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For me, meditation started a fundamental shift in how I think about free will, and oddly nobody I've mentioned it to in real life has felt this. I used to feel

by cromd 5y ago

For me, meditation started a fundamental shift in how I think about free will, and oddly nobody I've mentioned it to in real life has felt this. I used to feel very in-control of my own mind, but after intentionally sitting and monitoring for thoughts, labeling those thoughts, etc, I became sensitive to how thoughts can really come out of nowhere. You can't predict what you will think next. That strikes a little deeper than a nature/nurture argument where you might say "oh, I just behave a certain way I guess, its in my genes". You start to wonder if you're just being forced to watch the movie that is your own life. I personally feel like my life is a mostly-good movie, and there's reason to predict it will continue that way, but for many people, they're stuck in a bad movie. Some people may feel imprisoned by that. But not feeling in control can also be liberating, depending how you look at it. So I definitely agree that it's a double edged sword, or that YMMV. (Overall, I've enjoyed meditation, and I try to do it about once a week, just to remind myself that there's another mode of thinking that's available to me.)

leobg 5y ago
"You are not responsible for your own thinking." B.F. Skinner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDmRc8-pyU&t=793s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDmRc8-pyU&t=793s
leobg 5y ago
Carl Jung used to compare thoughts with deer in a forest: If you sit quietly and observe, you will notice that they will come and go all on their own.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
There are levels to meditation. Deep down, everything you know to be real is a thought in your head. The joy of being close to someone. Pain and suffering. Ultimately, only NULL is kind of real, and even that representation is too much of something to really be real.
iamacyborg 5y ago
I think you’d enjoy reading Selfie by William Storr. It talks a lot about the left brain observer and various experiments that have observed what you’re talking about.
HPsquared 5y ago
There's the idea that the world is a simulation. I believe it is, but not in the "Matrix" kind of way - more that everything you perceive and experience is a "model" of the outside world that your brain has constructed from the various input signals. You only see a partial reconstruction, a projection of the outside world, literally Plato's cave (the cave being the skull). Sometimes things come in from outside (what you see etc) but most activity is internal.
- barrenko 5y ago
  The ida that the brain models something "outside" is just another thought.
beowulfey 5y ago
Your thoughts are nothing more than the emerging patterns of neuronal activity formed by semi-stochastic responses of your constantly shifting brain connectivity. In many ways, they are random.
Aeolun 5y ago
I mean, in a sense you are locked into what you are going to do anyway. Even if you think you have a choice, there’s always only one action you will actually take. That kind of makes me sad, because I’d branch down a lot of paths if I could, but it doesn’t exactly disturb me. What waits at the end of that path, now that disturbs me.
Tetilio 5y ago
I'm not meditating and had the same thought/expiernce/revelation. My direct thought (me) what I feel is me, is trying to influence the rest of me and it just not always work. One theory is, that you are reading/expierincing what already happened (like subseconds ago) and you can only try to influence the upcoming behavior of your whole system.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
Likewise, I've found my exploration of meditation and similar things has left me feeling less in control (in some ways, at least), less "me", and much less of what I expected from the outset. I suppose I expected the inverse, in a way... To feel more grounded, connected, and in touch with myself. Instead it seems I've only found that myself isn't what I thought it was. I suppose the most profound aspect is realizing that you aren't who or what you thought you were. Your free will is a facade, and it can feel unsettling. I try to see the silver linings, like you mentioned. The first time I heard someone nail this on the head after quite a long time of sensing it, but not understanding it, was Sam Harris. I know many others have talked about this phenomenon and perhaps they've done it better, but he helped me understand it and feel better about it quite a lot. It was very unexpected, too – until that point, I'd never really listened to him. He advocates a lot for forgiving others on account of this lack of free will, which I really like. It's maybe the brightest silver lining. I find it easier than ever in my life to let things be when it comes to external matters. I'm a lot more compassionate towards people I may have only been bothered by in the past. It's easy to get into a headspace in which I see myself in people, and recognize how I never intend to be wrong, or bad, or whatever – and that's likely no different for them. I sometimes miss living in the facade. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I don't know who or what I am anymore. It was nice not having to consider it before. Sometimes I can't help thinking about the cellular activity and electrical signals in my body, apparently generating whatever this life is, whatever I am. It can interfere with every day life even. It can be sort of disassociating almost. I think a significant challenge going into my 40s will be finding a way to not care about these things and just let them be, and to focus on making the most of things.
- chevman 5y ago
  This type of experience was exactly what I experienced my first few LSD trips. It's a type of disassociation or ego death, where you really feel deeply the experience of observing yourself, your thoughts, from a seemingly separate viewpoint. It made me question reality in a way I hadn't before. Is all of this pre-determined? Is it arbitrary? Is it random? Is there an underlying meaning here we should recognize? I came to believe that love, connection, existing itself, were all somehow significant. Hard to say if this is real, or just part of the pattern :)
