Thoughts?
 

When one sits down to meditate, one of the things they must learn to deal with is the constant stream of thoughts going through the mind. While there is no shortage of advice about how to deal with them, what I am interested in in this thread is your thoughts about those thoughts.

If one can quite the mind for just a moment, they will see that the thoughts inevitably and spontaneously arise again. From where are these thoughts arising? How did they get to where they are arising from in the first place? Are these your thoughts, or did you just borrow/adopt them from others in your life? Are there more of these thoughts going on beneath what our conscious mind is aware of?

How does one define thought? If there were no languages, what would these thoughts consist of? Do animals think?

We seem to complete any number of routine actions without any conscious thought at all... e.g. driving, riding my bike, eating, etc....
Is it possible to exist without any "thoughts" at all, and what would that be like..... you may want to try to answer that for yourself first, with and without thinking about it.

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This Krishnamurthy video may be useful https://youtu.be/LZlkYPlS5s0

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Good questions. When we examine our thoughts they seem to arise out of nothing and return back to nothing. Between these thoughts there is a space. If we hold our awareness in this space then we can temporarily prevent a new thought from arising, but sooner or later another thought comes.

Are these our thoughts? We seem to have mental patterns of thinking, so certain mental phrases may recur for no apparent reason. The mind often works by association - we see something and that evokes particular thoughts in response, which then lead on to other connected thoughts and before we know it we are thinking of something completely different. And sometimes we find ourselves repeating thoughts we have absorbed from others such as our parents.

The mind is a tool which we have to learn to use. This requires the ability to concentrate and focus our thinking without being distracted. Most of us are struggling to do this.

Yes, we all do routine things without conscious thinking, operating on autopilot. But we seem to be still thinking while doing so, it is just that our attention is elsewhere.

When we try to still the internal mental chatter we discover that we are actually quite attached to thinking. It is so habitual for us that it is easier to carry on thinking than to hold our awareness in the state of not-thinking.

Is it possible to exist without any thoughts? The fact that we can observe our thoughts shows us that we are something separate from these thoughts. We are told by various sages that if we remain vigilant for long enough, stopping thoughts from arising, then thinking fades away because we no longer give energy to our thoughts. We actually break the habit of thinking. Then we enjoy the peace of a quiet mind while resting in awareness.

Peace

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Pursuing this line of thought to get to no thought (!) ... :D

The thinker thinking ... analytical, fragmented thought. However, when intuitively cognising the whole instantly, there is no separate thinker. Just awareness, connected to Universal consciousness.

Which is why the ego aspect discourages use of the intuition end of thought polarity ... the ego’s existence is at stake.

During meditation, there is no logical thought ... no ego thought ... only our awareness employing intuition. This is, in fact, our natural state. So it’s not about doing meditation but rather being in meditation by simply stretching & yawning and just being attentive to our aliveness in an orientation devoid of seeking, anticipating and clinging.

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.... "However, when intuitively cognising the whole instantly, there is no separate thinker. Just awareness, connected to Universal consciousness."
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In this state, is awareness also aware of itself?

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Rupert Spira uses this expression a lot! Awareness self aware of awareness!

Awareness just is. Period. It is self existent. Or we may say, we are the formless oneness vibrational presence of aliveness as that that survives death of the physical body and mind. This is what we awaken to in deep meditation ... realising that we ourselves are the object of our quest.

Intellectualisation does not help since it is thought that reasons and thought is limited to experience and memory. Mathematically we may say that the subset of a set cannot get to what is beyond the set. Hence, the need to exit thought and rest in awareness, in and as, our true element.

Meditation is nothing other than the letting go of association with the mind-body construct, while being attentive & receptive in silence in the now continuum. Undoing rather than doing. The more we are able to effortlessly undo or let us say relax resistance, deeper is the meditation.

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In my opinion we construct our own thoughts out of our own energy, they do not come from anywhere but us.
A person can get a headache from too much thinking. We have experiences and we file our experiences in our
memory by how they are similar or how they are different.

We compare and contrast experiences in our memory; memories are thoughts about the past, and desires are
thoughts about the future. Thinking can only be about the past or future. Even if that past was just a second
ago, or that future will take place in the next second.

We quiet our thoughts to live solidly in the moment because thoughts are always in transit between the past
and the future. Thinking is a tool which we have and if a person does not learn how to control their thoughts,
their thoughts will definitely control them; it is the same with emotions. Maybe "control" is not the proper word.

People generate thoughts based on their memories and desires; memories pertain to the past, desires pertain
to the future. Thoughts can also be about fantasies that involve creative imagination. So the mental faculties
involved in thinking are memories, desires, attitude, our attention, and our imagination.

Attention and attitude deals with how we construct, or perceive, our memories and desires. Some people
have very vivid thoughts, those with a good memory and creative imagination, while others have very faintly
constructed thoughts, usually those with a poor memory and a poor imagination. Thinking is a skill which can
be overdeveloped or underdeveloped.

Just like we can develop our memory, attitude. concentration, or imagination, we can also develop our thoughts
and thinking process. Thinking too much can make us tired and fatigued because we use our own energy to
construct thoughts. There are people with "thought disorders," and also while our physical body sleeps our
thoughts may continue in our dreams. "I think therefore I am" is wrong, because you do not have to think to exist.

When, under self-hypnosis, I ask for knowledge and guidance, most of the times the answer pops up before I finish wording out my question.

To me, this suggests that thoughts form at a deeper, non-verbal level.

The impetus of thoughts come from our subconscious, or sublime conscious, mind. Our subconscious is deductive
while our self conscious waking mind is inductive. These two categories of consciousness, our waking self conscious
and our subconscious, constantly communicate with each other.

Whatever we give our attention to on a regular basis becomes a subconscious pattern. Subconscious is on auto pilot
while our waking self conscious is manually operated by us. By the time we reach age-10 we have put lots of stuff in
our subconscious.

Most of what we think come from subconscious impulses that have been translated into words and pictures by our
thinking self conscious mind. Thought forms are reflections, translations of impulses which we receive from our
subconscious.

There is a popular belief about the “collective unconscious,” as described in Jungian psychology, where deductive
archetypal symbols form impulses. In and out-of-body experience lots of people have reported that they went into
realms where there was no thought, no past or future, no desire or memories, etc., they were unable to generate
thought in realms beyond this physical existence.

P.S. A person's thoughts can be picked up as electrical impulses on and EEG, which measures brain activity.
Just like every time our heart beats and electrical impulse crosses our heart and causes it to beat; this is picked
up on and EKG. We are bio-electrical creatures.

In your opinion, Starman, how do we figure out what is in the subconscious, how do I see it, clear it etc.