationship to life, just as in human relationships, attachment closes down options, commitment opens them up. Modern life has made us people of attachment rather than people of commitment. Indeed, many people have found that it is difficult to tell the difference between attachment and commitment in their own lives. Yet attachment leads farther and farther into entrapment. Commitment, though it may sometimes feel constricting, will ultimately lead to greater degrees of freedom. Both involve in the moment an experience of holding, sometimes against the flow of events or against temptation. One can distinguish between the two in most situations by noticing over time whether one has moved through this activity or this relationship closer to freedom or closer to bondage. Attachment is a reflex, an automatic response which often may not reflect our deepest good. Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose.

It is clear, then, that the desire for certainty shapes our spaces of possibility, our perceptions, and our lives both personally and professionally. Usually, this need saves us. But it also sabotages us. This produces an ongoing tension between what we might think of as our conscious selves and our automatic selves. To overcome our inborn reflex that pushes us to seek certainty (sometimes at any cost), we must lead with our conscious selves and tell ourselves a new story, one that with insistent practice will change our future past and even our physiological responses. We must create internal and external ecologies that… celebrate doubt! This means the biggest obstacle to deviation and seeing differently isn’t actually our environment as such, or our” intelligence, or even—ironically—the challenge of reaching the mythical “aha” moment. Rather, it is the nature of human perception itself, and in particular the perceived need for knowing. Yet the deep paradox is that the mechanisms of perception are also the process by which we can unlock powerful new perceptions and ways to deviate. Which means that mechanism of generating a perception is the blocker… and the process of creating perception is the enabler of creativity

He stared down at her for a moment, wanting to heal every cut on her soft skin. But he couldn’t, not yet. He needed to get her, and her car, far from this place so neither he nor Kate would be implicated in any way with the gruesome murder site. It also meant he would have to drive. In all his years, he had never driven an automobile. The closest he had come was watching various assistants through the years as they chauffeured him. He wasn’t sure he could even remember how to start the car, but right now he had no choice. Grudgingly, he got into the driver’s seat, and finding the lever underneath, he pushed it back so he sat comfortably behind the wheel. After trying three different keys, he found one that slipped into the ignition. From what he had seen over the past hundred years, driving was not a complex operation, and he was an immortal with reflexes far more keen than a human man. How difficult could it be? He turned the key and nearly jerked the wheel off the steering column when the car surprised him by lurching forward. The car went silent. The engine wasn’t running. What was he doing wrong? He stared at the gearshift, wondering if he should move it. His frustration reared up, but his agitation would not make the car drive itself. He had to keep a cool head. Not knowing what else to try, he pushed one of the pedals at his feet to the floor and turned the key again. This time the car didn’t move, and it roared to life. Grasping the gearshift, he jammed it into the first position and glanced over at Kate. Why couldn’t she have owned a car with an automatic transmission? Shaking his head, he put some pressure on the gas pedal and slowly released the clutch. Thankfully the car rolled a few feet, but without warning it jumped forward. He pressed the clutch back to the floor before the engine lost power again. Calisto slammed his hand against the wheel, muttering under his breath in Spanish. At this rate it would take him all night to drive her home. The faded yellow convertible pitched forward again, threatening to stall as he continued out of the parking lot, thankful it was late. The streets were fairly empty. At least he wouldn’t get into an accident with another car. Her car staggered ahead, lurching each time he tried to release the clutch, bouncing and jostling them both until Kate finally stirred and woke up. § “Are we out of gas or something?” Calisto watched her with a tight smile. “Not exactly.” Kate winced in pain when she laughed. “You can’t drive a stickshift, can you?” “Does it show?” Calisto pulled over, finally allowing the engine to stall. She nodded her head slowly to avoid more pain. “Just a little. What happened?” “You don’t remember?” “I remember being mugged. And I remember seeing you, but everything after that is blank.” She watched his eyes as Calisto reached over to brush her hair back from her face, and his touch sent shivers through her body. This wasn’t how she had hoped she would run into him, but she learned a long time ago fate didn’t always work out the way you expected.