srcreigh 5y ago
In my opinion, we both have free will and our thoughts don't always come from us. Some things we see with our eyes are from our own movements, others are from externalities. I believe thoughts are the same but neither contradicts free will.
- argentinian 5y ago
  How do you define that "us", the self?
  - srcreigh 5y ago
    I believe in individuality; we aren't all one, other people exist, etc. Understanding oneself is the whole point of one's life so it can't really be defined. Knowledge is more than definitions. The self is more than the body and the mind at least. Those are my personal beliefs anyways.
    - argentinian 5y ago
      As long as they work for you, it's ok.
DennisP 5y ago
The thoughts do come up out of nowhere, unpredictably. But with practice, I can choose whether to inhabit them, or simply note them with quiet amusement and let them pass by. I can also pick something to concentrate on, and stay mostly focused on that, while those extra little thoughts just flutter in the background. This all seems to me like an enhancement of free will. (Meditating almost daily.)
- sooheon 5y ago
  > with practice, I can choose whether to inhabit them, or simply note them with quiet amusement and let them pass by. I can also pick something to concentrate on, and stay mostly focused on that, while those extra little thoughts just flutter in the background. The next level is when you realize that these choices of how to respond, too, arise and resolve themselves spontaneously.
- cromd 5y ago
  I do get these feelings of control, so I can't say I feel like a victim of my thoughts - "let them pass by", as you say, is mostly what I feel. But I think for some people, there's a question like: "I thought I was the originator of many my out-of-the-blue thoughts, and I found out that's not true. Am I actually the originator of the thoughts at the next level up?". I think some people who have never meditated, while they admit to having thoughts just hit them randomly sometimes, they'll nonetheless feel that many of their truly out-of-the-blue thoughts were conscious choices to switch gears or pull on an interesting thread. A meditator might label the same low-level thought as "random", but a non-meditator would say "I did that". Can a meditator similarly be fooled, on a different level?
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    You are never entirely without external input. Even if you try to ignore all the stimulation you receive it’ll still have an effect on random thoughts popping into your head.
  - mi3law 5y ago
    Properly read, Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic is a response to the question you've articulated. Kant noted as much, and when not resolved with dualism (which flowed from Plato through Descartes to the modern day), this allegory offers powerful insights. I love these topics, have been swimming in them recently, so happy to talk more, just email me (info in profile).
julienb_sea 5y ago
We don't exhibit complete control over our thoughts, that is provably impossible and anecdotally obvious when reflecting on errant thoughts we have experienced. Free will is about behavior, not thoughts. Our free will is demonstrated by our ability to consciously choose whether and how to act when presented with thoughts and emotions.
- sooheon 5y ago
  > Our free will is demonstrated by our ability to consciously choose whether and how to act when presented with thoughts and emotions. This is nonsensical, because choice is a thought before it is an action, and we accept that we do not control the comings and goings of our own thoughts.
- sparks1970 5y ago
  Anyone who has had a panic attack or suffered from a social anxiety will tell you that you cannot always choose behaviour. Sometimes you simply cannot get your body to do what you will it to.
- argentinian 5y ago
  Ha, it's like Hume said. If your actions and thoughts depend on past events and biological and environmental stimulus, they are not free, they are conditioned, they are a reaction to past experience. And the alternative would be random actions, and random is not free, it's random.
  - Flankk 5y ago
    Color, the scent of a flower, music, a delicious meal, beauty, struggle, love, meaning, free will. These things only exist in your mind. If objective reality exists at all, it is of vanishingly small importance.
  - cromd 5y ago
    That makes a good distinction. Is he taking one side or the other though? Seems to me like deterministic != free, and random also != free. So maybe nothing is free?
mbg721 5y ago
Imo, recognizing that there are some uncontrollable thoughts is part of the general trend of acknowledging the close connection of mental health to physical health. The existence of "lizard" characteristics to the brain doesn't invalidate free will, but they're so rarely pointed out that it's useful to notice them.
- sooheon 5y ago
  There is no distinction between "lizard" and non-lizard thoughts. Every that that arises in your brain originates with processes far below the level of consciousness, you don't have control over the upstream causes that are in motion long before you are aware of any conscious thought.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Even accepting that deterministic framework, I think there's still a distinction in that the lizard-thoughts are missing some metadata that comes with the thoughts we recognize as conscious.
argentinian 5y ago
Do you consider that there's a "you", a self, apart from what you call your life?
- cromd 5y ago
