“You are right, Watson,” said he. “It does seem a most preposterous way of settling a dispute.”
“Most preposterous!” I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement"
- Adventures of the Cardboard Box
Sherlock Holmes might have been able to predict the thoughts of Dr. Watson but I have found out that predicting my own thoughts is enough of a challenge for me.
I learnt about the practice of observing thoughts from some meditation app. Whenever I can, I try to follow the breadcrumbs of my thoughts to see where they they lead. It’s a lot of fun. To do this kind of meditation I do not even have to be silent with my eyes closed. I can just do it anytime, anywhere I want. Every once in a while I try to take the thought that is currently in my head and try to figure out how my mind got there.
It is embarrassing to discover how fickle and tenuous connections in the mind are, how fragile the bridges are that the mind uses to cross from one thought to another.
I am very inquisitive by nature and it is surprising to me that I did not start doing this by myself and needed an app to tell me about it. I guess, this explains why meditation is non-trivial.
This quarantine has forced me to step back and look at things more closely and carefully, what else are you going to do with all this time? Some of things I am finding are not very flattering and encouraging. I do not want to sound clichéd and trite but it almost feels like we have been sleep walking all these years and are now being forced to wake up.
When I started observing my thoughts I realized three things:
- By default, my mind is filled with trash. It’s like a drug-addled hamster running in a maze. I wonder why this is the case? Why does the mind need to constantly think?
- This is by no means a fault of the mind. In fact, as soon as I you become aware that this is happening the mind calms down i.e. the mind is unaware of its own clutter.
- If you trace back your thoughts enough, they often are related to external triggers, like being in a certain place, or checking your email or phone.
Thinking about random things is great, it’s a part of the creative process that generates ideas. But I also think that much of this “creative thinking” happens subconsciously. That’s why many ideas pop up when you least expect them; on waking up, or after a hot shower. The clutter in your conscious mind might be stifling the subconscious thinking mind and making you less receptive to it. Or perhaps it is helping your subconscious mind to think. I do not know which one it.
I have never found the end goal to be a good motivator for anything. The process itself needs to be interesting and challenging enough for me to keep doing it. When it comes to observing my thoughts, it is both. I am going to keep doing this and see if it leads to some positive or negative change.