We may need to consider a little abstinence from our automatic, reflexive responses of being helpful to others. For some of us, doing this may feel very threatening; to identify our addictions of helpfulness is to challenge the ways we habitually express love – it comes close to challenging our love itself. . . . Let us go back for a moment and look at that tiny, perhaps almost nonexistent space between feeling a person’s pain and doing something in response to it. It is not easy to just be with the pain of another, to feel it as your own. No wonder we are likely to jump into our habitual responses so quickly. As soon as we start doing something for or to the suffering person, we can minimize the bare agony of feeling that person’s pain. It is like that everywhere; our addicted doings act as minor anaesthesia. . . . Sometimes, perhaps often, taking the space will feel like an absence of response. We may fear the person will think we don’t care because we are not immediately hopping like popcorn to do something helpful. And sometimes the response that is authentically invited will never appear overtly helpful. Perhaps we are just invited to pray, silently in the background, or just to be present without saying a word or offering even a touch. Sometimes love even invites us to leave a person alone. Such responses are not too good for our egos; the suffering person is unlikely to come and thank us for our lack of involvement. But love does not ask for credit, nor does it permit ego-gratification as the motive for response. Authentic loving responsiveness calls for a kind of fasting from being helpful. Real helpfulness requires a relinquishment of our caretaking reflexes. It demands not only that we stay present with the un-anaesthetized pain of the person or situation, but that we also risk appearing to be uncaring. It further asks us to be unknowing. Right there in the centre of a situation that screams for action, we must admit that we really don’t know what to do. Finally, it invites us to turn our consciousness toward the exact point where our hearts are already looking: to the source of love. There, and only there, is the wellspring of authentic responsiveness found.

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

Increasingly now, week by week, the normal, unconscious feedback of proprioception was being replaced by an equally unconscious feedback by vision, by visual automatism and reflexes increasingly integrated and fluent.

Prayer should become your first response and your automatic reflex when you don’t know what else to do.

The lights changed. She put the car into bottom gear, paused, then let in the clutch. It occurred to her as she did so that it was not only people’s physical reactions to those three colours that had become automatic but their mental ones as well. Red, yellow, green—frustration, hope, joy: a brand-new conditioned reflex. Give it a few more years to get established, and psychiatrists would be using coloured rays, projected in that sequence, for the treatment of melancholia; and to future generations green would no longer suggest envy, but freedom. In such haphazard ways are symbolisms born and reborn.

Attachment is a reflex, an automatic response which often may not reflect our deepest good. Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose.

Emotion apprises us that something vital to our welfare is occurring. We are bombarded by hundreds of thousands of stimuli every second of every day. Emotion automatically and reflexively sorts through the barrage, picking out what matters and steering us to the appropriate action. Our feelings guide us in issues large and small; they tell us what we want, what our preferences are, and what we need.

The object of biology is to grasp that which makes a living being a living being, that is, not--according to the realist postulate common to both mechanism and vitalism--the superposition of elementary reflexes or the intervention of a 'vital force,' but an indecomposable structure of behavior. It is by means of ordered reactions that we can understand the automatic reactions as degradations. Just as anatomy refers back to physiology, physiology refers back to biology.

Thinking takes on first a conceptual, metaphorical form. Then a subjective, affective form. Then an animal, instinctive form. Then a reflex, automatic form. At that point, it is simply a function equivalent to the circulation of the blood and artificial respiration. Writing is the living alternative to the worst of what it says . There was a dramaturgy of art and language: transfiguring the real into lyricism and violence, giving history a heroic, bloodstained ending. It seems today that art and language have the opposite function of making everything conform to ordinariness: without end and without resolution.

(...) își spunea în sinea lui că nu-i greu să iubești pe cineva strălucitor, elegant și fără cusur: această iubire nu-i decât un reflex lipsit de orice semnificație, care în mod automat stârnește în noi sentimentul întâlnirii întâmplătoare a frumuseții; pe când marea dragoste dorește să-și făurească ființa iubită pornind tocmai de la o creatură lipsită de perfecțiune, care, de fapt, e cu atât mai umană, cu cât e mai lipsită de perfecțiune.

The body, as has often been said, 'catches' and 'understands' the movement. The acquisition of the habit is surely the grasping of a signification, but it is specifically the motor grasping of a motor signification...But if habit is neither a form of knowledge nor an automatic reflex, then what is it? It is a knowledge of the hands, which is only given through a bodily effort and cannot be translated by an objective designation. The subject knows where the letters are on the keyboard just as we know where one of our limbs is--a knowledge of familiarity that does not provide us with a position in objective space.

same threat-level warning issued ad nauseam. The security mandates—empty your pockets, remove your shoes, laptops out, gels and liquids in separate bags—repeated so many times that eventually everyone stopped hearing them. All of this so reflexive and automatic and habituated and slow that the travelers were a little zoned out and playing with their phones and just simply enduring this uniquely modern, first world ordeal that is not per se “difficult” but is definitely exhausting. Spiritually debilitating. Everyone feeling a small ache of regret, suspecting that, as a people, we could do better. But we don’t. The line for a McRib was quiet and solemn and twenty people deep.

My memorization skills were so well honed at Korean school that it's now become an involuntary and automatic reflex. I have almost perfect recall of conversations I've had going back about twenty years or so. If required, I can recite an entire thirty-minute exchange verbatim. Sometimes this is useful, as when I'm arguing with a male companion about whether one of us did or did not break some previously made promise. However, my gift of recall is very annoying to other people. They forgot to tell us at Korean school that memory does not lead to a happy life.

