Considering meditation and thoughts
(Nimue)
Most meditation content I’ve read has included ideas about how we want to calm or eliminate thoughts. I’ve struggled with that – I like my thoughts. I’ve come to realise that what the majority of writers mean when they say ‘thoughts’ is some kind of unstructured babble of brain noise that people get tangled up in, identity with and cannot control.
I’m curious as to how this aligns with other people’s experiences. Is the inside of your head a noisy mess? Or is your thinking generally calmer and more deliberate?
As soon as I had words, I was thinking deliberately and using them. I’ve got better with that over time. I also know when to loosen my grip and just let things bubble up as that results in the best ideas. The surfacing of thoughts is important – I think – for self awareness, insight, making connections and being inspired. Deliberate thoughts allow me to make considered choices. Time when my thoughts are a bit free form allows ideas to occur. I don’t live in a state of perpetual inner chatter.
It can get noisy in here when I’m overloaded, but that’s a reflection of too much random information coming in. Are other people struggling with noisy brains as a consequence of being in overstimulating environments?
Brains can be noisy when there’s a lot to keep track of and no real time to process anything. I’ve experienced that plenty of times. Sitting quietly and letting things surface so that I can work them through invariably sorts this out. Again it’s overstimulation and/or lack of processing time.
I do see overstimulation and information overload as a problem – and one that can be tackled with gentle meditative and contemplative practices. I see this as an environmental issue, not as a problem occurring in my brain. The noisy thoughts I have sometimes experienced are just my brain trying to keep up – that’s not a problem, it’s a symptom. Calming my brain down won’t work if my environment continues to overload me.
I’m very interested to hear other people’s experience around thinking, not thinking and meditating. Does any of this chime with anyone else?
