internal dialogue – Traou an Dour

Musings, Personal Development, Questions

What if Anything is Beyond Your Ken?

If there was/is anything beyond your ken you would not know about it, because by definition it is beyond your ken, your ability to cognize and assimilate.

Perhaps a better question is “where does my ken end? Am I aware of the step function change from within my ken to beyond my ken?”

Can you expand the boundaries of this ken? Yes.

Not so long ago someone asserted to me that the guardians of the race do not exist and by extension there is no spiritual hierarchy. He was always a bit of a gobshite prone to being adamant and making assertions beyond his ken.

There are a lot of people like him. If something is beyond their ken then it cannot, must not exit. They do not know where their ken ends yet are prone to soap box.

If you work in higher education as I once did, part of your job is to extend the ken of young people and from time to time to mess a little with their heads. An undergraduate level only goes so far, nuance and depth are found after a few more years. Most people who do an undergraduate degree forget the bulk of it in a few years.

I am married to a non-scientist and although she can manage well in the world, she lacks a physics understanding. This physics understanding has improved. When I say let gravitational potential help us shift this downstairs, she knows it means let it go, let it fall.

People by and large are unaware about their lack of understanding.

Say for example you are shit hot at maths and quantum optics, it does not mean that you have the faintest notion of the interpersonal dynamics of “Love Island” or the market at Electric Avenue in Brixton. Your ken of humanity might end at the door of the Physics department. Under certain circumstances your lack of ken could be dangerous for you. I had an ongoing banter with the weed dealers at the bus stop in Brixton. They asked me if I was a copper, because of my short hair, no. It was our little joke. They knew my face and I theirs. I was safe.

Unless you can turn off your internal dialogue at will, your ken does not extend to quiet mind, much less to the point before thought. You may be a smart cookie, but you have never known mental silence, it is beyond your ken.

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Do you know where your ken ends?

When your ken ends do you have the humility to act accordingly?

Or in you self-diagnosed omniscience is the end of personal ken a notion which you cannot countenance, after all you are an omniscient being are you not?

Personal Development, Towards Freedom

Towards Freedom – Talking

Previously I have held up two ideas; a growing sense of freedom and a growing equanimity or balance. If for whatever reason you must have goals, then these two are not so bad. Moreover, they are personal and do not directly impinge on any other being, of course they will impinge indirectly because people like dependency and may not like your growing independence. These “goals” have no power over others inherent, they do to take nor inflict in any way. In this sense they are almost neutral. I have held them up for you to consider and should you find them beckon, then it is up to you.

Be aware though that the single biggest barrier is talking. By this I mean both your own talking, your own internal dialogue and the talking of others. It is by this talking that a world version is upheld in the semi-consciousness of man. I have used the preface semi as full consciousness implies full freedom, something which is extremely rare. It is very difficult to be conscious fully when one is busy talking. With an inevitability the act of speaking is detrimental to hearing and overrides much other sensory input. Yet the world is full of talking and the minds of most are overrun by incessant internal dialogue. All this makes a world version as it is held, roughly by many. Almost without exception these world versions are limiting and unless one is a psychopath they are beset by a set of conditional societal norms, to which one is supposed to adhere, support, agree with and comply. To a very large extent an imagined ideal of life is presented and nobody, not anyone, lives the glossy ideal of the advertiser. Many have tried, and all have failed. In that failure there is suffering. Idealised forms and imaginary picket fence narratives simply do not exist for real. This supposition of what life entails is endemic and any failure to buy into such a supposition can render one outcast. Not sharing the illusion is a suspicious activity.

That reel to reel nature of the internal dialogue plays, minute after minute, hour after hour and decade after decade; it loops. These “thought” forms construct a pseudo-reality, based in selective perception seen only through the coloured lens of whatever world version is favoured. There is a large and innate tendency only to select those perceptions which coincide with world version. This is both “convenient” and lazy. In fact, anything which strays too far from the parameters of world version is, for the time being, beyond perceptual capacity and cognitive assimilation. Restricted to a world version lens there are many parts of the reality spectrum which cannot yet be accessed. It follows that because the internal dialogue says that they don’t or can’t exist, then they must not or cannot be. It is with the talking that the world version lens is constructed, polished and its material defines which part of the reality spectrum it can transmit. Many world version lenses have a very small aperture, and this limits the world version to a tiny subset of all available realities. We might call this narrow minded, for example. Or we could say bigoted, dogmatic and closed. A more polite way of saying this is confirmation bias, which can be found on all sides.

