I’ve enjoyed returning to this inquiry into the nature of thought.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s my phenomenological report so far:<\/p>\n
This morning, watching thinking as it arose, I noticed that “thought” most often shows up for me in two forms:\u00c2\u00a0 either as an interior commentary that is actually more “felt” than “heard” (as a quick, very subtle, skittering play across the muscles involved in the articulation of speech, like little nerve impulses in the tongue, mouth, lips, and throat, that don’t cause actual movement but feel like the “points” that speech movement would proceed from if I allowed my thoughts to emerge into full speech), and as a subtle play of fleeting images, usually visual, but sometimes also auditory or felt\/emotional.\u00c2\u00a0 The running “commentary” form of my thought is not exactly audible, in the way that some imagined sounds occasionally clearly manifest, but the play across the muscles of articulation gives a “felt-sense” of the sound of speech, of my “voice.”\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I watched thinking, I noticed I was both watching thinking and thinking about thinking at the same time, or nearly the same time, in an interesting little moebius loop — maybe a very quick flipping back and forth between\u00c2\u00a0types of noticing and “engagement.”\u00c2\u00a0 Paying attention to the “commentary” part of my thought by slowing it down, and following that subtle play of pre-articulation, I was surprised at one point by a sudden feeling of “clearing” — thinking “vanished” for a moment and there was a flashing feeling of fresh clarity.\u00c2\u00a0 A little later I noticed thinking more in the form of arising images.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, seeing a fence, I was reminded of watching that fence a couple years ago while doing a similar exercise, and I saw a brief image of a photo I had associated with that practice overlaid on top of it.\u00c2\u00a0 I also noticed a brief sequence of images at one point that moved quickly, telling a story more compactly, than the “commentary” form of thinking could:\u00c2\u00a0 I noticed my “position” along the course I usually follow when walking, I associated that immediately with the time, and an image of a cup of yoghurt I planned to eat before the end of my break came to mind, and knew I had to pick up the pace if I really wanted to do that!\u00c2\u00a0 There was little or no verbal thought involved, just a quick series of fleeting images that carried a whole story and impelled a decision (walk faster!).<\/p>\n
Walking back, I tried visualizing the orange ball Jack mentioned.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve done visualization work before, so it was pretty easy to call an image to mind.\u00c2\u00a0 I noticed that as soon as I did so, it began setting off all sorts of echoes of association: Davidu and his ING ball came to mind, various images of bindus (on the foreheads of Nisargadatta Maharaj, Hariprasad Chaurasia, my wife’s puja statue), my son’s basketball, a brilliant sun radiating solar flares.\u00c2\u00a0 These associations flickered at the edges of the orange circle, which itself was “superimposed” in my mind’s eye over the scene of the parking lot where I was walking, and sometimes they momentarily eclipsed it (catching me up in their own content).\u00c2\u00a0 There was a subtle difference between the present, sustained “thinking out” of the orange ball and the “thoughts” that arose automatically in leaps of association, and David Bohm’s distinction between (lively) thinking and (past-based, recording-like) thoughts, between feeling and felts, seemed a useful one to me.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure I fully understand what the difference is, though.\u00c2\u00a0 Thinking seems “light” and connected to a creative sense of subjective presence, whereas thought seems like something I am “subject to.”<\/p>\n
I apologize for the length of this.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s my first post in awhile, so I guess I went on and on.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll try to be a little briefer in future postings.\u00c2\u00a0 :-)<\/p>\n
Best wishes,<\/p>\n
Bruce<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve enjoyed returning to this inquiry into the nature of thought.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s my phenomenological report so far: This morning, watching thinking as it arose, I noticed that “thought” most often shows up for me in two forms:\u00c2\u00a0 either as an … Continue reading