  (Note: I'm not sure if you're suggesting there is a "you" or not.) While I'm of course a mass of stuff that feels and thinks, I really do feel like I'm watching a pleasant movie filmed through my eyeballs. I feel like that about half the time. The other half, I forget, and live "normally". I also don't feel like I'm part of some interconnected world organism or anything like that. To the ~5 people I've described that to, they mostly show some kind of alarm, like they didn't realize I held such dangerous views. I guess in some people the same worldview might manifest as a sociopath personality that excuses reckless behavior, or a person with no drive that wastes their days away. In my case, I'm hypersensitive about harming people, I'm fairly risk averse, and I'm borderline obsessed with keeping high "productivity". I often tell myself I'm smart and that I deserve my very comfortable life, but I also have to wonder if something about my brain chemistry or environment makes me enjoy reading HN and coding all day, while others hate that. So I do find the narrative shifts from "I accomplished X because I decided to" and becomes "I spent time on X, and I'm glad that happened, it was fun, and I'm glad I find that fun". I hope I'm not getting too off topic given the original article. Self/consciousness/free-will debates can go on forever, so my ideal outcome is somebody says "yeah, that is pretty weird, pretty magical, oh well!". But more often it's met with "ah, don't be so negative, you can control yourself, if you try!".
  - bambataa 5y ago
    > I often tell myself I'm smart and that I deserve my very comfortable life, but I also have to wonder if something about my brain chemistry or environment makes me enjoy reading HN and coding all day, while others hate that. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that you live in an environment that plays to your strengths, and that it’s somewhat arbitrary. I have an aptitude for academic study and have always simply enjoyed it. Happily, I live in a society that rewards that. I’m also short, left handed and wear glasses. I would have fared less well in pre-industrial times. I’m extremely fortunate to have been born when and where I was.
greggman3 5y ago
Where would they come from in some alternate reality? What would the difference in your perception be if you weren't just watching a movie of your own life but where actually in charge of your thoughts? It's hard for me to imagine it being any different.
- cromd 5y ago
  (It sounds like you're saying you largely also view life as happening to you, but maybe I'm wrong). There's maybe no point in even making a distinction between life-as-movie and life-as-commander, especially if people aren't choosing the camp they fall in! I would posit there are correlations like "people who view life as something that happens to them tend to enjoy it more, when their economic and political circumstances are good, and enjoy it less when their circumstances are bad". And "people who view themselves as controlling their life enjoy life in a wider variety of conditions". I think some call this internal/external locus of control (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) You could probably extend those correlations to things like "societies with an overall internal locus of control tend to support the death penalty more", or "societies with an external locus of control tend to believe in magic more". Whether or not these are useful correlations, I don't know ;)
bamboozled 5y ago
From my own practice and what I've read / been taught, it's wrong to be labeling the thoughts, your either simply paying attention to raw experience or you're not. Once you start telling yourself it's good (or bad), you're not longer just an observer you're a participant. By wrong I don't mean to say you're doing anything wrong, but it's not in the spirit of objective mindful meditation. From my own practice, it's help me to accept the good and bad times, or what I'd usually think of good and bad, as more of a movie and put the bad times in a little more perspective.
- burrows 5y ago
  OP might be referring to value neutral labels like “thinking”, “feeling”, “vibration”, “buzzing”, etc.
- cromd 5y ago
  It's something like what burrows is saying. I don't know if I'm implementing it as intended, but I first heard of "labeling" when reading The Mind Illuminated by John Yates. It seemed silly/trivial at first, but I later started just trying to categorize my thoughts. I found that there were actually surprisingly few buckets that my idle thoughts fell into. I'd say that when I'm meditating, 90% of my out-of-the-blue thoughts fall into categories like: - A: seeking out little acquisitions (life/work hacks, low hanging fruit, new tech skills I could tackle today to improve my life) - B: chores I need to do and social debts - C: money, and whether I have enough - D: what will the future be like? - E: food, sex, safety - F: "this is nice, I'm not thinking of much" I don't feel like these are good or bad thoughts, since they all have their time and place. But I do expect/hope that as the session progresses, more and more time is spent in state F. I think one benefit of these labels is that instead of trying to re-articulate what you're thinking every time, you just drop it into buckets A-F (or whatever your personal buckets are). Making that task lightweight keeps me from overanalyzing the thought, at the risk of maybe oversimplifying my thought landscape.
apatters 5y ago
I like to think of it this way: - Actions arise from thoughts - We have an executive center in our prefrontal cortex which we use to create thoughts and compel the actions we want, it maps pretty closely to most people's ideas of consciousness, free will etc. - We also have other parts of our brain which have their own agendas and are constantly creating thoughts of varying intensity - Our executive center can mediate or override those impulses with some level of success, less than 100%. We can increase or decrease that success rate over time, but how to do so is only partially understood. Unfortunately, factors like psychiatric disorders can decrease this success rate dramatically. - Meditation can influence the success rate too. Mostly for the better but it can go both ways. That's not always its purpose and it's perhaps less effective than more modern techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy. I think this is probably a bit oversimplified but not too far from where the science is.
thenoblesunfish 5y ago
My experience might be similar in a way, in that when I started meditating I became aware in a more direct way of how self-referential my mind was. It does things, but then it also does things that can observe it doing things. That is both interesting and liberating, in that there are processes I can't control (which I think aligns with your feeling of lack of free will), but also processes which I can can control. It is quite comforting to feel like I'm not trapped on a single level of thought, which is sometimes uncontrollable.