A Maximus, the Gladiator, lies in every human being. When the time comes, your Maximus within you will come out. It is not called destiny – it is an extended automatic self-reflex.” – Anoop Raghav

The power of mindfulness is the power to examine those self-identifications and their consequences and the power to examine the views and perspectives we adopt so reflexively and automatically and then proceed to think are

The power of mindfulness is the power to examine those self-identifications and their consequences and the power to examine the views and perspectives we adopt so reflexively and automatically and then proceed to think are us.

MY SURVIVAL INSTINCTS come to the surface in other areas. Spotting the cracks so I know where I can tread. This is my reflex. There is no instruction booklet. Only I know how to fend her off, hold her back, back her down —and these impulses are automatic. Will it be a good day or a bad day? I am graceful at sidestepping perilous eventualities. I had no choice but to exist in the sea that she swam in. It was a fragile ecosystem where the temperature changed without warning. My natural shape was dissolved and I became shapeless. A plankton drifting in the current of her expectations. Unable to swim against it. And any attempt to swim away would harm her.

Every time I press that red button on the top of your head that reads, “There’s no Alex,” a reflexive thought pattern shoots up and declares, “Oh yes there is, and here’s what he has to say about this.” I press it again, and another pattern comes out, like, “I only understand this intellectually.” Or “I’m just not feeling it.” Whatever. It’s all a smokescreen, just another defensive mechanism to help me not tell myself the truth. Nobody wants to wake up 100% or they’d already be awake. I need at least 51% to work with a client successfully. And a willingness to open. A: I think I get what you’re saying. Are you saying that objections arise, but that there’s actually nobody there doing it? F: That’s exactly what I’m saying. Since there’s no Alex, it can’t be Alex raising the objections, right? A: Right. F: Conditioning is automatically arising to meet circumstance. A: Right. F: Well, if these objections aren’t even yours, do you have to believe them? A: (thinking, then smiling) No. No, I do not have to believe them! Fred: Precisely! And there’s the power. We don’t suffer from what we think; we suffer from what we believe! If we suffered from what we think, I’d still be a basket case. Thoughts arise. Period. This much we know from our direct experience, yes? A: Yes. F: The good news is that we don’t have to take thought very seriously. If we don’t take delivery of those thoughts, if we don’t claim them, they can’t hurt us.

Groundbreaking new research in neuroscience shows that our brains are designed to perceive trends even where they might not exist. After an event occurs just two or three times in a row, regions of the human brain called the anterior cingulate and nucleus accumbens automatically anticipate that it will happen again. If it does repeat, a natural chemical called dopamine is released, flooding your brain with a soft euphoria. Thus, if a stock goes up a few times in a row, you reflexively expect it to keep going—and your brain chemistry changes as the stock rises, giving you a “natural high.” You effectively become addicted to your own predictions.

Of course, television is not alone in being confronted with this destiny - this vicious circle: the destiny of all those things which , no longer having an objective purpose, take themselves for their own ends. In so doing, they escape all responsibility, but also become bogged down in their own insoluble contradictions. This is, however, more particularly the critical situation of all the current media. Opinion polls themselves are a good example. They have had their moment of truth (as, indeed, did television), when they were the representative mirror of an opinion, in the days when such a thing still existed, before it became merely a conditioned reflex. But perpetual harassment by opinion polls has resulted in their being no longer a mirror at all; they have, rather, become a screen. A perverse exchange has been established between polls which no longer really ask questions and masses who no longer reply. Or rather they become cunning partners, like rats in laboratories or the viruses pursued in experiments. They toy with the polls at least as much as the polls toy with them. They play a double game. It is not, then, that the polls are bogus or deceitful, but rather that their very success and automatic operation have made them random. There is the same double game, the same perverse social relationship between an all-powerful, but wholly self-absorbed, television and the mass of TV viewers, who are vaguely scandalized by this misappropriation, not just of public money, but of the whole value system of news and information. You don't need to be politically aware to realize that, after the famous dustbins of history, we are now seeing the dustbins of information. Now , information may well be a myth, but this alternative myth, the modern substitute for all other values, has been rammed down our throats incessantly. And there is a glaring contrast between this universal myth and the actual state of affairs. The real catastrophe of television has been how deeply it has failed to live up to its promise of providing information- its supposed modern function. We dreamed first of giving power - political power- to the imagination, but we dream less and less of this, if indeed at all. The fantasy then shifted on to the media and information. At times we dreamed (at least collectively, even if individually we continued to have no illusions) of finding some freedom there — an openness, a new public space. Such dreams were soon dashed: the media turned out to be much more conformist and servile than expected, at times more servile than the professional politicians. The latest displacement of the imagination has been on to the judiciary. Again this has been an illusion, since, apart from th e pleasing whiff of scandal produced, this is also dependent on the media operation. We are going to end up looking for imagination in places further and further removed from power - from any form of power whatever (and definitely far removed from cultural power, which has become the most conventional and professional form ther e is). Among the excluded, the immigrants, the homeless. But that will really take a lot of imagination because they, who no longer even have an image, are themselves the by-products of a whole society's loss of imagination, of the loss of any social imagination. And this is indeed the point. We shall soon see it is no use trying to locate the imagination somewhere. Quite simply, because there no longer is any. The day this becomes patently obvious, the vague collective disappointment hanging over us today will become a massive sickening feeling.

