Sure. I have not seriously taken up meditation again since that time, because although the centered-and-confident stuff was really nice, it took a long time to get to that point, and it wasn’t a superpower level of centered or confident.
So if you already can relax, stop your internal monologue, and generate some pleasant feelings, does it make sense to stop because you already got most of what you can get, or does it make sense to continue because it shows that you are already on 10% of the way towards the actually awesome things
Actually, my experience has been that dropping meditation is like dropping exercise: the benefits go away after a while. (It might not be 100% true as I think there might be some lasting benefit to having learned how much nonsense my brain generates from an experience perspective vs. just knowing it in the abstract. But I’d be hard-pressed to tell if that’s true, as I don’t have a control group for myself. ;-) )
Then I tried the kind of meditation when you count the breath and try to not-do the internal monologue. And I learned how to turn off the internal monologue. An interesting thing, to learn a new mental move, but that’s it.
How odd. I never learned to reliably turn off internal monologue during meditation, let alone everyday life. How long did that take you?
To be clear, I often experienced cessation of internal speech during meditation, but not because of any ability to do so on purpose. It just happened sometimes, in the same way my centeredness just started happening and hung around until a while after I stopped meditating regularly.
My own metaphor for meditation is that it’s like the mental equivalent of physical exercise: I get general mental health benefits from a regular practice, but motivation for it is often difficult because the benefits take time to show up and are subtle at first. And dropping out of the habit is easy because the benefits linger a while after you stop.
if you already can relax, stop your internal monologue, and generate some pleasant feelings, does it make sense to stop because you already got most of what you can get
Yeah, that’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me since I didn’t get any of those things as independent skills from meditating. Rather, I got them in the same way that physical exercise helps people relax or have pleasant feelings if they do enough of it. Nowadays I mix my meditation and physical exercise by doing Tai Chi so I can be more time-efficient. ;-)
(Well, not really, tai chi moves are often meditative in feel, but I haven’t been doing actual on-purpose meditation during it. But that might actually be an effect booster, so now I’m tempted to actually try it.)
How odd. I never learned to reliably turn off internal monologue during meditation, let alone everyday life. How long did that take you?
Hard to say, because before that I didn’t meditate systematically. I gave it a few tries, then forgot about the entire thing for years, then tried again. (Also, not sure whether I should include the time spent doing Silva method as not the same thing, but still about mind control.) Something between a month and a year since I started seriously trying to achieve this specific outcome.
The technique was counting your breath until you notice that you are distracted by internal monologue, then start again from 1. (My rule of thumb was that “distracted” means either that I am not 100% sure which number follows, or that I keep a certain topic of internal monologue longer than during one breath.) The first few attempts felt insanely impossible, like: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “oh my god I am so awesome I am finally doing this correctly… oh shit”, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “great, doing this again, this time I shouldn’t start talking to myself… fuck, I just did”, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “yes, just don’t ruin it again by… eh, doing exactly this, again”, 1, 1, 1,… It felt impossible to not make a meta comment on either my recent progress or the lack thereof. Plus the frequent unrelated thoughts, of course.
Then at some moment, I was travelling by a bus somewhere, and I was like: “I will keep doing this until the bus gets to my destination, regardless of whether it works or not.” I guess that achieved the paradoxical conditions of trying hard to do something while kinda being outcome independent. It started getting better, then I made a mistake, but I didn’t care and just started again without a strong emotional reaction, and the time intervals between mistakes became longer and longer. And it didn’t even feel like I was trying hard. Just, doing it, with greater or lesser success. And then, in addition to short internal monologues shorter than one breath, there were also moments with no monologue.
Afterwards, I already had the experience of what it feels like to be internally silent, so I can just try to go directly to that state. It kinda feels like holding my breath, except I am not, but it feels like a muscle tension at the back of my palate. It only lasts as long as I am aware that I am doing this. From certain perspective, it’s like I have replaced the verbal monologue by a non-verbal stop signal. (So I guess the next level of meditation would be to notice all these non-verbal self-signals and somehow stop doing them, too.) This was also more difficult and felt more forceful at the beginning, then got easier.
You probably know the book Don’t Shoot the Dog. I found it helpful at understanding what is happening; specifically that you are not supposed to punish yourself for failing… but also not supposed to meta-punish yourself for accidentally punishing yourself, etc. I suspect that before doing any awareness meditation, one is supposed to do lots of loving-kindness meditation, exactly for the purpose of getting the self-reinforcement mechanism right. No punishment whatsoever on any level at any step of meditation. Because ultimately, punishing yourself for doing X is inevitably connected with punishing yourself for noticing that you did X, which goes against the goal of noticing it all.