by cromd 5y ago

leobg 5y ago

"You are not responsible for your own thinking." B.F. Skinner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDmRc8-pyU&t=793s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDmRc8-pyU&t=793s

leobg 5y ago

Carl Jung used to compare thoughts with deer in a forest: If you sit quietly and observe, you will notice that they will come and go all on their own.

eurasiantiger 5y ago

There are levels to meditation. Deep down, everything you know to be real is a thought in your head. The joy of being close to someone. Pain and suffering. Ultimately, only NULL is kind of real, and even that representation is too much of something to really be real.

iamacyborg 5y ago

I think you’d enjoy reading Selfie by William Storr. It talks a lot about the left brain observer and various experiments that have observed what you’re talking about.

HPsquared 5y ago

There's the idea that the world is a simulation. I believe it is, but not in the "Matrix" kind of way - more that everything you perceive and experience is a "model" of the outside world that your brain has constructed from the various input signals. You only see a partial reconstruction, a projection of the outside world, literally Plato's cave (the cave being the skull). Sometimes things come in from outside (what you see etc) but most activity is internal.

barrenko 5y ago
The ida that the brain models something "outside" is just another thought.

beowulfey 5y ago

Your thoughts are nothing more than the emerging patterns of neuronal activity formed by semi-stochastic responses of your constantly shifting brain connectivity. In many ways, they are random.

Aeolun 5y ago

I mean, in a sense you are locked into what you are going to do anyway. Even if you think you have a choice, there’s always only one action you will actually take. That kind of makes me sad, because I’d branch down a lot of paths if I could, but it doesn’t exactly disturb me. What waits at the end of that path, now that disturbs me.

