The Cost of Information Overload
Taking in information faster than you organise it clutters the subconscious until intuition can no longer get through, so consume less and go narrow and deep.
Dandapani compares the subconscious to a library where ten unindexed books arrive every day, which after a year holds thousands of books and nothing you can find. He describes the structure he keeps: questioning what he takes in, resolving what he keeps reacting to, and studying one tradition deeply rather than many shallowly.
What this talk covers
- Monasteries have you study one philosophy at a time, not to dismiss other teachers, but to organise the second floor of the mind so intuition has a framework to come through.
- Fifty or seventy years ago there was a newspaper and an evening news broadcast, and today we cannot walk, drive or use a treadmill without adding a podcast or music on top.
- Adding ten books a day to a library without indexing them leaves you with about three thousand six hundred and fifty books and no way to find anything.
- As information comes in, ask whether it is something you want, something you resonate with, something you want to develop, and look at what is still unresolved in there that you keep reacting to.
- Study one tradition and go narrow and deep rather than shallow and wide, and practise what you read instead of collecting a book a week.
That's like putting 10 books in the library every day without properly understanding it, applying it in your life.Dandapani
Questions
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Dandapani says the problem is consuming without organising. Information that is never processed or concluded on clutters the subconscious, and a cluttered subconscious blocks intuition from coming through.
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He questions it. Reading without applying is just collecting information, like putting ten books a day into a library. His alternative is to practise what you read, adjust, and practise again.
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Be conscious of how much you consume, question each piece of information before letting it in, resolve the things you keep reacting to, and go narrow and deep in one tradition rather than shallow and wide.
Transcript
717 words · 3:57
Intuition works through a clarified subconscious and organized and disciplined subconscious. So in traditional monasteries, when you go there, the teacher trains you in one philosophy and you're not allowed to read books from other teachers or other traditions. It's not that they are saying those teachers are wrong or they're bad. The idea is to organize the second floor, which provides
a framework for intuition to work through to come to the conscious mind. When the second floor gets messy and cluttered through consuming information, not organizing it, not processing it, not forming conclusions, which is a huge thing, then the second floor gets so cluttered that intuition can't come through, which is what's happening today for
most people because look at the rate at which we consume information today. 50 years ago or 70 years ago, you had a newspaper. And then you waited for the next print. And then maybe the news might come on at 8.30 at night,
and that's all you got. But today, we consume so much of information. We can't even drive or walk or be on a treadmill without sticking headphones and listening to a podcast
or music or this or that. But we never spend time organizing the subconscious as the subconscious gets so cluttered and then intuition can't come through.
So once we understand that, Then the first step in cultivating intuition is really not about working with the super conscious, it's working with the subconscious in organizing it
and creating structure so intuition can work through. Intuition works through structure, contrary to what most people think. Can you be more specific about what you mean
of creating structure? Yeah, so for example, for me, I want to function in the super conscious area of the mind most of the time
because my intuition never guides me wrong. Your intuition never guides you wrong. So what's the work I need to do? I need to be very conscious of how much information
I'm consuming on a daily basis. So imagine my subconscious is a storehouse. Imagine my subconscious is a library. Let's step back and say this.
I'm building a house. In my house, I'm creating a room, which is going to be a library. Every day, I put 10 books in the library.
I don't index them, I don't categorize them, I just put 10 books in there. After a year, I get about 3,650 books in my library. Will I be able to find anything?
No, right? Because there's no structure. As I consume information each day, I ask myself, is this something I want?
Is this something I resonate with? Is this something I want to develop? And that allows me to structure my subconscious and the information that's going in.
Now I look at my subconscious and I go, what are the unresolved things in my subconscious that I'm reacting to? Why when I see that person,
it always brings up a very annoyed feeling in me? Why am I being triggered by that? So I look in my subconscious and I think, what are the unresolved things?
How can I work to resolve that? So I'm not perpetually reacting. And all of those things allow me to create structure in my subconscious by doing those things.
I study one tradition, one particular thing, and I go narrow and deep as opposed to shallow and wide so that way I'm forming a proper understanding of something in my subconscious.
All of those things create structure which allows intuition to go through, rather than just consuming, consuming, consuming. And one of the big things that you see on the internet today
is that people say like, read, read books, read a book every week. Like, how about practicing something you read? That's just collecting information.
That's like putting 10 books in the library every day without properly understanding it, applying it in your life. Do you think you could apply it
just by reading a book every week? No, you don't have to apply and practice and, you know, adjust and practice and adjust and practice and adjust. But no, the sense is like I'm just consuming.
I read a book every day. That's so great. You know, I'm learning and growing. You're not.