“These points all center on self-awareness. When you do anything—eat breakfast, make love, think about the universe, write a pop song—your mind can be in only one of three states: unconscious, aware, and self-aware. When you are unconscious, your mind is passively receiving the constant stream of input from the outside world, with minimal reactions and no creativity. When you are aware, you pay attention to this stream of input. You select, decide, sort, process, and so on, making choices about what to accept and what to reject. When you are self-aware, you loop back on what you are doing, asking How is this for me? At any given moment, all three states coexist.”