When babies are very young, their behaviours are automatic and reflex driven. Only at 6-14 weeks old do they begin to become aware of the outside world. New babies are simply not aware of us, and we need to adjust our expectations around their behaviour. In other words, we won’t always be able to stop them crying, or make them calm, or get them to feed well.

Let us start by exploring the consequences of our simplifying "no- brainer" decision that we must rely on a strong trademark. This conclusion automatically leads to an understanding of the essence of our business in proper elementary academic terms. We can see from the introductory course in psychology that, in essence, we are going into the business of creating and maintaining conditioned reflexes. The "Coca-Cola" trade name and trade dress will act as the stimuli, and the purchase and ingestion of our beverage will be the desired responses.The

When someone compromises your mindset principle, your “Grr!” reflex automatically kicks in. Just like your physiological reflexes, this psychological reflex serves and protects by safeguarding a virtue of humanity.

As it turns out, it is often individuals who defy conventional normality who are the healthy ones. The psychologist Abraham Maslow made the investigation of self-actualization—the attainment of authentic satisfaction not based on external valuations—his life’s work. “A study of people healthy enough to be self-actualized,” he wrote in a widely read paper, “revealed that they were not ‘well-adjusted’ (in the naïve sense of approval of and identification with the culture).” These healthy people, suggested Maslow, had a complex relationship with their “much less healthy culture.” Neither conformists nor automatically reflexive rebels, such men and women expressed their unconventionality in ways that kept them true to their inner values, without hostility but not without fight, when that was called for. “An inner feeling of detachment from the culture was not necessarily conscious but was displayed by almost all . . . They very frequently seemed to be able to stand off from it as if they did not quite belong to it.”[14]

Trump’s unpredictability caused much discomfort among his frequently changing staff and among America’s allies, who were used to automatic, reflexive support from American presidents. But it had its uses internationally by putting America’s adversaries off balance and instilling fear in its enemies. As Israel’s prime minister, I saw it as my job to carefully navigate through the new reality Trump brought to Washington in order to advance Israel’s security and vital national interests and to forge four historic peace agreements. I could do so because Trump adopted an entirely new approach to peacemaking. He did not heed bureaucratic orthodoxy and was willing to go outside the box. For the first time in Israel’s history, peace was achieved without ceding territory or uprooting Jews from their homes. It was based on mutual economic, diplomatic and security interests in which all sides benefited. In

Trump’s unpredictability caused much discomfort among his frequently changing staff and among America’s allies, who were used to automatic, reflexive support from American presidents. But it had its uses internationally by putting America’s adversaries off balance and instilling fear in its enemies. As Israel’s prime minister, I saw it as my job to carefully navigate through the new reality Trump brought to Washington in order to advance Israel’s security and vital national interests and to forge four historic peace agreements. I could do so because Trump adopted an entirely new approach to peacemaking. He did not heed bureaucratic orthodoxy and was willing to go outside the box. For the first time in Israel’s history, peace was achieved without ceding territory or uprooting Jews from their homes. It was based on mutual economic, diplomatic and security interests in which all sides benefited. In addition to recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, President Trump recognized the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. In confronting Iran he was equally bold. Recognizing the absurdity of the Iran deal, he withdrew from it and did not hesitate to apply forceful economic and military pressures on Tehran. In all this he was a true trailblazer. Despite bumps in the road, our years together were the best ever for the Israeli-American alliance, strengthening security and bringing four historic peace accords to Israel and the Middle East. They showed the world that great things happen when an American president and an Israeli prime minister work in tandem, with no daylight between them. We proved conclusively that if you pursue peace through strength, you get both.

The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR) also influences the coordination of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the development of one-side dominance (think right- or left-handedness). One-side dominance is critical for motor learning and the ability to take actions without concentrating on them (called “automaticity”). Without automaticity, movements must be consciously executed making them cumbersome and tiring.

