The second thing that makes big ticket items so big is their exclusivity among all our processes in our conscious awareness. Everyday we enter into thousands of processes that sequence multiple events as one activity. We "get dressed", "fix dinner", "work". Simply "waking up" includes opening the eyes, rolling over, blinking at the ceiling, sitting up, and letting the needs of the day start flooding into our thoughts.
Now, please mentally make that sound of the car brakes skidding to a stop. Thank you. Right now, please notice all the things you are doing while "reading". Is your hand on a mouse, or are you scrolling the screen with your thumb? Where are you sitting or standing? Do you have a drink or snack? A pet, child, or pressing thought nearby?
Noticing the mundane is seeing what our implicit memory thinks is unimportant which allows it to address things for us automatically without our giving them a second thought. Second thought, being able to see what you didn't know you saw, is often considered a liability (i.e. make up your mind!) to efficiently accomplishing this process called "life".
The big ticket items in our lives seem to be so because the implicit memory screens out the thousands no, millions of other processes we enter into each day. Our explicit desire to alter certain processes, makes them the shared property of both conscious and subconscious memory. Since the subconscious implicit memory is much quicker, the conscious explicit memory usually only has hindsight of what was implicitly decided and those big ticket items seem to be the only habits that slip through without conscious awareness.
By developing a fondness for noticing the mundane, we can, as when we were children prior to the automatization of our minds, fully experience the beauty of simple things like the opening the toothpaste, the feel of squeezing the tube with our fingertips, the sound of water running first thing in the morning, and grow awareness for the variable nature of our processes in which lay our choices.
When what were big ticket items are just another part of a sea of processes, they lose their potency. They become just another possibility as the possibility of our noticing them in the moment is cultivated. Life is not always supposed to be efficient. This is an erroneous conclusion made by the implicit memory. Life is something to be savored and this is the time to teach this to our little helper.
Try adding the following practice to seeing blue bunny for a lucid change.
Each day choose an activity such as "wash hair" or "fix breakfast" and notice each of the processes sequenced in so doing. Notice what senses are involved. Touch, hear, taste, see, smell more deeply. Notice how much more full and noticeable your experience is. Be Lucid!
Swirl of toothpaste photo courtesy Bradley P Johnson via Creative Commons Search on Flickr.com
