Objectifying thoughts

Hi guys, in my noting practice I find that the most difficult things to objectify are thoughts. They just spontaneously arise and I'm identified with them before I'm even aware of them, and all I seem to be able to catch of them, at best, is sort of their afterglow or echo or something.

I don't seem to be able to clearly see them come and go and do their thing, so to speak, except of the ones that "I" conjure up "deliberately". Reason for quotation marks should be obvious, but the sense that some thoughts are deliberately manifested, so to speak (such as the labels given to note physical sensations), and others are not, I think it means that those deliberate thoughts are already objectified as they arise, while the othes are not. Is this making sense?

So anyway, what I'm experimenting with at the moment is to really get a handle on practicing the objectification of thoughts. Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated .

Cheers

All I do is characterize them--speculating, anticipating, grandstanding (when I imagine myself as a big shot meditator or whatever), visualizing, reminiscing. Sometimes I just note "thinking." I guess for me it isn't so much of an issue most of the time because I assume they're going to arise, and when I catch myself doing it I just place one of these labels on it, or else just say "thinking" to myself. You are perhaps feeling frustrated because it takes you what you believe is a long time to be able to do this,
but from what I gather one gets better with practice, to the point of being able to label the little darlings just as they arise.

I feel a bit hypocritical, though, because just a few days ago I complained about "monkey mind" on my own thread. I guess what was bugging me then was the fact that I felt unable to settle down at all. People commented at length about it, and now as I answer your question I'm beginning to understand just a little what they might have meant! There is no problem whatsoever with letting thoughts arise, as long as you can just label them (or notice them) and let them go. All the best to you in your practice.

This is not easy, simply because observing thoughts tends to prevent them from arising. It is a bit like trying to have a lucid dream from the waking state. The more we observe dream images, the more awake, lucid and altert we become. As a result, dream images cease to arise, preventing us from entering consciously into dreamland.

The trick is therefore to use an indirect anchor such as the breath, the sitting posture or a mantra. Keeping this indirect object as an anchor for our attention, we just allow ourselves to drift in thoughts and daydreams. As soon as we realize that we have been daydreaming or lost in thoughts, we just notice it, getting back to our anchor gently. Getting lost in our inner dialogue and waking up to reality again and again, we may eventually reach the perfect point of equilibrium where thoughts are witnessed as the arise, abide and pass away in real time. Tricky, but possible.

Cheers JLaurelC, yeah I hear what you're saying. Especially about the fantasies of me as a big shot meditator or whatever . Now here's the thing I've noticed. You call it "when I catch myself doing it". And I call it the exact same thing. Why? Because the train of thoughts making up the fantasy is already there when I notice it happening (i.e. when it is reflected in conscious awareness).

I have no problem labelling them if and when I notice them, but when I notice them they've already arisen. There is the sense that I am doing the fantasizing, because by the time I notice it, those thoughts are already there and have already been identified with. Now it shouldn't come as a surprise here that there is no "I" doing the fantasizing, or doing the noticing. There is only the identification with (to a large extent) the thoughts which gives rise to that sense of "I" as something real. At least, that's my hypothesis at the moment.

It's like the conscious awareness of "my" thoughts is constantly lagging behind the thoughts themselves. I'm not posting here because I feel frustrated about this or because I'm trying to stop them or change them in anyway. Quite the contrary. I'm trying to get to the point where, the very instant a thought bubbles up, the awareness of it is already there, sothat it can be fully disidentified with. That's what this experiment is about. That's how I'm trying to test the hypothesis. This is what I'm practicing to do at the moment, but since I'm far from being a mental gymnast yet, I certainly wouldn't mind any suggestions on how to best go about this.

Thanks Alex, that makes a lot of sense, and that is how I'm going about it at the moment. Observing the senses (particularly body sensations) to get some mindful awareness going, and using that as a kind of grounding and stepping stone towards learning to observe thoughts in realtime.

Mark,

I would often do something where I would work mainly with visual thoughts. I would watch for some image to come up and then allow it to branch off to another image (often associated in some way).

So if I do it now "Freddy Krueger, a glove, a skull, metal pipes, steam, clouds, a mountain, a bird, a man, a pair of shoes, corn, etc."

Just one image arising after another.

"There is only the identification with (to a large extent) the thoughts which gives rise to that sense of "I" as something real. At least, that's my hypothesis at the moment.
- MarkMeijer"

Hi Mark and welcome!