1  Spotting fleeting, automatic thoughts and writing them down concisely on a self-monitoring record, so they can be viewed in a detached manner. 2  Carefully distinguishing emotions from the thoughts and beliefs that underlie them, so the thoughts can be viewed as representations of reality that could be true or false. 3  Writing thoughts up on a flipchart or board and literally taking a step back to view them from a distance as something ‘over there’. 4  Referring to your thoughts in the third-person, e.g., ‘I notice that Donald is beginning to feel angry and thinking to himself that this person has insulted him…’. 5  Using a counter or keeping a tally to track the frequency of particular automatic thoughts or feelings, throughout the day, thereby viewing them as habitual and repetitive, like reflexes rather than rational conclusions. 6  Shifting perspectives and imagining being in the shoes of other people who might view the same events differently, and perhaps exploring a range of different perspectives on the same situation.

Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen, often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your dare-devils, jet cars, motor-cycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment.

With the natural caution of a scientist venturing outside his field, Dr. Cannon concluded his study of 'The Wisdom of the Body' with the suggestion that the model of the living organism might be applied with advantage to the larger human community. Since technologies and economic systems are themselves products of life, it is not strange that, to the degree that they work effectively at all, they have incorporated many organic devices not in line with their own abstract ideological or institutional premises. But because brain physiology, dream exploration, and linguistic analysis were all outside his are of high competence Dr. Cannon never faced the central problem that arose, at a very early point, I suspect, once the enlargement of man's neural functions enabled him to escape the automatism of his reflexes and hormones. how under those conditions to prevent the brain from succumbing to its own disorderly hyperactivity, once liberated from the bodily functions and environmental contacts and social pressures necessary for its existence? The need to recognize this special source of instability coming from the extraordinary powers of the mind, and to take measures for overcoming it, is not the least lesson to be drawn from man's historic development. In so far as automatic systems become more lifelike as well as more powerful, they carry with them the threat of increasing human irrationality at higher levels. To follow an organic model, then, not only the system as a whole must be kept in view, but each individual part must be in a state of alertness, ready to intervene at any point in the process and take over.

The fast brain is where all of our subconscious intuitions, cravings, habits, and emotions reside. The fast brain’s primary purpose is to provide these subconscious “spurs” to drive behavior patterns aimed at bringing us safety, security, food, and social connection. We’re born with a fully operational fast brain, which begins functioning while we’re still in the womb. It is always on and running, constantly scanning to collect information and continually forming conclusions about what it observes. Those conclusions often are based in intuition, emotion, or cravings. Our fast brain also spurs behavior through habits—automatic responses such as putting our foot on the brake when we see a stop sign. Those habits that determine how we relate to others, such as a reflexive response to tell the truth or own up to our mistakes, become our character habits.

We reveal our character all the time through observable behaviors: in the way we treat other people. As we mature, these character-driven behaviors become automatic reflexes, the character habits that express our guiding principles and beliefs.

Character habits and beliefs. All of us are guided by our subconscious minds—perhaps more than we think. Character habits, acquired during our early years and modified throughout our lifetime, are a large part of our inner world, even though they operate mostly at a subconscious level. As we saw earlier, many moral actions that define and express our character are the result of automatic response patterns that bypass rational thought. These character habits often appear as our reflexive response to a given situation—the unfiltered expression of our beliefs. Character habits, in combination with a leader’s beliefs—especially his or her aspirational beliefs for the organization—directly influence the individual’s decision-making skills and other leadership activities. For that reason, a leader’s character habits and moral beliefs matter a lot when it comes to value creation and business results. (In chapter 3, “The Journey from Cradle to Corner Office,” we examine what the research has to tell us about how life experiences shape leadership character.)

counselors, often confuses stages, states, and lines. He mentioned that clients could move through all four stages (sensorimotor to formal operations) in a single counseling session. People do not actually develop through four (or even two) stages in a day. Rather, different lines of development may be differentially developed, so that a client may appear to exhibit very rudimentary development in one aspect (for example, morality) and advanced development in another (scientific or mathematical thinking). Similar phenomena (clients’ appearing to exhibit the qualities of different stages of development) can be accounted for by distinguishing between stages and states of consciousness. For example, a client may have a developmental center of gravity that hovers around the formal-reflexive mind but experience a state of panic or intense depression during which he resorts to the type of illogical and contrary-to-evidence thinking that characterize preoperational thinking. There are a few places where Ivey seems to distinguish between stages and states, as when he is describing a concrete operational client with whom the counselor finds various deletions, distortions, overgeneralizations, and other errors of thinking or behaving that “represent preoperational states” (1986, p. 163, italics added). This is an important point. The basic structures are not completely stable; otherwise, they would endure even under extreme stress. Hence, developmental waves are conceived of as relatively stable and enduring—far more stable and enduring than states of consciousness, but also far from rigidly permanent structures. Levels and Lines of Development Ivey also wrote of how clients cycle through Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Each person who continues on to higher levels of development is also, paradoxically, forced to return to basic sensori-motor and pre-operational experience… . the skilled individual who decides to learn a foreign language … must enter language training at the lowest level and work through sensori-motor, preoperational, and concrete experience before being able to engage in formal operations with the new language. (Ivey, 1986, p. 161) People do not revert from the capacity for formal operational thinking to sensorimotor, except perhaps because of a brain injury or organic disorders of the nervous system. Piaget was very emphatic that cognitive development occurs in invariant stages, meaning that everyone progresses through the stages in the same order. At the same time, it is true that just because an individual exhibits formal operational thinking (a stage or level of cognitive development) in chemistry and mathematics does not mean that she automatically can perform at mastery levels in any domain, such as, in this case, a foreign language. This is another example of the utility of Wilber’s (2000e) distinguishing the sundry lines

