Mental Noise: The Silent Killer Comments

At first, the very idea of sitting still for 5 minutes seemed impossible to me.

For how long can you sit in a chair, in a room, in silence, by yourself, while still awake, do nothing, and not be bored or restless? I don't know. For me, I read that question and say, about as long as I would sit on train tracks while a train approaches. That's just me. I guess I just don't have as many voices in my head as Amac and CET or I have subconsciously mastered the art of feeling peaceful all the time. I achieve the most peaceful restful state through something called sleep. :) Seriously I have no ability to relate with what you are saying. I'm at peace watching a Football game on a Sunday, or playing softball with friends. I'm at peace driving down the coast watching a surfer catch a wave, eating good sushi or spending time with friends. I just don't get any joy out of experiencing nothingness nor do I have any desire to try. I crave external stimulation. We are all different and look to different avenues to find peace and happiness in life. I think it's cool that you're working toward findng what gives you peace.

Nwaite, I'm not deeper or more spiritual than you. I wouldn't want anyone to think that. As far as I'm concerned we're all equal. For you it sounds like "beer" is your spiritual practice. :-) It makes you happy, so it's spiritual. I like creativity, nature, travel, and pondering/studying the cosmos. I'm not sure what the word "spiritual" means to me anyway these days. It's often associated with religious feelings towards a Creator, but I define it as what makes us feel at peace and one with life. I don't know what being at one with everything means, but I think it's a feeling we all know.

OK, all. I realized some new ways to explain this. Here's a related question I have to someone who doesn't understand what I'm talking about: For how long can you sit in a chair, in a room, in silence, by yourself, while still awake, do nothing, and not be bored or restless? The tendency is to require some sort of entertainment or something to keep us busy like talking to someone, working, thinking, reading a book or magazine, surfing the web, or watching TV/movies. There are many reasons for this need to keep busy, but I think it all comes down to people not wanting to be trapped in their thoughts. But that state where we are at such peace that we don't require anything external to be happy is sublime. I think we all get glimpses of it throughout the day and I've found that through practice I can be in that state more of the time. Much of the time when we're in this peaceful state, we're not talking to ourselves. We just are. Does that make sense? Oh, and CET, your description is so accurate, but I think most of us don't realize that this happens in all of us. So when you describe it, it almost sounds like schizophrenia. :-)

I know EXACTLY what you mean AM, and it is something I've wrestled with my whole life. The chatter in my head is really noisy, and it never stops. It's not just one voice either, usually it's 2-3 different voices, all talking at the same time, about different stuff, and it's REALLY REALLY distracting. I've found that the more I try to silence them, the louder they get. The few moments of quiet emptiness I've experienced are when I've been able to let go of them, and just allow them to do what they do. Eventually, they fade into the background, become softer, and sometimes become entirely quiet. The problem is, when I realize that they've stopped, they start again. :-/ Just letting go is what works for me. Thinking about them, wrestling with them, listening to them, these are all forms of attachment. What we're looking for is non-attachment, right? ^_^

Amac, I am even more baffled after reading that.

You are correct. I think Ghandi may know what you mean but to most folks it sounds like something that should be practiced by a Shaolin Monk. I call that spirit of awareness Beer-thirty. You are a much deeper and more spiritual than I. I hope you find a way to stop over-analyzing things and find your chi.

Good point Lotte. The "noise" I'm talking about isn't stress or intuition. It's just unnecessary analysis. It's hard to explain. In fact, I think I've done a poor job of communicating it because it doesn't seem like anyone knows what I'm talking about. Here's an excerpt from a book I like called "Stillness Speaks" by Eckhart Tolle. It's a decent description of what I'm talking about. It's not perfect, but it's better than I can explain it myself:

The human condition: lost in thought. Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past. In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature. Finding that dimension frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on yourself and others when the mind-made "little me" is all you know and runs your life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness. If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as simply thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions happen - the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds. The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely. Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously. How easy it is for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons. The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It says: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret "your life" or someone else's life or behavior, however you judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. It is no more than a bundle of thoughts. But reality is one unified whole, in which all things are interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself. Thinking fragments reality - it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces. The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don't realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.

Does that resonate better than my explanation?

My mental noise was "mental." So I had to stop listening and start focusing on other things. If your mental noise is "intuition", then nwaite that is great advice. If your mental noise is just "stress" and you need a way to wind down with meditation. I haven't figured that out.

Thanks for the advice, nwaite. Just to clarify, I'm not trying to pretend it isn't there. And as I mentioned, it's an important tool. However, there are times when we need to learn to shut it down and just be. It's almost like meditating throughout daily activity when we don't need the inner voice to solve a problem. The reason I'd like to learn to turn it off more often is because great peace and joy spring from mindfulness. I feel that peace for small (sometimes longer) periods of time every day time and I'd like to be able to maintain that state longer.