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Discovered a strange phenomenon - wordstream in my mind
JetsFan366
Explorer
in Meditation
Through meditation I've discovered a crazy phenominon - when I'm tired, if still my thoughts enough, I can pick/tune in to a running wordstream in my head. It's not a voice, it's more like remembering a conversation. Thing is, it's complete gobledygook. Seriously, things like "Half is a note ... world touch ... something happened and the bunny" When I have a song in my head or something I think it's the same stream thats playing, only louder. It seems to lie 'beneath' my active thought process - I think that I can pick up on it when I'm alert too, it's just much quieter.
An interesting (and useful) side effect is, when I 'listen in' when I'm really tired, if I can concentrate on it, I fall asleep quickly.
Does this seem totally insane?
An interesting (and useful) side effect is, when I 'listen in' when I'm really tired, if I can concentrate on it, I fall asleep quickly.
Does this seem totally insane?
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Comments
I get it a lot when I'm tired and just trying to drift off....
It seems to me that this is a important phenomenon to notice. The potential to understand and perhaps even control this chatter must have great benefits. Perhaps some meditation pros can do it no problem.
Using a water analogy as well, I compare thoughts to ripples in the sea of our minds, and with a strong wind these ripples coalesce into waves and the waves, start to froth and splash. I just put this background noise down as the frothing and splashing. And the stronger the wind driving the waves, the more frothing and splashing takes place, perhaps thats why at midday when you are most active, and perhaps least mindful, in your job or whatever, the wind is at its strongest. Drifting off to sleep mindfully, I see the settling down.
Has anyone tried to be mindfully aware that very first instant you awake? Just a thought...
Mettha
I still don't have any memory of the walking in the shop part. Amnesia! Weird experience. I didn't realise just how mindless I could be. I think the comments I've been getting to stop over-thinking - damn right they were.
What it felt like was a thrill of energy shooting outward from my center (out the arms and legs) and a sudden 'return' to awareness. I'd almost fallen asleep. So I took deep long breaths and short, harder out breaths (to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system) so I could finish the meditation awake, preferably.
Later as I was lying in wait to notice the moment of falling asleep (I didn't
I also hear the 'background mumbling', and it is disjointed and nonsensical, like I am hearing bits of different conversations. One phenomenon I noticed is if I am getting sleepy in meditation, those voices get much louder, and I seem to hear them with my 'ears' rather than as thoughts. I also get "visual" entertainment, and I wonder if this happens when I'm sleepy too. I know I'm not seeing anything, my eyes are closed and I meditate later in the evening. Sometimes it's like cartoons, or one image morphing into another like it's being played with by a graphics program. At first the images were always faces, and ugly or bizarre ones at that. Lately I'm seeing more neutral images, and last night I saw a giant bright yellow flower like my nose was right in the center. I thought "Wow that's beautiful!" and *pop* it was gone, of course.
but to my point: I was mindfully driving my kid home tonight, and had the most horrendous vision of someone blowing his brains out, and in the same journey, a horrendous vision of the death of my wife poked its way into my consciousness, and it was really quite disturbing, such that I became tearful, almost like I had actually lost both of them. Any explanation for that is appreciated, but don't want to hijack the post.
Mettha
I don't see this as reductionistic OR as evidence people with psychosis are peering into subtle realms the rest of us can't see. It's probably just the brain grumbling and farting and tossing and turning as meditation calms it down.
I know there are nimittas that occur at certain levels of concentration (samatha) meditation. They can be 'visual' or 'auditory' and some people I've read have 'tactile' nimittas. The significance of nimittas as indicators of entering jhanic states seems to be a point of contention among meditators. And how one would distinguish them from brain farts and rumblings . . . well, I suppose if one has a genuine nimitta, there would be no question.
I also wonder if the filter between the unconscious and the conscious is an issue.
Its just that the majority are living with constant distractions of one kind or another as so do not become aware of the fact that they have a radio in their heads constantly broadcasting nonsense a lot of the time.
When we begin to meditate the mind quietens, and paradoxically that reveals the full extent of the 'interference'..Its a good sign.
One of my teachers said that if we spoke our stream of thoughts out loud uncensored it would be assumed that we were as mad as frogs..
Mettha
This is just me over-thinking it btw (mindfully @Chaz), don't get too attached to the analogy or try to push it forcefully away (that was for those reading who are not @fivebells). But I like to do that, it's meditation in action of a sort.
Back to the expansion for @fivebells: For the sake of argument, let us say 'materially' we are just a sentient ocean of mind stuff (let's call it the 'brain ocean, that secretes thoughts and responds (via feedback mechanisms, such as the senses) to those thoughts with emotions (which can be positive, negative or equitable). Certain waves can be thought of as a harmonic frequency that causes certain waves to arise frequently, for instance, we recognise a certain wave as 'I' or waves with a similar frequency as 'me', 'myself', 'mine' etc. Other waves arise dependently on 'I' 'me' 'myself' and 'mine' as lets say 'am' and 'being', and they are again 'harmonics' that we recognise; like notes on a keyboard.
Unfortunately the sentient brain ocean is not infinite and doesn't have a store of every conceivable thought in it, but instead it has the 'capacity' to recognise waves of certain frequencies as let's say 'stupid' or 'raft' or 'brainbokker' in other words there is the potential for us to recognise everything language can describe about us and our experiences (e.g. such as this little soliloquy within it), but is not manifesting to the sentient brain ocean. This is what I mean by latency. it's there and always will be it just depends on what provokes the next wave to arise.
Now, water is not static, even ice can be seen to move at a glacial pace, to observe that you've really got to be patient and still relative to it (or have a video camera with slow lapse photography built in). In fact everything is dynamic (changing), and the fundamental frequency centres on 'I' and resonates with it, and it manifests itself about the next thought that arises
So lets say that when agitated, the waves of the brain ocean move in a certain pattern. This pattern is caused by y (what brought it about) and conditioned by x (what the state of the ocean is in) and as it does so thoughts and emotions (mustn't forget them) arise in a way that is understandable, but if you are mindful of them they are just waves in the brain ocean, but if you interact with them (analogous to the wind blowing ), they may take on a richer and more textured pattern according to the feedback it is getting (positive or negative).
The latency I refer to means that there is the capacity, particularly if there is some disharmonious feedback going on blown by the winds of certain actions, for waves of certain frequencies to arise together in a way that does not normally happen or is recognised to happen, and the sentient mind may disjointedly put 'going' with 'mad' and 'jedi' and sees... 'going mad jedi' as a small thread of thought that appears and disappears, but is still perceived, as a completely random disconnected thought, that itself may feedback in such a way as to cause dis-ease or discomfort. Or start a thread of it's own like this one.
I pray my analogy works, if not I will just put it as yet another failure!
What was that?
This was a completely original piece of eccentric art btw.
What was that: originality is just unidentified plagiarism'
Now that was not an original thought was it? Emotions stirring? Want to react. lol
Mettha
addendum: btw = beautiful to watch. Bet you didn't see that wave before!