Playing Chess Unconsciously For another demonstration of the power of our unconscious vision, consider chess playing. When grand master Garry Kasparov concentrates on a chess game, does he have to consciously attend to the configuration of pieces in order to notice that, say, a black rook is threatening the white queen? Or can he focus on the master plan, while his visual system automatically processes those relatively trivial relations among pieces? Our intuition is that in chess experts, the parsing of board games becomes a reflex. Indeed, research proves that a single glance is enough for any grand master to evaluate a chessboard and to remember its configuration in full detail, because he automatically parses it into meaningful chunks.29 Furthermore, a recent experiment indicates that this segmenting process is truly unconscious: a simplified game can be flashed for 20 milliseconds, sandwiched between masks that make it invisible, and still influence a chess master’s decision.30 The experiment works only on expert chess players, and only if they are solving a meaningful problem, such as determining if the king is under check or not. It implies that the visual system takes into account the identity of the pieces (rook or knight) and their locations, then quickly binds together this information into a meaningful chunk (“black king under check”). These sophisticated operations occur entirely outside conscious awareness.

When we find ourselves in a difficult situation of any sort, there are often two “easy” choices: passive submission and violent resistance. They are easy because they are automatic, reflexive.

Swift-Killer had never hurt so. Her last thought was that Bright had decided to punish her for having the temerity to attempt to talk to God. The automatic protective mechanisms in her body, activated by the lack of body reserves and the shock from the topside burns, suddenly took over. The animal reflexes were turned off, and for the first time in untold generations, a cheela went to sleep.

The simplest kind of control that is afforded by this feedback loop is the so-called stretch reflex, which is illustrated by the knee-jerk test which most of us have experienced in the doctor’s office. The common tendon of the quadriceps is tapped with a rubber mallet just below the knee-cap, and this tap has the effect of a sharp tug on the muscle fibers of the thigh. This sudden change in length of the thigh muscles is registered by the anulospiral receptors, which in turn stimulate in the spinal cord the motor neurons which power the thigh, causing a brief contraction of the thigh muscles which makes the foot jerk forward in a healthy reflex. This automatic contraction has the effect of keeping the thigh muscles at a constant length regardless of outside forces acting upon it, and makes it possible to maintain erect posture in spite of external disturbances. The components of this arc are like a miniature or primitive nervous system, a microcosm of our nervous system as a whole, a system which “in its simplest form is merely a mechanism by which a muscular movement can be initiated by some change in peri-ipheral sensation.” My spindles and their reflex arcs are tiny neural units that monitor and influence motor events that are so continuous and so numerous that they would totally overwhelm my conscious mind. Even if I could keep track of the changing lengths of every one of my millions of muscle cells, I certainly would have no room left to think about anything else.

The lowest level of this modifying intermediate network is the spinal cord. The cord still possesses many features that were first developed in the segmented earthworm. It is largely made up of neurons completely contained within it, which form bridges between the sensory and motor elements throughout the whole body. Each peripheral nerve trunk still innervates a specific segment of the body, and still joins the cord at a specific level, creating a ganglion. Sensory signals entering into a single segment may be processed by its own ganglion, and cause localized motor response within the segment; or the signals may pass to adjacent segments, or be carried even further up or down the line, involving more ganglia in a more widely distributed response. In this way, the cord can monitor a large number of sensorimotor reactions without having to send signals all the way up to the brain. Thus stereotyped responses can be made without our having to “think” about them on a conscious level. Most of these localized and segmentally patterned responses are not the result of experience or training, but of genetically consistent wiring patterns in the internuncial network of the cord itself. These basic wiring patterns unfold in the foetus during the “mapping” process of the nervous system, and they have been pre-established by millions of years of development and usage. The spinal cord can be surgically sectioned from the higher regions of the internuncial net, and the experimental animal kept alive, so that we can isolate the range of responses that are primarily controlled by these cord reflexes. Almost all segmentally localized responses can be elicited, such as the knee jerk caused by tapping the tendon below the knee cap, or the elbow jerk caused by tapping the bicep tendon. These simple responses can also be spread into other segments, so that a painful prick on a limb causes the whole body to jerk away in a general withdrawal reflex. The bladder and rectum can be evacuated. A skin irritation elicits scratching, and the disturbance can be accurately located with a paw. Some of the basic postural and locomotive reflex patterns seem to reside in the wiring of the cord as well. If an animal with only its cord intact is assisted in getting up, it can remain standing on its own. The sensory signals from the pressure on the bottoms of the feet are evidently enough to trigger postural contractions throughout the body and hold the animal in the stance typical of its species. And if the animal is suspended with its legs dangling down, they will spontaneously initiate walking or running movements, indicating that the fundamental sequential arrangements of the basic reflexes necessary for walking are in the cord also. All of these localized and intersegmental responses are rapid and automatic, follow specific routes through the spinal circuitry, and elicit stereotyped patterns of muscular response. Most of them appear to consistently use the same neurons, synapses, and motor units every time they are initiated.