Tetilio 5y ago

I'm not meditating and had the same thought/expiernce/revelation. My direct thought (me) what I feel is me, is trying to influence the rest of me and it just not always work. One theory is, that you are reading/expierincing what already happened (like subseconds ago) and you can only try to influence the upcoming behavior of your whole system.

steve_adams_86 5y ago

Likewise, I've found my exploration of meditation and similar things has left me feeling less in control (in some ways, at least), less "me", and much less of what I expected from the outset. I suppose I expected the inverse, in a way... To feel more grounded, connected, and in touch with myself. Instead it seems I've only found that myself isn't what I thought it was. I suppose the most profound aspect is realizing that you aren't who or what you thought you were. Your free will is a facade, and it can feel unsettling. I try to see the silver linings, like you mentioned. The first time I heard someone nail this on the head after quite a long time of sensing it, but not understanding it, was Sam Harris. I know many others have talked about this phenomenon and perhaps they've done it better, but he helped me understand it and feel better about it quite a lot. It was very unexpected, too – until that point, I'd never really listened to him. He advocates a lot for forgiving others on account of this lack of free will, which I really like. It's maybe the brightest silver lining. I find it easier than ever in my life to let things be when it comes to external matters. I'm a lot more compassionate towards people I may have only been bothered by in the past. It's easy to get into a headspace in which I see myself in people, and recognize how I never intend to be wrong, or bad, or whatever – and that's likely no different for them. I sometimes miss living in the facade. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I don't know who or what I am anymore. It was nice not having to consider it before. Sometimes I can't help thinking about the cellular activity and electrical signals in my body, apparently generating whatever this life is, whatever I am. It can interfere with every day life even. It can be sort of disassociating almost. I think a significant challenge going into my 40s will be finding a way to not care about these things and just let them be, and to focus on making the most of things.

chevman 5y ago
This type of experience was exactly what I experienced my first few LSD trips. It's a type of disassociation or ego death, where you really feel deeply the experience of observing yourself, your thoughts, from a seemingly separate viewpoint. It made me question reality in a way I hadn't before. Is all of this pre-determined? Is it arbitrary? Is it random? Is there an underlying meaning here we should recognize? I came to believe that love, connection, existing itself, were all somehow significant. Hard to say if this is real, or just part of the pattern :)

srcreigh 5y ago

In my opinion, we both have free will and our thoughts don't always come from us. Some things we see with our eyes are from our own movements, others are from externalities. I believe thoughts are the same but neither contradicts free will.

argentinian 5y ago
How do you define that "us", the self?
- srcreigh 5y ago
  I believe in individuality; we aren't all one, other people exist, etc. Understanding oneself is the whole point of one's life so it can't really be defined. Knowledge is more than definitions. The self is more than the body and the mind at least. Those are my personal beliefs anyways.
  - argentinian 5y ago
    As long as they work for you, it's ok.

DennisP 5y ago

The thoughts do come up out of nowhere, unpredictably. But with practice, I can choose whether to inhabit them, or simply note them with quiet amusement and let them pass by. I can also pick something to concentrate on, and stay mostly focused on that, while those extra little thoughts just flutter in the background. This all seems to me like an enhancement of free will. (Meditating almost daily.)

sooheon 5y ago
> with practice, I can choose whether to inhabit them, or simply note them with quiet amusement and let them pass by. I can also pick something to concentrate on, and stay mostly focused on that, while those extra little thoughts just flutter in the background. The next level is when you realize that these choices of how to respond, too, arise and resolve themselves spontaneously.
cromd 5y ago
I do get these feelings of control, so I can't say I feel like a victim of my thoughts - "let them pass by", as you say, is mostly what I feel. But I think for some people, there's a question like: "I thought I was the originator of many my out-of-the-blue thoughts, and I found out that's not true. Am I actually the originator of the thoughts at the next level up?". I think some people who have never meditated, while they admit to having thoughts just hit them randomly sometimes, they'll nonetheless feel that many of their truly out-of-the-blue thoughts were conscious choices to switch gears or pull on an interesting thread. A meditator might label the same low-level thought as "random", but a non-meditator would say "I did that". Can a meditator similarly be fooled, on a different level?
- Aeolun 5y ago
  You are never entirely without external input. Even if you try to ignore all the stimulation you receive it’ll still have an effect on random thoughts popping into your head.
- mi3law 5y ago
  Properly read, Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic is a response to the question you've articulated. Kant noted as much, and when not resolved with dualism (which flowed from Plato through Descartes to the modern day), this allegory offers powerful insights. I love these topics, have been swimming in them recently, so happy to talk more, just email me (info in profile).