You are right about thoughts giving rise to and supporting the sense of 'I'. Investigating that process of becoming to its roots is pretty advanced and subtle stuff so don't be discouraged if you don't get it right away

In addition to the standard noting of thoughts that JLaurel suggested, you could also try binary noting silence / noise. If you catch yourself thinking, just note 'noise'. With practice you will be also able to notice some gaps in between the thoughts and then you note 'silence'. With time the gaps will become cleared and last longer and you will become quite familiar with your thought patterns. The nice thing about this technique is that it is so simple that you can do it pretty much all the time.

Another thing I've sometimes done is the reverse of what Mu is suggesting: I'll notice a thought at a point when there's already been a series of thoughts, and then trace it *back* through the chain to the beginning, insofar as I'm able to determine it. I'll even do this in daily life when I catch myself daydreaming or free-associating; in fact, I sense that doing it in daily life is good practice for dissociating from all such thoughts both in and out of meditation.

"It's like the conscious awareness of "my" thoughts is constantly lagging behind the thoughts themselves. "

Well, it actually is. It's established in cognitive science that there's a half-second gap between a sense experience and consciousness of it. Now, I know we're talking about thoughts, but I think the Buddha was on the money when he described thought as the sixth sense. So, to some degree, you'll never resolve that sense of "lag", although you will progressively become more aware of a difference in "feel" between a thought-sense-moment (before your mind turns it into a name and a picture) and consciousness. There is something subtle that precedes "you" "naming" the thought.

You've got all sorts of great suggestions already but here's another: note "intention". There's a kind of pre-echo of your "conscious" actions that you can become aware of. This is a big part of a lot of classic instructions on walking meditation: before you lift your foot to take a step, watch for the first stirring of "intention" to take that step.

Edited to add: as with everything, there's no need to become good at this, or to be able to do it all the time!

"Mark,

I would often do something where I would work mainly with visual thoughts. I would watch for some image to come up and then allow it to branch off to another image (often associated in some way).

So if I do it now "Freddy Krueger, a glove, a skull, metal pipes, steam, clouds, a mountain, a bird, a man, a pair of shoes, corn, etc."

Just one image arising after another."

Wow that's very cool. One exercise I tried today was to alternate attention in cycles between a breath, a sound, and a thought, in order to keep some kind of present-moment anchor going, and also hoping to somehow make thoughts appear more distinct as a sensory modality, so to speak. And one thing that stood out to me was that the thoughts I managed to make out were mostly images. I couldn't make them out as quickly as you , and often time it seemed to be some vague shape or another that I didn't really have a name for. Not much in the way of identifyable objects. But actually what struck me most about it, was that usually in everyday life, there is a tremendous amount of chatter, maybe even more so than images. But during this exercise, I wasn't able to make out that much chatter, but more visuals than I'm usually aware of.

"Hi Mark and welcome!

You are right about thoughts giving rise to and supporting the sense of 'I'. Investigating that process of becoming to its roots is pretty advanced and subtle stuff so don't be discouraged if you don't get it right away

In addition to the standard noting of thoughts that JLaurel suggested, you could also try binary noting silence / noise. If you catch yourself thinking, just note 'noise'. With practice you will be also able to notice some gaps in between the thoughts and then you note 'silence'. With time the gaps will become cleared and last longer and you will become quite familiar with your thought patterns. The nice thing about this technique is that it is so simple that you can do it pretty much all the time.

"

Like it, thanks. Sounds like a good start. Question, though. Is the act of labelling here a potential major pitfall? Because we're labelling with the sense of a self doing the labelling, and this would be because the thoughts that constitute the labels are themselves never objectified. They sound like our own voice, but really they're just thoughts in themselves. Right? As soon as I note "silence", I'm overlooking the noise of that label.

"Another thing I've sometimes done is the reverse of what Mu is suggesting: I'll notice a thought at a point when there's already been a series of thoughts, and then trace it *back* through the chain to the beginning, insofar as I'm able to determine it. I'll even do this in daily life when I catch myself daydreaming or free-associating; in fact, I sense that doing it in daily life is good practice for dissociating from all such thoughts both in and out of meditation. "

Yeah this is often what my practice amounts to, insofar as it concerns observing thoughts, and that's because I don't seem to be able to watch thoughts arise, I only seem to be barely aware of some kind of afterglow, and then I find myself doing the replay trick in order to fool myself into thinking I had a clear view of the original . Now the replay is already objectified from the moment it arises, because that's what gives the sense of a self (subject) doing the replaying (object). I think. But this is of course not equivalent to pulling the original chain of thought back out of history into the present moment and objectifying them after the fact. And also, the replay appears to me more like a forged reconstruction of the original. It often seems to me for example that words flash by that I can barely make out, and then I fashion them into a coherent sentence (or scene) in proper sequence, and pretend that was what the actual thought looked like.

