lukstafi comments on Meditation, insight, and rationality. (Part 2 of 3) - Less Wrong
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Tried this last night. Interesting personal results.
I was surprised by just how difficult it was. My brain is very noisy, and I kept thinking. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my breath, memories of earlier in the day or plans for tomorrow kept intruding. Or music loops. Or recollection of the instructions written here. Or frustration that I couldn't concentrate on my breathing, and meta-thinking about all the thinking I was doing instead of concentrating on my breathing. It was really quite shocking - I considered it a success (and a RARE one) if I could get two breaths in a row without my mind jumping to something.
But much more surprising was the repetitive nature of my thinking. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop. I kept coming back to the same 4 or 5 thoughts/memories/plans, and kept replaying the same small slices of songs. I even came back several times to being shocked/annoyed by how repetitive my thinking was. If this reflects my normal mental processes, then I waste a TON of energy simply re-thinking thoughts over and over.
I found this very interesting, and plan to keep doing this for a while. I have no idea what the term "vibrations" is supposed to mean, and it sounds very New-Age-Woo to me, so I have doubts I'll experience any of that. But the experiment was easy and produced novel results quickly.
Anyone else get anything similar?
Think, or think not. Trying already gets you into "meta".
If it was that easy I'd simply think not. :)
I often quiet myself with "shhhh" (aloud), in a comforting manner, when I'm tired and observe that my thoughts are useless or even detrimental.