This world version is the basis of how an individual makes sense of where they are in the world and society. Without it people feel afraid and at sea. For most there has to be at least some framework; a kind of belief system whether developed and broad or otherwise. For some these frameworks are very basic and revolve around corporeal need and pass time supply. For others these are more nuanced and extensive. To ask big questions is terrifying for some and beyond capacity for others. The extent of world version varies with capacity and courage. Straying more than a little from what is acceptable to peers is fraught. Not everyone is fated to be Avant Garde.

Until one is willing, at least as a hypothesis, to accept that world version is not omniscient or all encompassing, then it is justified by talking as a means of self-defence. For should the world version start to crumble then all sense of certainty is at risk. If you listen to talking you can hear that so much of it is of a pseudo-rational justificatory nature. It is with bricks of justification and the planks of reasons and excuses that the fabric of world version is constructed. In addition, world version is plastered with supposition and sealed with assumption, many of which are dogmatically inviolate and never actually tested. The loop says it must be so.

This noise, caused by talking inner and outer, inhibits extent of experience and whilst that might seem cosy and safe, it isn’t really. The world does not comply with how it says it ought to be and when this happens, because the world version does not contain everything, we become unsettled and fearful. Our contextual framework of reality differs from the actual. In this respect many are almost completely unaware of where “their” thoughts and ideas have come from. Many are picked up and borrowed from others or deemed consensually accurate if acquired from peers. Let me say that consensus is not the same as truth or reality. Consensus is a socio-political creation arrived at only in the minds of man. The universe does not care one jot about what man thinks and says. The planet does, in a sense, care about what man does; for man does impact on planet, as yet the universe is relatively safe from our actions.

One thing is for sure and that is you cannot run away from your own mind, you can dull it and anaesthetise it, but it keeps on coming back. I don’t know for certain what goes on in the minds of others, but I think it fair to guess that they are not by and large at ease and in bliss. Human mind does not rest well and what we say to ourselves is often unhelpful. The dark recesses of the human mind can indeed be dark, despite any outer appearance. There is a lot of fear and anger. There are many unpleasant thoughts and motives. Humanity is not calm and measured. It is often petty and vengeful.

Having said all of the above; are you as a reader bothered by internal dialogue? Does it cause you grief and suffering? Chances are that it does. Now the corollary of this is; do you like this state of affairs and if not, are you willing to do something about it? If you are, then at least in principle if not yet in practice, ready to start to work at the biggest barrier to freedom, talking.

Some people like conversation, it is a major party of life for them. The idea of falling dumb is unattractive and social interaction is valued. I am not advocating that you find a cave and become a yogi. What you can do with relatively little initial disruption is to work at the cessation of your own internal dialogue. Internal dialogue is quite the most tiring thing and takes up vast tracts of time. If you calm and eventually stop the internal dialogue you will have so much more energy and quite a bit more time. Sales pitch over it is really up to you, but if you want to do this you will need some meditative practice or other to help you begin. Be aware though that there are many purveyors of snake oil and it easy to simply swap one world version for another and end up out of pocket in the process.

Once you have instilled a measure of control over your internal dialogue you will find that the aperture of mind opens, how far it opens is in proportion to your control or cessation of internal dialogue. There is a potential drawback in that a fertile mind is relatively easily populated so care should be taken and discernment practised.

Unless you can control and eventually stop at will your internal dialogue you will not be free of it or from it. As a consequence, equanimity will be fleeting as the next storm front of internal dialogue gathers and passes over. If you can’t control your own mind, you are not free. Rather you are plagued by internal noise which both limits and colours your perceptions of the world. In this sense internal dialogue is by way of an enemy that is both persistent and full of guile. It does not surrender willingly or easily. It likes the control that it has over you.

Cause & Effect, Dreams, New Age, Personal Development, Toltec Teachings

Waking up in the Dream

In “The Peaceful Warrior” film Socrates takes Dan up into the rafters of the Gymnastic Club of University of California, Berkeley. He shows Dan the internal dialogue of all his fellow gymnasts. Later in the film he gets Dan to turn off his internal dialogue by throwing him off a bridge into a river. In the absence of internal dialogue Dan has temporary enhanced perception. He has woken up in the dream, the nightmare, which humanity has self-created. He sees more than he had previously imagined possible.

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As I walked around the pond this morning, I was trying to remember what it felt like to be plagued by internal dialogue. I was unable to. As a rule of thumb my mind is quiet and if I want to think, I have to initiate thinking. Thinking is a conscious process. I need to boot up the apparatus. I do not have a circle line train going round and round 24/7.

Many imagine that if they stopped the world they “think” they live in their “sanity” might collapse. A long time ago I used exist in a “world” in which student satisfaction surveys, Times Higher Education ranking and Research Excellence Frameworks demarcated the boundaries of reality. They even gave me hundreds of thousands of pounds to play with lasers.