"Well, it actually is. It's established in cognitive science that there's a half-second gap between a sense experience and consciousness of it. Now, I know we're talking about thoughts, but I think the Buddha was on the money when he described thought as the sixth sense. So, to some degree, you'll never resolve that sense of "lag", although you will progressively become more aware of a difference in "feel" between a thought-sense-moment (before your mind turns it into a name and a picture) and consciousness. There is something subtle that precedes "you" "naming" the thought.

You've got all sorts of great suggestions already but here's another: note "intention". There's a kind of pre-echo of your "conscious" actions that you can become aware of. This is a big part of a lot of classic instructions on walking meditation: before you lift your foot to take a step, watch for the first stirring of "intention" to take that step.

Edited to add: as with everything, there's no need to become good at this, or to be able to do it all the time! "

Thanks, great idea. I remember having actually observed intention preceding action at some time. I've been trying to do it again these days, but I can't seem to see it now. I'm sure it will come back though. As for the mind as a sense organ, yeah I like that idea a lot as well, and I'm trying to get into the "seeing" of thoughts in that way as I described in an earlier post just now. Because there is something eerily ephemeral about them that I find makes it very difficult to make them out with any clarity.

"Question, though. Is the act of labelling here a potential major pitfall? Because we're labelling with the sense of a self doing the labelling, and this would be because the thoughts that constitute the labels are themselves never objectified.

- MarkMeijer"

If the labelling 'you' were the same 'you' who is doing the thinking, then it would be a problem. As it turns out, that is not the case. The real 'you' is an infinite field of knowing present at every moment regardless of thoughts that are arising and passing on their own. And this is not a concept, but a fact that you will see for yourself when you become aware of the system behind the scenes. Becoming aware of that field of knowing or the Essential Nature of the Mind is called 3rd gear or Mahamudra in Kenneth's teachings and that is when your practice really takes off.

"If the labelling 'you' were the same 'you' who is doing the thinking, then it would be a problem. As it turns out, that is not the case. The real 'you' is an infinite field of knowing present at every moment regardless of thoughts that are arising and passing on their own. And this is not a concept, but a fact that you will see for yourself when you become aware of the system behind the scenes. Becoming aware of that field of knowing or the Essential Nature of the Mind is called 3rd gear or Mahamudra in Kenneth's teachings and that is when your practice really takes off.

"

You're still putting "you" in quotes when equating it to that field of knowing. Is there any specific reason why you chose to equate that field of knowing with some concept of "you", with the implication of a personal agency or ownership, instead of considering that field of knowing to simply be there doing its own thing as part of the whole of reality, just like everything else?

A common note for me is something along the lines of "remembering imagining thought" or "remembering planning thought."
I'll use this whenever I realize that I'm recalling that, a second or two ago, I had been caught in an imagining thought or a planning thought that has already come and gone. I seem to be able to disidentify from the remembering of the thought right there in the moment. Don't know if that makes any sense.

"You're still putting "you" in quotes when equating it to that field of knowing. Is there any specific reason why you chose to equate that field of knowing with some concept of "you", with the implication of a personal agency or ownership, instead of considering that field of knowing to simply be there doing its own thing as part of the whole of reality, just like everything else?"

However one might try, the sense of "I" is always inferred from some other phenomena and never seen directly simply because it does not exist. That is the reason I used the the quotation marks

"However one might try, the sense of "I" is always inferred from some other phenomena and never seen directly simply because it does not exist. That is the reason I used the the quotation marks "

Yeah I understand why you used the quotation marks, I was just wondering why you used the word: you, at all. Do you mean to say that the sense of "I" is sometimes inferred from that field of knowing in your case?

"Yeah I understand why you used the quotation marks, I was just wondering why you used the word: you, at all. Do you mean to say that the sense of "I" is sometimes inferred from that field of knowing in your case?"

You are right Mark; 'you' is not the right word in this context. However, in a way that choice of words described very well my own development through the early stages. Even though phenomena after phenomena turned out to be empty of 'me' I still believed in the illusion and held to the idea that there must be some other 'me' that I have not discovered yet, who is watching the show.

This habit seems to die hard. For the past four weeks I have been unable to find any sense of 'me', but still there is some mechanism in operation that is sometimes trying to construct this idea from seemingly unrelated sensations and thoughts.