6GA. What can we say about human thought?
Does thinking serve us, or must we serve thinking?
In the human experience we can manipulate images, and they can either be tied to our present input from the 5 senses, or images that can diverge from the present moment into our concepts and memories. Thinking of the past or the future, and all kinds of other imaginations. In all cases these images are a model, separated from what they are modeling.
(There are also self-creative thoughts, like if you say "I promise", you have created a commitment ex-novo that wasn't there before. Here, I am not talking about that, but only of descriptive or modeling thoughts.)
1. Thinking is supposed to benefit you in the grand scheme of things, like in the creation or in throughout evolution. For the part of thinking that is considering what you perceive here and now, that thinking is probably benefiting you in some way. First priority in the thinking is recording (to memory), what is safety and what is danger, and to be able to quickly identify those elements. Not only about physical survival, but how to be accepted in a social situation, at work, or what's happening while you are getting things done.
2. Thoughts can be just wordless images, and the movement of those images. Why not? But in our modern cultures I would say that all of those images are tied to the words of interpretation and recognition, that attempt to describe the sensation and the vision. So now we have a perceived image, whatever the accuracy of that is, and the word picture that is painted along side of it, which purports to be an accurate model. We live in an ecology (a pseudo model of nature), that is our language. I would call that a human trait, that we always explain (in words) what and why we are doing, and make an excuse for what we choose to avoid. Call it your story. There is some emotional necessity for this, but we won’t consider it now.
Often this is a continuous stream of thoughts, either considering what's coming in, or just recycling our older adopted conclusions, around and around, over and over again, always seeking verification. Other times we may be recycling what we are doing just now, where we must go next, and what's the best way to get there. It is kind of a repetition of today's to-do list. Well, we don't want to drop something out, and have to make a side trip on tomorrow's to-do list. I am not judging nor condemning any of this, but just trying to arrive at how it is often working.
3. One belief about thinking, is that it is always in the "background-processing mode”. That means, no matter what we are doing, or considering, or if we are listening to another person, we can be thinking about that, or what we will say to them next, or thinking about something entirely different at the same time. We define this as efficient, you have the central CPU, why not task it to always be processing the myriad of contradictions that are the hallmark of this life?
Others say that no, you are weakening your focus from what you are doing now, approaching it with only your partial energy, so you should learn concentration techniques. For me, concentration is just about interest, which leads to motivation. So if your mind (processor) is all over the map, you have no interest in much of your day, and you will just keep part of your attention on your "movie". With Multi-Taskers, it could be said that you’re enslaved. You slavishly follow your concept that more and faster is better.
4. May I interject here, me saying this will mean nothing at all to you. Life skills are not transmitted through language, but through experience. The language part is only to suggest that you experiment with different levels of focus so you can get the experience, and also see if background processing is always (or at all) useful or necessary. Our belief is that thoughts come by themselves, so you can’t turn them off. Therefore our lot in life is to endure them, and/or try to get the most out of them. In part that may be true.
5. Many people practice meditation techniques. Each person may have some success, or merely frustration until they find a technique that works for them. Even those techniques will work for a while, and then they become rote. Many find a temporary place in the mind where incessant thought subsides. That is coming through the intermediary of their meditation technique. However easy or complicated that technique is, you probably can't do it "on-the-fly", in a daily life situation. It is in daily life that it might be most useful to quiet the internal noise, not only in your retreat situation.
6. Can the human mind do multi-tasking?
We have to say yes, since that is what we are all doing to some degree. A better question might be: Can the human mind bring all of its energy to bare on, and do this one single task. After all, thoughts seem to be limited to one at a time. We don't really have a "split-screen". If we are multi-tasking we are jumping from screen to screen, image to image. Then we say that we forgot (that one thing), but we weren't really there to absorb it. We may claim that single tasking is only possible with interest, passion and motivation. We have to be “in the zone”. If we are also saying that those three are elusive and we haven't found them yet, then we remain the victim of "thoughts that generate themselves".
7. Much of healing is done after the fact. The unwanted sequence appears “by itself” or by surprise, and then we attempt to cut it off, or suppress it. Same with stray thinking. It appears and we try to beat it down, with limited success, because suppression seems to add energy to the unwanted. A good trick would be to realize what manufactured that sequence, and stop it's generation in the first place. I am saying in our culture, all this is on the playing field of investigating language. What is the story that we are telling ourselves right now about this?
One story is that when thoughts come up, and usually the most toxic have the greatest pull, we should follow them up. Maybe this (100th) time, we will learn something from it. “If it came up, it must be needed”. If you have this idea, that's a definition to discard. Stray thoughts are chaff, not grain. Put that thought back down, and not to substitute it, but just leave the screen blank. It will fill fast enough.
