“In fact, unconscious scanning goes on all the time. It seems more than ever that what we know as the visionary or poetic mode is our response via the unconscious senses to what is really there in the environment. We are not trying to 'explain it away': it is rather that we symbolize this kind of awareness.”

“Here is the crux of it: between the conscious and unconscious mind we are more complex and given to concept than we are just in the conscious mind. This means we must somehow get more use out of the unconscious part. But the unconscious has no idea of being dutiful. To waken it, we try laying some sensual or aesthetic or moral excitement just under its nose: the fragrance will rouse it from its torpor, we hope. The unconscious mind had much rather remain sleeping, of course: it knows what it's doing. If it wanted to be awake all the time, it would be the conscious mind. It is powerful: it holds most of our memories. It has a penchant for terror and self-defense. If not tempted by other nourishment, it will content itself with lurching to its feet just when we don't want it to, attacking someone senselessly. It is as much soup as animal. It prefers steeping away to thinking. It is a mess, but in its mess lie impressions life once gave us.”

“I know it doesn't feel this way all the time, but we get to choose what we care about and what we spend our resources on. We choose what - or ideally whom - to lust after. We choose what to watch, what to like, what to build, how to spend the breaths that we've been alive. And the fact that many of our choices are unconscious - get that handbag, get that Starbucks, look at that Snooki - does not in any way make us less responsible for those choices. I'm happiest when I feel like I'm part of a community that helps me choose more intelligently and with greater empathy. And I, for one, like the choices we made this weekend.”

“A large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition—besides inherited aptitudes and qualities—which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerfu...See more”

“why can't we be more aware and conscious of all the things we already have rather than what we would like to have?”

“Rather than thinking in terms of good and bad, it is more helpful to think in terms of conscious and unconscious, aware, and unaware.”