julienb_sea 5y ago

We don't exhibit complete control over our thoughts, that is provably impossible and anecdotally obvious when reflecting on errant thoughts we have experienced. Free will is about behavior, not thoughts. Our free will is demonstrated by our ability to consciously choose whether and how to act when presented with thoughts and emotions.

sooheon 5y ago
> Our free will is demonstrated by our ability to consciously choose whether and how to act when presented with thoughts and emotions. This is nonsensical, because choice is a thought before it is an action, and we accept that we do not control the comings and goings of our own thoughts.
sparks1970 5y ago
Anyone who has had a panic attack or suffered from a social anxiety will tell you that you cannot always choose behaviour. Sometimes you simply cannot get your body to do what you will it to.
argentinian 5y ago
Ha, it's like Hume said. If your actions and thoughts depend on past events and biological and environmental stimulus, they are not free, they are conditioned, they are a reaction to past experience. And the alternative would be random actions, and random is not free, it's random.
- Flankk 5y ago
  Color, the scent of a flower, music, a delicious meal, beauty, struggle, love, meaning, free will. These things only exist in your mind. If objective reality exists at all, it is of vanishingly small importance.
- cromd 5y ago
  That makes a good distinction. Is he taking one side or the other though? Seems to me like deterministic != free, and random also != free. So maybe nothing is free?

mbg721 5y ago

Imo, recognizing that there are some uncontrollable thoughts is part of the general trend of acknowledging the close connection of mental health to physical health. The existence of "lizard" characteristics to the brain doesn't invalidate free will, but they're so rarely pointed out that it's useful to notice them.

sooheon 5y ago
There is no distinction between "lizard" and non-lizard thoughts. Every that that arises in your brain originates with processes far below the level of consciousness, you don't have control over the upstream causes that are in motion long before you are aware of any conscious thought.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Even accepting that deterministic framework, I think there's still a distinction in that the lizard-thoughts are missing some metadata that comes with the thoughts we recognize as conscious.

argentinian 5y ago

Do you consider that there's a "you", a self, apart from what you call your life?

cromd 5y ago
(Note: I'm not sure if you're suggesting there is a "you" or not.) While I'm of course a mass of stuff that feels and thinks, I really do feel like I'm watching a pleasant movie filmed through my eyeballs. I feel like that about half the time. The other half, I forget, and live "normally". I also don't feel like I'm part of some interconnected world organism or anything like that. To the ~5 people I've described that to, they mostly show some kind of alarm, like they didn't realize I held such dangerous views. I guess in some people the same worldview might manifest as a sociopath personality that excuses reckless behavior, or a person with no drive that wastes their days away. In my case, I'm hypersensitive about harming people, I'm fairly risk averse, and I'm borderline obsessed with keeping high "productivity". I often tell myself I'm smart and that I deserve my very comfortable life, but I also have to wonder if something about my brain chemistry or environment makes me enjoy reading HN and coding all day, while others hate that. So I do find the narrative shifts from "I accomplished X because I decided to" and becomes "I spent time on X, and I'm glad that happened, it was fun, and I'm glad I find that fun". I hope I'm not getting too off topic given the original article. Self/consciousness/free-will debates can go on forever, so my ideal outcome is somebody says "yeah, that is pretty weird, pretty magical, oh well!". But more often it's met with "ah, don't be so negative, you can control yourself, if you try!".
- bambataa 5y ago
  > I often tell myself I'm smart and that I deserve my very comfortable life, but I also have to wonder if something about my brain chemistry or environment makes me enjoy reading HN and coding all day, while others hate that. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that you live in an environment that plays to your strengths, and that it’s somewhat arbitrary. I have an aptitude for academic study and have always simply enjoyed it. Happily, I live in a society that rewards that. I’m also short, left handed and wear glasses. I would have fared less well in pre-industrial times. I’m extremely fortunate to have been born when and where I was.

