...became important to me because, from my perspective at that time, it was driving me crazy. I was under a lot of stress, and I theorized that the internal dialogue was adding to that stress.
When someone says, "Every time I think about what happened, I get angry again." This is true. People get angry again and again, over the same issue, because their thoughts generate the same feelings. I knew this, and I suspected this applied to all kinds of thinking. I had read in one of Carlos Castenada's early books a discussion about ending the internal dialogue, and I wondered if such a thing was possible. My mind was "talking" non-stop and adding lots of stress to my life. At one point I was driving along calculating what the interest on some bank loans was costing me per day! I saw how that kind of crazy thinking was putting me under psychological pressure.
After I started meditating, the full scope of my thinking became obvious, and I felt like I was engaged in a real battle with my mind. Ha ha. In retrospect this is incredibly funny, but that's what it felt like at the time. AAR, I decided that a talkative mind was "bad," and I began trying to escape from it by constantly shifting attention away from thoughts to breath awareness, breath counting, being the breath, and other meditative practices.
At some point I began to see the absurdity of sitting in meditation the rest of my life to escape thinking, and I began to consider how little children interact with the world. I thought, "They don't make any effort to stop thinking; they simply don't think much. They are so busy interacting with the world physically through their senses that their minds haven't yet become dominant." Following this line of thought I speculated that formal meditation was actually just a subset of ATA, and I began to consider ATA of equal or greater importance. IOW, it seemed more important to interact with reality like little children than to engage in breath awareness practices. It seemed logical that little children were in the habit of looking and listening whereas adults were in the habit of thinking, and if I got into the habit of looking and listening, it would replace the internal dialogue, or at least diminish its significance and effects.
I began spending an hour each afternoon walking through the countryside while looking at the world around me. I would look at some trees and several minutes later realize that I was thinking about something. I would then shift attention back to what I could see, and five minutes later find that I was again lost in thought. Later, I began doing this while driving around in my truck, but it was depressing to realize how dominant the mind was. I literally felt like I was waging an internal battle for control over the mind. Ha ha!
When our family went on a vacation to Florida, I walked on the seashore looking and listening. At night, after everyone had gone to bed, I would sit on the balcony listening to waves crashing on the shore. The mind would jabber, and I would shift attention to the sound of the waves. I would find myself lost in thought, and shift attention back to the sound of the waves. It felt a bit crazy to be doing that, but I felt like a scientist performing an experiment on consciousness. The question that dominated my thinking was, "Can the internal dialogue cease? Is it possible to have a silent mind?" I was extremely curious about this.
The next step was writing notes to myself to remind me to check what the mind was doing. I had notes on the dashboard of my truck, in the glove compartment, on my desk, etc. Most of the notes were questions, such as "What are you doing?" I would see a note, check the mind, find that I was lost in thought, and shift attention to what could be seen or heard.
It took a long time before significant gaps of silence appeared, but I was persistent, and the more I shifted attention to what could be physically sensed the mind got quieter and quieter. Is a totally silent mind necessary? No, but that's what this body/mind got interested in. After a few years, I could suspend thought at will, and look at the world in total silence. Today, the body/mind can stop thinking at any time, and it can remain silent for whatever length of time it wishes, but it no longer matters. Sometimes it thinks and sometimes it doesn't think. The effort to have a silent mind ended on the day that selfhood was realized to be a fiction.
This body/mind pursued various experiments with consciousness because that's what it was interested in doing based on ideas it had about reality. Fortunately it is not necessary to have a silent mind to realize that the seeker is a fiction.
When someone says, "Every time I think about what happened, I get angry again." This is true. People get angry again and again, over the same issue, because their thoughts generate the same feelings. I knew this, and I suspected this applied to all kinds of thinking. I had read in one of Carlos Castenada's early books a discussion about ending the internal dialogue, and I wondered if such a thing was possible. My mind was "talking" non-stop and adding lots of stress to my life. At one point I was driving along calculating what the interest on some bank loans was costing me per day! I saw how that kind of crazy thinking was putting me under psychological pressure.
After I started meditating, the full scope of my thinking became obvious, and I felt like I was engaged in a real battle with my mind. Ha ha. In retrospect this is incredibly funny, but that's what it felt like at the time. AAR, I decided that a talkative mind was "bad," and I began trying to escape from it by constantly shifting attention away from thoughts to breath awareness, breath counting, being the breath, and other meditative practices.
At some point I began to see the absurdity of sitting in meditation the rest of my life to escape thinking, and I began to consider how little children interact with the world. I thought, "They don't make any effort to stop thinking; they simply don't think much. They are so busy interacting with the world physically through their senses that their minds haven't yet become dominant." Following this line of thought I speculated that formal meditation was actually just a subset of ATA, and I began to consider ATA of equal or greater importance. IOW, it seemed more important to interact with reality like little children than to engage in breath awareness practices. It seemed logical that little children were in the habit of looking and listening whereas adults were in the habit of thinking, and if I got into the habit of looking and listening, it would replace the internal dialogue, or at least diminish its significance and effects.
I began spending an hour each afternoon walking through the countryside while looking at the world around me. I would look at some trees and several minutes later realize that I was thinking about something. I would then shift attention back to what I could see, and five minutes later find that I was again lost in thought. Later, I began doing this while driving around in my truck, but it was depressing to realize how dominant the mind was. I literally felt like I was waging an internal battle for control over the mind. Ha ha!
When our family went on a vacation to Florida, I walked on the seashore looking and listening. At night, after everyone had gone to bed, I would sit on the balcony listening to waves crashing on the shore. The mind would jabber, and I would shift attention to the sound of the waves. I would find myself lost in thought, and shift attention back to the sound of the waves. It felt a bit crazy to be doing that, but I felt like a scientist performing an experiment on consciousness. The question that dominated my thinking was, "Can the internal dialogue cease? Is it possible to have a silent mind?" I was extremely curious about this.
The next step was writing notes to myself to remind me to check what the mind was doing. I had notes on the dashboard of my truck, in the glove compartment, on my desk, etc. Most of the notes were questions, such as "What are you doing?" I would see a note, check the mind, find that I was lost in thought, and shift attention to what could be seen or heard.
It took a long time before significant gaps of silence appeared, but I was persistent, and the more I shifted attention to what could be physically sensed the mind got quieter and quieter. Is a totally silent mind necessary? No, but that's what this body/mind got interested in. After a few years, I could suspend thought at will, and look at the world in total silence. Today, the body/mind can stop thinking at any time, and it can remain silent for whatever length of time it wishes, but it no longer matters. Sometimes it thinks and sometimes it doesn't think. The effort to have a silent mind ended on the day that selfhood was realized to be a fiction.
This body/mind pursued various experiments with consciousness because that's what it was interested in doing based on ideas it had about reality. Fortunately it is not necessary to have a silent mind to realize that the seeker is a fiction.