I think I could stop the internal monologue at any moment I want, but without it I am unable to do some things, for example to write text. My ability to read text is also impaired; I can read individual words, but I do not understand the meaning of the sentence. But I can e.g. walk.
Sure. I have not seriously taken up meditation again since that time, because although the centered-and-confident stuff was really nice, it took a long time to get to that point, and it wasn’t a superpower level of centered or confident.
Actually, my experience has been that dropping meditation is like dropping exercise: the benefits go away after a while. (It might not be 100% true as I think there might be some lasting benefit to having learned how much nonsense my brain generates from an experience perspective vs. just knowing it in the abstract. But I’d be hard-pressed to tell if that’s true, as I don’t have a control group for myself. ;-) )
How odd. I never learned to reliably turn off internal monologue during meditation, let alone everyday life. How long did that take you?
To be clear, I often experienced cessation of internal speech during meditation, but not because of any ability to do so on purpose. It just happened sometimes, in the same way my centeredness just started happening and hung around until a while after I stopped meditating regularly.
My own metaphor for meditation is that it’s like the mental equivalent of physical exercise: I get general mental health benefits from a regular practice, but motivation for it is often difficult because the benefits take time to show up and are subtle at first. And dropping out of the habit is easy because the benefits linger a while after you stop.
Yeah, that’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me since I didn’t get any of those things as independent skills from meditating. Rather, I got them in the same way that physical exercise helps people relax or have pleasant feelings if they do enough of it. Nowadays I mix my meditation and physical exercise by doing Tai Chi so I can be more time-efficient. ;-)
(Well, not really, tai chi moves are often meditative in feel, but I haven’t been doing actual on-purpose meditation during it. But that might actually be an effect booster, so now I’m tempted to actually try it.)
Hard to say, because before that I didn’t meditate systematically. I gave it a few tries, then forgot about the entire thing for years, then tried again. (Also, not sure whether I should include the time spent doing Silva method as not the same thing, but still about mind control.) Something between a month and a year since I started seriously trying to achieve this specific outcome.
The technique was counting your breath until you notice that you are distracted by internal monologue, then start again from 1. (My rule of thumb was that “distracted” means either that I am not 100% sure which number follows, or that I keep a certain topic of internal monologue longer than during one breath.) The first few attempts felt insanely impossible, like: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “oh my god I am so awesome I am finally doing this correctly… oh shit”, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “great, doing this again, this time I shouldn’t start talking to myself… fuck, I just did”, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, “yes, just don’t ruin it again by… eh, doing exactly this, again”, 1, 1, 1,… It felt impossible to not make a meta comment on either my recent progress or the lack thereof. Plus the frequent unrelated thoughts, of course.
Then at some moment, I was travelling by a bus somewhere, and I was like: “I will keep doing this until the bus gets to my destination, regardless of whether it works or not.” I guess that achieved the paradoxical conditions of trying hard to do something while kinda being outcome independent. It started getting better, then I made a mistake, but I didn’t care and just started again without a strong emotional reaction, and the time intervals between mistakes became longer and longer. And it didn’t even feel like I was trying hard. Just, doing it, with greater or lesser success. And then, in addition to short internal monologues shorter than one breath, there were also moments with no monologue.
Afterwards, I already had the experience of what it feels like to be internally silent, so I can just try to go directly to that state. It kinda feels like holding my breath, except I am not, but it feels like a muscle tension at the back of my palate. It only lasts as long as I am aware that I am doing this. From certain perspective, it’s like I have replaced the verbal monologue by a non-verbal stop signal. (So I guess the next level of meditation would be to notice all these non-verbal self-signals and somehow stop doing them, too.) This was also more difficult and felt more forceful at the beginning, then got easier.
You probably know the book Don’t Shoot the Dog. I found it helpful at understanding what is happening; specifically that you are not supposed to punish yourself for failing… but also not supposed to meta-punish yourself for accidentally punishing yourself, etc. I suspect that before doing any awareness meditation, one is supposed to do lots of loving-kindness meditation, exactly for the purpose of getting the self-reinforcement mechanism right. No punishment whatsoever on any level at any step of meditation. Because ultimately, punishing yourself for doing X is inevitably connected with punishing yourself for noticing that you did X, which goes against the goal of noticing it all.
I think I could stop the internal monologue at any moment I want, but without it I am unable to do some things, for example to write text. My ability to read text is also impaired; I can read individual words, but I do not understand the meaning of the sentence. But I can e.g. walk.