Why is it so difficult to stop thinking?

[pErvinalia]

One of the main Buddhist goals is to 'still the mind'. I don't know about you but mine races, pops, jumps and skitters all over the place. It is fucking exhausting sometimes!

So why didn't we evolve the ability just to go mentally into neutral now and again?

Or is it just me?

No, i'm like that too. But we have evolved the ability to create and consume valium.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Stop thinking? Easy. Turn to Fux News.

[mistermack]

"Sometimes I like to sit and think...and sometimes I just like to sit."

"Some come here to sit and think, I come here to shit and stink"

Toilet wall, Sir Thomas Rich's Grammar School, 1965.

[Audley Strange]

Try transcendental excrameditation. Focus the mind on pushing so hard that you do an Elvis and leave your body.

[FBM]

Don't just do something, sit there!

[hadespussercats]

I have struggled with an overactive mind most of my life, often I yearn for there to be a "blank" or "void". I remember sitting and watching a robin in the hedge once and envying it's lack of language-I constantly think in language. To be a creature that simply engages with and reacts to stimuli without a mental construct. How amazing it would be to just not have words forming, just to perceive something for what it is, maybe with accompanying emotions, but without a commentary. I have OCD though, so I guess my mind is always babbling-physiologically, my brain's wired to not shut out unnecessary/unwanted thoughts. Meditation does help with that, I've tried it, it simply comes down to, in my case, a difficulty with being patient enough to sit long enough for the effects of meditation to be realised.

My brain often likes to race through my past to dig up moments of shame or anger or both. Which pisses me right off. It's a nice day, nothing's wrong, I'd be happy right now if it weren't for you, brain!

On the subject of language, I've been thinking that a lot lately, because my son's starting to become verbal (he's had some words for a while now, but he seems to be coming up on some sort of language breakthrough.)

And it's exciting. But I think of other parents I've known, talking about how they can't wait to hear what their child's been thinking, connecting with them in that way. And I feel strange about the fact that I feel like him talking might actually get in the way of our communication-- that there feels something very pure and direct about needing to watch him, read his face and his body language, and stay aware he's doing the same in reverse.

I know, we'll keep doing that. But... crap, how did I wind up quoting Gloria Estefan? The words get in the way.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I wish I could stop thinking and just puddle sometimes.

[Tyrannical]

Talk more.
I've heard the more you speak, the less you think

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Talk more.
I've heard the more you speak, the less you think

That's why my posts are so terse.

[Gonzo]

One of the main Buddhist goals is to 'still the mind'. I don't know about you but mine races, pops, jumps and skitters all over the place. It is fucking exhausting sometimes!

So why didn't we evolve the ability just to go mentally into neutral now and again?

Or is it just me?

The ego's job is to mediate between the idealistic reasoning of the superego (right and wrong) and the base urges of the ID, to lack control over your ego is to lose control over your decision making and thinking patterns. Buddhists believe you should eliminate the ego all together to find tranquility, that is, total non-abandonment. An ideal that is meant to make you face trouble in a calm abiding fashion, essentially a clear mind.

[rasetsu]

You just made that up.

[Cormac]

When I used to train in Tai Chi Chuan, (not the wooish hippy sort), doing the form was an effective meditation. As you progress through the postures and particularly the changes from posture to posture, you are focussed on your physical structure, and also on the martial allocation of each change, you think about how your body and your opponents body interact and move, and how and at what points you will feel the void and the non-void in your opponents body, and how each change and posture allows you to exploit that duality.

Because you do this slowly, in a focussed manner, it is very relaxing. "Relaxing" is not quite right. Physically, you are not soft and floppy - the guiding expression is "internally bound, externally stretched/extended". It is the same mentally, you are calm, but focussed and with martial intent.

After 30 minutes to an hour of this, I'd do conditioning training, techniques (grappling, throws, boxing), and then spar.

Afterwards, I'd have a great endorphine rush, and be really calm and relaxed.

[Gonzo]

You just made that up.

nah... I have novice knowledge of Buddhism and Psychology; other people just made it up.