I can bring a glass of water smoothly to my lips because practice has taught me just how much contractile effort and speed is necessary to lift it and carry it through the air without either dropping it or throwing the water towards the ceiling. This familiar feel for the resistance of the glass of water, and for the appropriate muscular effort to both overcome that resistance and remain in constant control, are functions of the variable settings of the inhibitory response of the Golgi tendon organs. And I use this reflex mechanism every time I use a screwdriver or a wrench, row a boat, push a car, do a push-up or a deep knee bend, pick up an object—in short, every time I need a specific amount of effort delivered in order to accomplish a specific task—any time “too much” is just as mistaken as “too little.” This includes, of course, almost all the controlled uses to which I put my muscles. Now in order to be helpful in all situations, this variable setting of the tension values which trigger the reflex must be capable of both a wide range of adjustment and rapid shifts. Objects that we need to manipulate with carefully controlled efforts may be small or large, light or heavy. Building a rock wall can require just as much finesse and balance as building a house of playing cards, but the levels of tension which require equally sensitive monitoring are very different in each case. Since these relative tension values can be altered rapidly at will, and are refined with practice, it seems evident that they can be controlled by higher brain centers. This is presumably done through descending neural pathways which can generate impulses that either facilitate or inhibit the action of the Golgi/motor neuron synapses. In this way, control signals from higher nervous centers could automatically set the level of tension at which the muscle would be maintained. If the required tension is high, then the muscle tension would be set by the servo-feedback mechanism to this high level of tension. On the other hand, if the desired tension level is low, the muscle tension would be set this level.9

We now know that a movement may be initiated by either of these two motor systems. The motor cortex can initiate a voluntary movement without being blocked by the stretch reflex, because when I know that I am going to move in a specific way, then the critical “unexpected” quality of stretching muscle lengths is neutralized. The unconscious gamma command centers in my brain stem can mimic a move directed by my conscious mind, lengthening and shortening its intrafusal cells in concert with the alpha cells around them so that the anulospiral sensory element is not stretched or collapsed during the movement. In this instance, the gamma system follows the lead of the alpha, with the anulospiral ending’s reflex arc silenced as long as the two are synchronized—that is, as long as the alpha movements correspond to “expected” limits that are successfully mimicked by gamma movements. A movement may be initiated by the gamma motor system as well. In this case, the command signals are organized in the terminal gamma ganglia in the brain stem (the gamma system’s counterpart for the alpha’s cerebral cortex). These signals are then sent through a complicated path known as the gamma loop: They descend through gamma motor neurons out to the intrafusal fibers. These small spindle cells are not strong enough to move a limb, but they are strong enough to stretch their own anulospiral receptors. This stretch automatically fires the spinal reflex arcs connected with the receptors, and the larger alpha motor cells are immediately stimulated to match the contractions of the gamma fibers. As soon as the desired muscle length has been reached, the commands from the brain stem cease, and the spindles hold their new resting length. When the alpha fibers catch up to this new resting length (a matter of a fraction of a second), the anulospiral element is quieted, and contraction ceases.

Any preprogrammed physical response is potentially susceptible to the wedge as long as it has three key characteristics. First there needs to be a clearly identifiable external stimulus. Second, that stimulus must trigger a predictable automatic biological response or reflex. Third, that physical response must elicit a feeling or sensation you can visualize or imagine independently of the external trigger. If the reflex has these characteristics, then using the wedge is as simple as setting up an environmental stimulus and then resisting the sensation that it triggers. Over time it becomes easier to maintain the tension between reflex and mental control.

