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theaspirationalmind.com

The Aspirational Focus
Why Have A Creative/Aspirational Focus?
The evolution of our mind will, I believe, inevitably result in increasingly sophisticated behaviour. We share simple survival behaviours with many species, that are produced within our body and our Subconscious. As humans we have also evolved conscious social and cultural behaviours provided by what I call our Social Focus and our Cultural Focus as described by the science of Social Learning. On top of those capabilities we have the ability to solve complex problems in a logical or procedural way using our highly conscious, but slow, Planning Focus. And, to improve even on these capabilities and to promote behaviours that add further to our survival and relative success as a species, we are able to use creative mental capabilities that have a focus on the future. This part of the mind, which acts intuitively, is what I term our Aspirational Focus.
What is the Aspirational Focus?
To describe this in more experiential terms, I propose that our Aspirational Focus is a part of ourselves that is never quite at rest. That part of ourselves that has a mission in life, though we don't often actually know what that mission is. That part of ourselves that wakes us up in the middle of the night and nudges us with an idea that is just out of reach; a meaning with little expression. That part of us that seeks unknown goals and influences our choices through intuition and feeling.
Our Aspirational Focus is not directly available to our conscious awareness and yet it can influence our every thought. Our Aspirational Focus points us toward long-term purposes for ourselves, to provide us with creative alternatives, and to provide potentials for personal fulfilment. The purpose of the Aspirational Focus is to guide us in ways that we do not understand at a logical level towards a future that supports us to grow as an individual. It is primarily our Aspirational Focus that represents our long-term purposes and unique skills over our full lifetime.
Our Aspirational Focus gives us humour, art, music, invention, pastimes, creative skills, and more advanced versions of the playfulness associated with the Social Focus.
Our Aspirational Focus can also appear as a certainty about our vocation or a restlessness that drives us towards the extraordinary.
Our Aspirational Focus can give us 'genius' or, more often, an ability for an ordinary person to achieve the extraordinary.
Speed Interest Characteristics
Very slow Interested in distant-future, distant-horizons, and potential benefits still to be discovered.

Imaginative focus = seeking distant potential.

Provides creative potential which can be expressed in many ways.

Very adaptable.

Acts through intuition.

Easily swamped by other faster Focuses.

Provides life-purposes, vocations, and drives to engage with life in general.

Typical emotions include hope, aspiration, wellbeing, anticipation, inspiration, and excitement.

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Aspirational Focus Communication
We may be aware of the influence of our Aspirational Focus as intuitions and urges that disrupt our normal behaviour. These intuitions rarely come with an explanation and are likely to appear at odds with any carefully thought-through logic that we may have. Our Aspirational Focus offers us, through these intuitions and urges, an alternative course of action that is aimed at achieving a bigger life-purpose.
Intuition and urging can also come from the Subconscious, of course, but the Subconscious is mainly concerned with life in the moment. Our Subconscious reacts to the current situation and alerts us to signals that we may have missed consciously or patterns of behaviour and habits that have become automatic.
There is a significant chance of confusing automatic activity with creative activity and a lot of spiritual teaching fails to identify or highlight the differences. Listening-in to body feelings, to emotional urgings, and to quiet thoughts is at the heart of meditational/mindfulness practice as well as deeper psychological therapies, cathartic work, and body work in general.
If the Aspirational Focus is to be identified independently of the other parts of our mind then it is important to recognise that the Aspirational Focus is creatively future-focussed rather than reactive (as is the case with our Subconscious and our Social/Cultural Focuses). Our Aspirational Focus is less interested in personal pleasure or benefit. Also, the feelings that come from our Aspirational Focus are, in my experience, more likely to seem to come from beyond the confines of our present circumstance.
Nurturing the Aspirational Focus
Some people are able to naturally listen in to their own Aspirational Focus without consciously trying and, if they are able to trust their own 'inner voice', these people can naturally and easily find a path through life without much in the way of doubt or regret. Such people, rightly or wrongly, exude larger-than-life confidence and we may be drawn to them charismatically or we may find these people to be able to offer some natural wisdoms.
Some people get the feeling of disquiet from their Aspirational Focus but struggle with the discomfort as a sense of wrongness. Perhaps this is made worse as we do not have a well-defined cultural understanding of our own mental processes. Such people may represent the 'Tortured Soul'.
Some people seem deaf to their Aspirational Focus and live their lives for selfish pleasures or just follow the 'rules' of society. These people may be simple quiet-souled folk, but some become lost souls.
Most of us seem to have an intermittent appreciation of something going on within us and work hard to find a path for ourselves that makes sense. We have our victories and our insights, our moments of achievement, and we also have our temptations and frustrations, our times of turmoil and grief.
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