8. Is this endless chatter damaging? I don’t know. Perhaps it affects your focus when you want to get things done. Perhaps it justifies your time, that something is going on, so it must be productive. But perhaps new thoughts need a space into which they can appear. Is all the possible space already occupied? Maybe new thoughts are identified as confusion, so you are subconsciously blocking them out. Making a choice among options might be classified as “work”. (Oh, I am already so tired.)
It comes to a rigorous “setting down” of stray thoughts (those not about your objectives in this moment), again and again. Just don't go there anymore! It is an easy enough decision, even if it take 100’s of times.
But you have to do it for yourself. Then how will life be different? That's what you'll find out.
Thanks for being here.
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I have been finding interesting sites and engaging with the content of their posts. My objective is to build a discussion. Everybody does not look forward to a detailed discussion because their process may be make more posts and draw in more people. But it is in the details where thinking can be more direct. In other words, all advice, and even conventional wisdom is helpful, up to a point. But is there a more effective way to do it?
If I am commenting, usually I am not agreeing 100%, but adding another way to look at it. One post that I did agree with had this statement: "No one makes you angry. It’s your thoughts about them that make you angry." https://danehrenkrantz.substack.com/p/if-i-were-not-such-a-coward-this
That is such a powerful paradigm shift. Practically, no one can believe it. But I do, and I act on that, which means I change those thoughts. So I commented.
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Then the author asked me this question: "The tool you suggest for controlling our thoughts is--more thoughts. I think this can take us some distance. But how do you control the thoughts needed to effectively control thoughts? It seems to me that some degree of "thought control" will always remain beyond us."
I REPRODUCE MY ANSWER HERE, which is also relevant to this post above
I am not against thoughts; they are one of our best tools. If we define “controlling” thought as “not having any”, then another thought cannot eradicate itself. But I would claim that is a misinterpretation of spiritual lore. All cultures are built on language stereotypes. Therefore, all cultures, all of mankind’s relationships, are one or another “virtual reality”. Hence the spiritual saying is that; life-is-an-illusion. Golly, is that a great discovery, or is that the most obvious thing in the world?
So, moving away from thought (in meditation), is purposed to show that your particular thought pattern and the suffering that it creates, are not the meaning of life. Still, everything that happens to humanity is done with agreements in language, (thought). So, to eschew all thought is to step out of human innovation, and step into permanent victimhood, of what the others are doing to you with THEIR thinking.
“Control” thought is a wording I would move away from, because of a common connotation. We think of each situation as already a given, or it sneaks up on us, and then we move in to control it. So therefore, control equals suppression, and suppression seems to add energy to the unwanted. But "control", or I suggest authorship, can come before the situation, or arise with the situation. So, the need for suppression might not be there. Simple wording can be work-around. Can we author our thoughts? Well, it is not a guarantee, but let’s see.
You might begin to realize that thoughts are not a one-off, there are 100's of thoughts begging to be picked up. Then one pops in, often it’s the one that screams the loudest, attached to some hurt or a personal conundrum.
(Maybe what I'm saying now is really how it is; or maybe it is just another story, but still, you can act on it as if it is THE REAL mechanism.) It can make a huge difference.
So, then your definition becomes, "I picked up this thought", can I lay it down? Why not? What does it give me, is it of any service? Now maybe you are noticing a variety, or some choices. It's a knack. First stage is to practice setting down thoughts. It is a repeated process, just keep going with it. Take your energy and interest away from that thought, (like you do in meditation, when a thought interrupts). But then pick up another one, the goal is not a clear space or no-mind.
A lot of what sticks a thought is the identification that this one-thought is ME. If you are saying there is choice among many options, the ME expands. Everything becomes easier. I have a metaphor whereby you can notice something about thoughts before you really run with them, (I won’t expand on it for brevity). But it is like a bus station; all the buses are parked there in the boarding area with the sign of their destination. It may be a foggy sign, but you DO know not to get on that bus. That means you don't pick up that thought and run with it. Still, there are plenty of buses, so you do pick up some other thought. That takes you to another thought, stimulus and response, and on and on.
Whether you get to choose all your thoughts becomes irrelevant, because once you define this as the mechanism, (again, whether it's true or not), you can operate with it. And when you become proficient at "setting-down thoughts", it doesn't matter what is running. You know that they are all harmless, and can be put away at will. Maybe it is just a trick, but I say it works and it is transformative.
Then the whole practice becomes unneeded, you have graduated from the school. I either have no reactive thoughts, or I have some reactive thoughts, same-same, they all have an equal weightlessness. My state of mind is not perturbed. It has worked for decades.
Thanks
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