First of all, the tone of my muscle cells must hold my skeleton together so that it neither collapses in upon my organs nor dislocates at its joints. It is tone, just as much as it is connective tissues or bone, that is responsible for my basic structural shape and integrity. Secondly, my muscle tone must superimpose upon its own stability the steady, rhythmical expansion and contraction of respiration. Third, it must support my overall structure in one position or another—lying, sitting standing, and so on. Finally, it must be able to brace and release any part of the body in relation to the whole, and to do this with spontaneity and split-second timing, so that graceful, purposeful action may be added to my stability, my posture, and my rhythmic respiration. It is no wonder we find that such large portions of our nervous systems are so continually engaged in controlling the maintenance and adjustments of this tone. The entire system of spindle cells, with both their contractile parts and their anulospiral receptors, the Golgi tendon organs, the reflex arcs, much of the internuncial circuitry of the spinal column, and most of the oldest portion of our brains—including the reticular formation and the basal ganglia—all work together to orchestrate this complex phenomenon. We have, as it were, a brain within our brain and a muscle system within our muscle system to monitor the constantly shifting values of background tonus, to provide a stable yet flexible framework which we are free to use how we will. Nor is it a wonder that these elements and processes are normally controlled below my level of consciousness—if this were not the case, walking across the room to get a glass of water would require more diversified and minute attention than my conscious awareness could possibly muster. It is the old brain, along with the even more ancient spinal cord, that are given the bulk of this task, because they have had so many more generations in which to grapple with the problems and refine the solutions. Millions upon millions of trials and errors have resulted in genetically constant motor circuits and sensory feedback loops which handle the fundamental life-supporting jobs of muscle tone for me automatically. Firm structure, posture, respiratory rhythms, swallowing, elimination, grasping, withdrawing, tracking with the eyes—all these intact and fully functional activities and more are given to each of us as new-born infants, the legacy of the development of our ancestors.

Another disproportionately fascinating symbol is the Singing Commercial. Singing Commercials are a recent invention; but the Singing Theological and the Singing Devotional -- the hymn and the psalm -- are as old as religion itself. Singing Militaries, or marching songs, are coeval with war, and Singing Patriotics, the precursors of our national anthems, were doubtless used to promote group solidarity, to emphasize the dis­tinction between "us" and "them," by the wandering bands of paleolithic hunters and food gatherers. To most people music is intrinsically attractive. Moreover, melodies tend to ingrain themselves in the listener's mind. A tune will haunt the memory during the whole of a lifetime. Here, for example, is a quite uninterest­ing statement or value judgment. As it stands nobody will pay attention to it. But now set the words to a catchy and easily remembered tune. Immediately they become words of power. Moreover, the words will tend automatically to repeat themselves every time the mel­ody is heard or spontaneously remembered. Orpheus has entered into an alliance with Pavlov -- the power of sound with the conditioned reflex. For the commercial propagandist, as for his colleagues in the fields of poli­tics and religion, music possesses yet another advan­tage. Nonsense which it would be shameful for a rea­sonable being to write, speak or hear spoken can be sung or listened to by that same rational being with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual convic­tion. Can we learn to separate the pleasure of singing or of listening to song from the all too human tend­ency to believe in the propaganda which the song is putting over? That again is the question.

Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment." ~

Matrices vary in flexibility from reflexes and more or less automatized routines which allow but a few strategic choices, to skills of almost unlimited variety; but all coherent thinking and behaviour is subject to some specifiable code of rules to which its character of coherence is due-even though the code functions partly or entirely on unconscious levels of the mind, as it generally does. A bar-pianist can perform in his sleep or while conversing with the barmaid; he has handed over control to the automatic pilot, as it were.

Recognizing ourselves in the position of the implicated subject […] will not automatically make us better people; such self-reflexivity can indeed become a form of narcissism or solipsism that keeps the privileged subjects at the center of analysis. [...] Self-reflexivity alone will not lead directly to a political movement that can dismantle the conditions of implication. The burden of history will not simply evaporate once we see our place in its long- and short-term legacies. Precisely because it involves negotiating with the past, the confrontation with historical violence is ongoing, it's expiration date uncertain.

In truth, the reflexive brain is not a single integrated system, but a jumble of structures and processes that tackle different problems in varying ways, everything from the “startle reflex” and pattern recognition to the perception of risk or reward and the character judgments about the people we meet. What these processes have in common, however, is that they tend to run rapidly, automatically, and below the level of consciousness.

Brain scans in Peter Kenning’s neuroeconomics lab at the University of Münster in Germany show that when investors consider putting money in foreign markets, the amygdala—one of the brain’s fear centers—kicks in. These findings suggest that keeping our money close to home generates an automatic feeling of comfort, while investing in unfamiliar stocks is inherently frightening. Those responses originate in the biological bedrock of the reflexive brain.