Lost and found ... in thought

Ever find yourself lost in wonderment - thinking deeply about a topic or daydreaming yourself away to some other place? Maybe your asking yourself deep questions like, "what is the meaning of life?" or "why am I here?" Maybe you replaying the morning events or simply thinking about what you're going to have for dinner. These thoughts are what many call mind chatter. They tend to run on autopilot; driven by a sequence of events (internal and external) that create a thought stream leading to internal dialogue, physical sensations and emotions followed by external responses, actions and behavior. As we know some of these internal and external manifestations are pleasant while others are far from what we want. Take for example hunger. You're sitting at your desk just before lunch and your stomach begins to growl. You'll likely have a stream of thoughts, images and sensations that will soon follow. One stream of thought might create a sense of urgency to eat. This pattern may then create a sequence of internal responses that create external responses such as irritability, anxiousness, etc. Why? Because we're focussed on what we don't want - to be hungry! On the other hand your stomach may growl in the same way and you may go in another direction with your response. This time when you feel the hunger pangs arrive it reminds you that your lunch break is drawing near. You get excited because it reminds you that you were meeting friends for lunch, packed your lunch to save money and reward yourself with something big or pay down debt; maybe you're just looking forward to biting into a burger. The internal stimulus was the same in both situations - your stomach growled to let you know you were hungry. However the first thought process focussed on what you didn't want (to be hungry) while creating responses that were uncomfortable. The second thought process focussed on what you did want (to enjoy what you wanted to do with your hunger) creating excitement.

There's a natural tendency to break things into categories such as good and bad. This is sometimes called dualistic thinking. Dualistic thinking is how most of us operate on autopilot. And unfortunately the autopilot for most of us is rather limiting and inhibits our neutral mind.

In my next post I'll discuss dualistic thinking and the autopilot in greater detail.

Wishing you joy,
J