greggman3 5y ago

Where would they come from in some alternate reality? What would the difference in your perception be if you weren't just watching a movie of your own life but where actually in charge of your thoughts? It's hard for me to imagine it being any different.

cromd 5y ago
(It sounds like you're saying you largely also view life as happening to you, but maybe I'm wrong). There's maybe no point in even making a distinction between life-as-movie and life-as-commander, especially if people aren't choosing the camp they fall in! I would posit there are correlations like "people who view life as something that happens to them tend to enjoy it more, when their economic and political circumstances are good, and enjoy it less when their circumstances are bad". And "people who view themselves as controlling their life enjoy life in a wider variety of conditions". I think some call this internal/external locus of control (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) You could probably extend those correlations to things like "societies with an overall internal locus of control tend to support the death penalty more", or "societies with an external locus of control tend to believe in magic more". Whether or not these are useful correlations, I don't know ;)

bamboozled 5y ago

From my own practice and what I've read / been taught, it's wrong to be labeling the thoughts, your either simply paying attention to raw experience or you're not. Once you start telling yourself it's good (or bad), you're not longer just an observer you're a participant. By wrong I don't mean to say you're doing anything wrong, but it's not in the spirit of objective mindful meditation. From my own practice, it's help me to accept the good and bad times, or what I'd usually think of good and bad, as more of a movie and put the bad times in a little more perspective.

burrows 5y ago
OP might be referring to value neutral labels like “thinking”, “feeling”, “vibration”, “buzzing”, etc.
cromd 5y ago
It's something like what burrows is saying. I don't know if I'm implementing it as intended, but I first heard of "labeling" when reading The Mind Illuminated by John Yates. It seemed silly/trivial at first, but I later started just trying to categorize my thoughts. I found that there were actually surprisingly few buckets that my idle thoughts fell into. I'd say that when I'm meditating, 90% of my out-of-the-blue thoughts fall into categories like: - A: seeking out little acquisitions (life/work hacks, low hanging fruit, new tech skills I could tackle today to improve my life) - B: chores I need to do and social debts - C: money, and whether I have enough - D: what will the future be like? - E: food, sex, safety - F: "this is nice, I'm not thinking of much" I don't feel like these are good or bad thoughts, since they all have their time and place. But I do expect/hope that as the session progresses, more and more time is spent in state F. I think one benefit of these labels is that instead of trying to re-articulate what you're thinking every time, you just drop it into buckets A-F (or whatever your personal buckets are). Making that task lightweight keeps me from overanalyzing the thought, at the risk of maybe oversimplifying my thought landscape.

apatters 5y ago

I like to think of it this way: - Actions arise from thoughts - We have an executive center in our prefrontal cortex which we use to create thoughts and compel the actions we want, it maps pretty closely to most people's ideas of consciousness, free will etc. - We also have other parts of our brain which have their own agendas and are constantly creating thoughts of varying intensity - Our executive center can mediate or override those impulses with some level of success, less than 100%. We can increase or decrease that success rate over time, but how to do so is only partially understood. Unfortunately, factors like psychiatric disorders can decrease this success rate dramatically. - Meditation can influence the success rate too. Mostly for the better but it can go both ways. That's not always its purpose and it's perhaps less effective than more modern techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy. I think this is probably a bit oversimplified but not too far from where the science is.

thenoblesunfish 5y ago

My experience might be similar in a way, in that when I started meditating I became aware in a more direct way of how self-referential my mind was. It does things, but then it also does things that can observe it doing things. That is both interesting and liberating, in that there are processes I can't control (which I think aligns with your feeling of lack of free will), but also processes which I can can control. It is quite comforting to feel like I'm not trapped on a single level of thought, which is sometimes uncontrollable.