I exist beyond that world now and in so far as I can tell I am quite sane. I live deep in nature and not the inner city. Wildlife comes and we experience the seasons fully.

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In “The Matrix”, Neo is unplugged from the electricity grid and he wakes up from the software dream which was used to pacify his mind so that they could use him as a Duracell. Real life was much simpler.

These days many are so plugged in that they do not notice the seasons. We have the phenomenon of ‘phone zombies, walking the streets of our cities. We get to hang out in hospital waiting rooms. The first thing that ~80% of the people do is whip out their ‘phones. People are fearful of silence and having nothing to distract themselves. The other 20% are our age or older.

If you wake up in the dream you see that the “insistence” of the world you self-create is not as real as you insist it to be. The terror, the fear of missing out is an illusion. If you miss “Strictly Come Dancing” on the television you may not be able to talk about it with the other vegetables, but you probably won’t stop breathing.

If King Charles III and I were alone in the jungle at night and along came a hungry leopard. Who is more important and has higher kudos to the leopard? The leopard does not care. It would probably eat Charles first because he is older and possibly slower than me. The importance which humans bestow on rank is something made up in human “mind” and socio-political hierarchies.

A while back I tutored a young man who lived in big house in Hampshire. It was on an estate of similar houses all worth well in excess of a million. One morning I got there and there was evidence of a party from the night before and his mum was looking a tad hungover. She apologised profusely for the mess. I said to her that houses were not for show but for living in and she relaxed. This is the kind of thing societal constraints of ought and should evoke.

Internal dialogue can be very judgemental, both of self and others. Matt, teenage kiss by the bins outside the disco, Hancock has been very heavily tutted at. People want him to suffer in the bushtucker trials. Are not human beings great?

If you want to wake up in the dream, you need to stop the internal dialogue and then stop the world so you can see it for what it is. You will have to confront this fear of missing out…otherwise you will continue to exist in Avīci.

buddhism, Cause & Effect, Mantra, paradigm, Personal Development, Philosophy and Buddhism

That Infernal Internal Dialogue.

One from the vaults…”pain is inevitable suffering optional”

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Earlier on this year I was overcome by a very strong sense of how much apparent suffering there is in the world, and I mean that more in the sense of angst, fear and frustrated desire than in the sense of genuine suffering. For most people in the west life is relatively speaking, comfortable. Even if times are financially difficult the vast majority do not have to exist under the conditions in refugee camps such as Dafur; so many are unhappy and actually quite grumpy about their lot. The world then has to it a sense of malaise or disease, in which most are not at ease with themselves nor their life conditions. I was filled with a sense of deep love for my fellow humanity and the folly which creates and perpetuates this sense of malaise.

As such I was drawn to the word’s of Shantideva’s Bodhisattva vows:

As long as diseases afflict living beings

May I be the doctor, the medicine

And also the nurse

Who restores them to health.

Altruistic and life affirming as these sentiments no doubt are there are some people who do not want to change, nor lift themselves out of the apparent suffering in which they live. I have pondered long and hard as to what causes most of this apparent suffering and it is fairly plain to see that it is that infernal internal dialogue which is causative of apparent suffering. Through what we say to ourselves we create our own sense of reality and for some that is infernal, or a living hell of sorts. So my premise for today is:

Our internal dialogue is the cause of most of our apparent suffering, as such it is not our friend rather our own self created enemy.

The basis of neuro linguistic programming (NLP) and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is that reality and behaviours can be changed by altering both what we say to ourselves about stuff and how we act within this self created framework. People live life in a manner which is very much akin to building a house. As we evolve, we lay the foundations in youth, the first bricks in early adulthood and leave a gap perhaps for cavity wall insulation. We then construct the rest of the house as life progresses. The nature of our construct does not change that much as it evolves and apart from a few variations the basic design is set at some point in the past. The extent to which our house differs from the others on the housing estate which is humanity speaks volumes on our individual tendency towards being avant garde or herd like. The house, the castle, is what ever we tell ourselves it is or aspire to. We build our lives by telling ourselves all sorts of stories about ourselves, our capacities, our desires. These stories are often heavily influenced by our peers, the media and the times. In our talking both internally and with others we create our own “reality” and our shared “reality”.

Internal dialogue is very repetitive and as such it is our internal mantra. These dialogues of course vary, though perhaps not quite to the extent that one might first imagine. Some of the dramatic elements are common and shared, these might be related to house, children, jobs, careers, health, holidays, religion, sex, food, drinking and television based entertainment. These are the building blocks of the common dream, that larger housing estate upon which we build our own little houses.

