I have realized that for a long time, with varying fluctuation, I have experienced negative emotions when thinking. I don’t mean to say that the thoughts themselves were always negative or harmful to me, sure, maybe much of the time they were, but the thought of thinking, thinking about thinking, would cause some sort of reflex rejection. Through some recent writing and conversation, there has been a breakthrough, of sorts anyway, where I have been okay with and enabled to simply think. There is limited apprehension to how it started to become blocked out, and the number of variables at play to making it come back to life are also still in question, however, I think enough has been uncovered to take a sneak-peak. This is a topic that has the possibility of coming back in the future with further elaboration. Too, keep in mind, this will be a little more free-form.
I used to meditate, and I recently had a conversation where meditation was mentioned as a tool for, well, many uses, but for myself, it came down to control. The mind is always running, like a machine, producing thoughts in many forms, and perhaps some forms dominate over others, depending on the type of mind you have. When I think, I usually think in a monologue or dialogue, words are my main form of thinking protocol, unless something specific is taking place that pushes me in a direction connected with reality. For example, if I’m doing something musical, I still do have the tendency to think in words, which is why I likely lean into theory so much, but at other times, words are not present, and simply sounds are. In both of these cases, my mind is running; it is thinking in some shape or form. Meditation, I would say, is allowing those thoughts to come and go; they pass.
There are many forms of meditation, but to keep it brief, I will mention my main method of meditating, and generally what I mean by meditation. It is putting your focus on something simple, like breathing, or nothing, if you know what nothing is, and then holding your attention there. Maybe not right away, but if you know, then you know there is a point when you no longer are the thoughts in the mind, but instead, the observer of the thoughts. A sense of separation occurs, or maybe the separation is real; whatever it is, you could acknowledge it as a level of metacognition. Depending on how much time you spend getting to this state, you may find yourself letting thoughts pass, or finding a thought in particular that is of a higher quality. Whether that quality means it is negative or positive, it means you can choose to bring it to attention, and focus on it, rather than breathing or nothing.
As this used to be in the past, I haven’t gone through the process like described in quite some time, but I know that for a fact, it has helped me. It meant I had to set time aside to think, or not think, but it can be unsettling to give yourself a few minutes to stay at rest, physically anyway, but the mind is hard at work being and using a muscle it normally does not. Or, you could say the will is hard at work, or the soul, or whatever you’d like. In this case, any of those forms or ideas work fine. The point is: I dropped it. I stopped. Perhaps I would meditate a little before bed, or during a walk, but there were limits to that meditation. There would exist in reality some sort of distraction or stimulation that would be asking for my attention, and in nine out of ten cases, I put the distraction there. An easy example for me is going for a walk, but I’m also listening to music. Sure, without the music I could meditate, but with the music? It becomes more difficult, and I intentionally put the music there so that I would focus on it, rather than nothing or my immediate thoughts.
With time being the gushing river that it is, time passed, and the same water you saw a few moments ago is now long past. I’ve gone through many events, of which many were not helpful to the health of my mind. In other works, I’ve already gone into detail as to what those events were and how they affected me. Things are nuanced, and there are always many variables at play, but I know that those events referenced to in my writings most definitely hurt me in the short and long-term. In the interest of time, those variables and experiences will not be shared or iterated upon here, nor now, but the idea that they have continually impacted me will remain. The way in which they have impacted me has led to, I would suggest, the fear of thinking, a decrease in meditation, and a general avoidance of having thoughts or contemplating thoughts.
One of the methods for avoiding thoughts, or thinking at all, has been listening to music, but that doesn’t always work. At others time, like before bed, a time I used to often meditate during, I now listen to some sort of video. I’ve been doing it for months, too, and it’s become part of my regular schedule. There are some tendencies for what I listen to, but the point is, my head, mind, brain—whatever it is, is then distracted by an external media. That process then inhibits me from having my own thoughts and assessing them, which causes a number of problems, of which many I am still ignorant of, but I know that the inhibition of thinking has most definitely negatively impacted my general emotional state and creativity.
It’s likely in a previous piece of writing there has been made mention of the most recent uptake of conversation which then has, allowed me to entertain ideas and concern myself with a world I otherwise wouldn’t have. Talking, and rambling especially, has allowed me to think about ideas, when alternatively, that part of my mind would have been suppressed. Depending on the conversational partner or partners, the ideas can be talked about with varying depths. This has helped me considerably find enjoyment or entertainment when there otherwise would be something actively trying to take my attention away from the words inside of my head. I knew in the past, and I know currently, that actively trying to suppress the mind and its processes doesn’t ever work, and it will only cause problems, but that doesn’t mean slipping into past mistakes cannot occur. It can, it will, and it has.
Conversation, talking, or even just chatting, has the disguise of being something separate; something different; it isn’t about thinking or thoughts, it’s a distraction! Or so, that’s what I would tell myself. It might be true, yes, but it has the quality, or you could say, the ability, to enable me to think when otherwise I would not. Distraction is relative; it is not a universal quality. If you are actively distracting yourself, it means there is something relative to your own experience you want to avoid or pretend does not exist. The source of stimulation will fill your senses, thus negating the thing you don’t like, mentally or otherwise, at least temporarily. Chat, and commonly VRChat, has worked as a distraction for me in some ways, while in others, it has brought me back to a place where I can take my thoughts and create something external with them.
Does this mean that I don’t actively avoid some thoughts? Am afraid of certain types of thoughts? Do I no longer have thoughts that can actively harm my immediate mood? Unfortunately, these are still present, and that’s part of my life, there’s no way to get around it. I can dance around it for a long time, but at the end of the day, time will outlast me, and by quite a large margin. The best I can do is dance slowly and meticulously, working my way through my mind; I can’t chew on all of it at once. I slowly take it in, and work my way through, and the work will go on my whole life, so I have to be ready for that, as well.
I’ve been having trouble creating or focusing on something that would be of a smaller scale relative to the size of piece I normally write, so this is going to be an attempt at it. The quality of the writing can always be brought into question, as I can’t help but notice that it takes me many words to describe something that for other types of individuals, they can express in far fewer words. Even the same concept or idea can be put far more simply and in a much shorter time. The density of information could be brought into question, too, as too dense of information in too short of a timespan then leads to the listener, or even the creator later on, having to go over the same piece over and over again. This is not a bad thing, but it is a choice that one has to make. I think in some medias, it makes more sense to have dense information, but for this? I’m still deciding on that.
My thoughts can often be scattered, and it takes a level of effort to gather them up, and what ends up being gathered does not often bring pleasure. Yet, the process of collecting the thoughts and manifesting them into something, even a silly piece of writing, can bring even the slightest pleasure, and if not so, then neutrality, which is far more comfortable than negativity. I am becoming more okay with thinking, thoughts, and what information the thoughts offer to me. I lean towards action, or so I try to tell myself, and I have to limit how much thinking is done versus real manifestation of materials and medias.