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  Our awareness essentially comes from our upper nervous (the neocortex), which is made up of many communicating parts that make a concerted effort to make sense of the world.  The nervous system receives input and it is made sense of in the neocortex.  The neocortex does not receive input (it does not have sensory neurons), except from the nervous system.  This is the idea of the bipartite brain.  I believe I have a basic understanding, but would appreciate corrections if not.     

  The above idea is very liberating.  I was thinking about it today.  If everything that we feel is from our neocortex, with help from the "frog brain," then we should be able to have a great deal of self-control.  I feel that I can, to a great extent, "control" my thoughts (when I try very hard), and these thoughts are a part of the activity in the neocortex.  The neocortex then works with the nervous system, which communicates with the extra-nervous system world via sensory and motors neurons, and if one controls the neocortex and the nervous systems actions, then emotions and feelings seem much more controllable.  Of course this idea could use refining, but all day I have been feeling things on my body and rather than allowing any thoughts to develop based on these sensations, I have been just feeling how my body reacts.  In this way maybe a part of the neocortex is shutting off valuations of the world and just feeling, thus allowing annoying thoughts and feeling to dissipate.  Today was a cool experiment with this idea...Maybe someone has thoughts on this idea?