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Blogs by Stephen Kata
Involuntary Actions 7/28/2011 5:06:56 AM
We like to think we are in control of our destinies, but life can throw us for a loop at any time. And when I consider the human body, I wonder if we really control anything at all.
Our heartbeats, breathing, digestion, and infection fighting, along with countless other bodily functions, carry on without our conscious effort. What sustain our bodies are involuntary actions and processes. It is when these processes cease or are seriously interfered with that we die.
Even our brains are not completely under our control. The brain's arena is rational and logical thought, emotions, fears, reflexive actions; so the brain involves the mind. But the brain is not strictly the mind. The brain and its attached medulla control involuntary actions and systems in the body -- without the assistance of the mind. Unconscious people continue to breathe, circulate blood, etc.
We do not choose to fall asleep. We may choose to take a nap or go to bed, but if we concentrate on falling asleep it does not happen because falling asleep requires the absence of cognitive thought. Neither need we make a conscious effort to awaken. Our subconscious, or an external stimulus, such as noise, does it for us.
Often, we do not even choose the thoughts that come into our minds. Once they enter, we choose which of them to entertain, but we do not always choose what enters. Thoughts appear randomly, or pop up as a result of external stimuli. The same with what arises from the subconscious mind. Things which we do not deliberately direct often trigger thoughts: visual images, smells, sounds, taste, touch, memories. One might go so far as to suggest that the subconscious mind is God at work or alive in our beings. It is certainly not we ourselves, who by deliberate action, set these bodily functions in motion or continually keep them operating.
