This is interesting: "The adaptive character of the training leads to continual engagement of executive processes while only minimally allowing the development

This is interesting: "The adaptive character of the training leads to continual engagement of executive processes while only minimally allowing the development of automatic processes and task-specific strategies." In Iconclast, Gregory Burns talks about 2 pathways in the brain, one used for tasks we know how to do and one for new tasks. Using the latter, he says, is when we are being creative. And he presents ways to use the latter more frequently. In meditation, one of the most important lessons is to realize that there is the thinking brain, which is the conditioned mind and is concerned with time, the past and the future. And there is the listener, the one that gets a chance to solve problems when the thinker gives up. We can't even see how it works. There is no visible linear thought process. The brain is not using that automatic pathway. It lives in and pays attention to the present, not what happened in the past or what may someday happen. It is about being present. So training this listener part of the brain, the unconditioned part, makes sense to me. We've all known people that are stuck repeating conditioned behaviors. There's no doubt this interferes with achievement.