[logpogingg]

during meditation i studied the thought process and came to the conclusion that there are at least two steps of thinking.
first there is the pure thought or the intention to think. i call it thought impulse. then after the thought impulse we write out the thought in full like we are thinking 'i must go to the shop', 'i have to eat something' and so on. during normal life were not aware of the first step but we are just 'hearing' the inner monologue.
during meditation when i try to calm my mind i manage to prevent it from doing the second step but the thought impulse still comes. when this happens i just ignore it.
so are you reaching a state where even the thought impulse doesnt come or is it sufficient just to prevent the second step? in my understanding it would be even dangerous to prevent the thought impulse because you would never think again...
but maybe there is a step before the thought impulse that im not aware of yet. what do you say?

[EvonsRorgon]

Interesting train of thought...

Acutally I find when I work on calming my mind - then I notice when I'm picking up other people's thoughts - they're not mine.

DD

[enactolaelant]

during meditation i studied the thought process and came to the conclusion that there are at least two steps of thinking.

I found several, too. It is interesting to follow the thoughts back to their origin.



"first there is the pure thought or the intention to think. i call it thought impulse. then after the thought impulse we write out the thought in full like we are thinking 'i must go to the shop', 'i have to eat something' and so on. during normal life were not aware of the first step but we are just 'hearing' the inner monologue. " Is the "thought impulse" without a language? I found that first, thoughts are there on several "layers" rising inside the mind before the normal wake consciousness is aware of them. And second that even before this happens the thoughts are there in a languageless form.

during meditation when i try to calm my mind i manage to prevent it from doing the second step but the thought impulse still comes. when this happens i just ignore it. Yes, I observed the same. For both trance and meditation is is sufficient to calm the surface (your "second step") but leave the thought impulse at it is.

so are you reaching a state where even the thought impulse doesnt come or is it sufficient just to prevent the second step? in my understanding it would be even dangerous to prevent the thought impulse because you would never think again... I experienced both so I think to prevent the thought impulse does not necessarily lead to a permanent cessation of all thoughts. But it might also be that I just cut off my awareness from the thought impulse. Truely, I do not know, but intuitively I would say that if you do not really want to stay thoughtless you won't be.

but maybe there is a step before the thought impulse that im not aware of yet. what do you say? I think the thoughts arise in the mind according to the personality. As long as there is a personality wake or dreaming the thoughts will rise and fall, When the personality is in deep sleep no thoughts arise. Observation of the thought impulse might be a bridge to the impersonal Witness state.

You might like this site I found just a few days ago:

http://www.sunyaprajna.com/Advaita/Atmananda.html

[logpogingg]

Thanks for the feedback.

@Dragon's Daughter:
How do you know the thoughts are not yours? I noticed that there is a 'background thinking process' (dunno how else to call it) that im not aware of. it starts later during meditation and when i become aware of it it stops (or i stop it because i want a clear mind) . i always thought that it is the dream mind beginning to dream. 1. because it starts earlyer when meditation is done before sleep and 2. normally it is (nearly) completely senseless chattering and with some efford i can make out the thought impulse that comes before each sentence. Do you mean that or yet other thoughts?

@freawaru:
Thanks for the link. ill have to spend some time reading it

Is the "thought impulse" without a language? Yes it is without a language. I think this is what you can pick up via telepathy. in my understanding telepathy is kinda intuitional thing when you know but cant really say what another person thinks. if you clearly hear the thoughts its called clearaudience i think. maybe when you prevent your own thought impulses to come somehow you would only receive the ones coming from other people. but then there is the problem to identify them as not your thoughts but the ones from other people. the next step would be to identify the person the thought is coming from. this way you could learn to mind read...

[EvonsRorgon]

Let me see if I can remember how it was explained to me when to know when thoughts are yours....

Ok, I think it went like this... When you have a thought, you will think of something BEFORE you feel the emotion. Such as you will realize that you are watching a car accident before you get horrified that is what you are seeing. Even if it's only split seconds before you feel it, you will think about it "oh no, an accident..." *horror*

When a thought isn't yours, you will feel the emotion BEFORE you think the thought. If you suddenly feel sad, for no reason - you picked it up from someone else. Now alot of times your mind will rationalize your feelings "I must be still sad from seeing the bad news on TV last night" etc. You can find this alot when you run into someone that's feeling strong emotions - you get happy from running into someone that's happy ("they're infectious!") or you get really sad from running into someone that's heartbroken, etc. We've all had this happen...

Now it gets tricky when you're analyzing the thoughts in your head. What worked for me was to connect the emotions with the thoughts. It's actually rare to have NO emotions with each thought. If you really look at your emotions and thoughts, you should find this to be true.

When I could connect the emotions with the connected thought, then I could start analyzing which would come first, emotion or thought. If it was emotion first, it wasn't mine. Then it was for me to figure out if my mind was creating a thought to rationalize the emotion I was getting or was the thoughts actually from someone else.

And as I was doing all this analyzing, I started to figure out the rythym of my own thoughts, then I'd notice how the rythym of others' thoughts were different. And I found that other's thoughts are just like the other person's speech. How someone speaks is how they think, that's how their thoughts sound. So I was able to actually figure out who's thoughts I was picking up at times because I recognized the thought's 'sound' just like recognizing the actual voices I'd hear.

It did take some time to get to this point. And actually it was an accident when it happened. I was learning 'psychic self defense' and whatever book I was reading at the time talked about learning to know when you were getting other peoples' thoughts as a defense. Next thing I knew, I was becoming telepathic.

Now you won't pick up everyone's thoughts. Some people don't broadcast their thoughts at all. Others seem like they're always shouting their thoughts at others. (it's like being a radio and tuning into stations that are available) What's a real mess, is when you can pick up some people really good and then you have trouble distinguishing if you're actually hearing them speak or just getting their thoughts. You'd think this wouldn't be a problem - but when you're not looking directly at them (have your back to them) and a thought comes in just as loud as if they spoke it - you can really freak people out.

I rarely pick up people's thoughts anymore. I shut this down because it really can hurt to know what people that you trust think about you. Or to learn that someone is very deceitful to everyone around them - that they're a big fake, and not who you thought they were at all.

You have to be VERY self confident and self assured to handle what you'd get. I wasn't these things at the time I developed it (I was 19 at the time). And though I am now, it seems like the older people get, the more secrets they have - and I'm not sure I want to know everything that's going on with the people around me. But with my spiritual development, if it develops again without me working at it - I'll take it and hopefully not let it interfere with my life.

DD

[logpogingg]

Wow sounds interesting.

Ill thik about it if i should give it a try or not...

Thank you

[Khurlxgq]

The impulses are all at surface levels. Thus the impulse to stop the impulses only gets you so far. Impulses seem to eminate from the language level of thought with lots of help from the ego. Scientists have tried to prove that thought 'occurs' in language with limited success.

Much of the 'mind chatter' is not yours but caused by external programming. My personal opinion is that even the part that is yours is not worth much. So, just let it all implses cease.

Most meditators I talked to eventually experience a more abstract mind without churn and without language. All that 'stepping through logic' and 'spewing of possibilities' goes away. Action the seems to be spontaneous, not following a long dialog or string of choice. This trick to make that your default resting state of being.

Fear not, I know of no recorded cases of not being able to 'restart' thinking after too much quieting.