Our internal dialogue is often of a very comparative nature, discussing whether we are as good as our peers, better than them and whether our house matches up to our own expectations and the perceived expectations of others. Much of this dialogue creates an imaginary and self limiting reality in which we are forever unhappy because we fail to live up to expectations. In a very real sense we conspire with each other to limit and by and large strive towards the lower common denominator called social acceptance. My guess is that the self esteem, self confidence and self belief of many is way lower than any outer presentation to the world. Most of all internal dialogue is the most fertile of grounds through which fears are propagated and amplified by the means of collective mind. Internal dialogue provides for us all a justification as to why it is foolish to try something entirely new and perhaps even slightly unknown. It breeds an infernal fear of ill health, death and dying and a terror of complete social exclusion; and in so doing creates an earthly hell of sorts. The desire for longevity is misplaced. When my sell by date is up I hope to be taken off the shelves and not to be left there to rot.

Internal dialogue bolsters the sense of shared victimhood and “it is not fair” mentality. When, if one is detached, it is easy to see that for most people in the western world, there is really not that much to be grumpy about. There are relatively few who face starvation and gang rape on a daily basis. That might be something to complain about!!

Much internal dialogue centres around the concept of physical beauty and sexual attractiveness in which access to horizontal jogging is placed a little too high on the great mantelpiece of life. The vast tracts of advertising imagery based upon idealised physical forms, fashion and lifestyle, acts as an accelerant to the fire of internal dialogue, through which the comparative fire of mind says we are not good enough. Very few stop to ponder on the fact that physical beauty can in it self be a real curse. Internal dialogue is mostly about the form side of life and where we may or may not stand in some imaginary pecking order.

The plethora of fears associated with diet, health, exercise and longevity fill the mind with a mass of bric-a-brac such that the thoughts and sounds of internal dialogue are like so many young birds in a nest clamouring for the parental worm. The internal dialogue needs and demands constant feeding, as such it is a harsh master. There is simply no space or room amidst all that noise to stand back and consider about where life is going. The apparent urgency of internal dialogue causes the days, months, years and decades to flash past like an express train. The desires of the internal dialogue appear paramount and are rarely, if ever, sated.

My experience of most internal dialogues is that they are filled with such words as you can’t, you should, you ought to, that is normal, you have failed, that is not what is done here and would daddy be proud of that? For many there is a relative cacophony of entirely negative thought forms which create a climate of some grim application to life. This is so very familiar that, just like heroin, it is very addictive. Internal dialogue needs a fresh score every morning and to be shared with all the other pushers within our social circle whom we might choose to call friends. The reality is that pushers are criminals and hence we the junkies and the pushers are all, partners in crime.

I am going to make another premise here:

You are not your internal dialogue

This might seem mildly radical but it is true. If you can examine your internal dialogue from a detached view then, you are not it. In any case much of what you say to yourself is a pack of lies with which you have created your own mythos, your precious self image. The internal dialogue does not like to be challenged and is very defensive. Most conversation is shared internal dialogue and is mutually bolstering.

For the reader of a religious bent I have a simple question which points directly at the folly of internal dialogue; does God care about whether you are pretty, have a large cock, a nice car, a fashionable wardrobe or if you achieve the national average of extended multiple orgasms each week? Is Buddha all that interested? I suspect not. Viewed from this angle the contents of most internal dialogue are “chitta” which is onomatopoeic and exactly like the sound of birds in a nest. If you were about to die, would you really be bothering as to whether Mr Jones’ new Audi looked better than your Volkswagen?

Perhaps as a beginning it might help to look at the interaction between internal dialogue and fear, which is the very basis of the corrupt and manipulative insurance industry. This plays directly on the fear of losing possessions, accidents etc. and is a part of the fabric of the blame culture which abounds today. If you are stupid enough to trip over a paving stone is it really the fault of the council for putting it there? I don’t think so. Deep down everyone knows this, but the litigious “victim” can these days seek recompense. “I didn’t deserve to trip up…”

The fear of litigation is a product of the internal dialogue which supports the blame culture. It is always someone else’s fault!! If you had not been stuck up in your mind, within the circles of your internal dialogue, you might have been sufficiently wide awake to look where you are going.

In what way does the chitta in the mind reinforce all your fears, how does it limit you and above all does it make you at ease and happy? The internal dialogue is one of humanity’s major diseases and my prescription is first of all to become aware of your own internal dialogue and then simply to stop doing it.

If you must have internal dialogue then your mantra might be; “I am a Magical Being of the Universe”. Try this and as the saying goes; “Trust me I am a Doctor!”