Watching the Mind Watch Itself

Thoughts about thoughts. What follows is not necessarily conceptually original. The themes of thought, awareness, language, and meaning have been explored for hundreds of years. This is more a direct, personal synthesis of my understanding of the themes.

Framing

I like to watch the mind and see what it does. It’s always doing interesting stuff. One way of framing the mind’s continual activity is by categorizing the stimuli and your response. You see something and then you react. A bird flies by and your eyes track it. The responses that feel automatic are particularly interesting. For example, when you are in a conversation and you speak before you think. The words just come out without thinking too much about it, but later there is post-processing. When you engage in reflection, you think about what you just said. You may follow-up with further thoughts you had about what you said or what someone else said earlier. This can become an endless, recursive feedback loop if you allow it. For most people, the loop dissipates naturally, but it can continue indefinitely if you let it.

Questioning

Observation naturally leads to questioning. For some reason, this captures my interest (writing). But would I like to be interested in other things right now? When I think about what I might like to rather be doing, I notice the “why” that follows close behind. Why would I rather my interest be captured by something else? Ideas about “normativity” seem to creep in: feelings of perceived obligation, internally or externally imposed. Maybe I should spend time with so and so, or sweep the floor, or prepare for such and such. Then attention returns to the activity at hand: typing, thinking, feeling. These “should” thoughts, once recognized, can become options, or appearances, rather than commands. The key, of course, is recognizing them.

Awareness

Any attempt to answer these questions seems to require a metacognitive honesty with oneself. You have to be honest about what you are experiencing. This requires a high degree of awareness. In order to be honest, you gotta know what to be honest about. Maybe awareness and honesty depend on the capacity of acceptance. If you are able to accept the thoughts and feelings that arise in consciousness, you won’t repress them and thereby will become conscious of them. Occasionally, some thoughts and feelings are so distressing that you may be incapable of accepting them or letting them surface. For example, thinking the world is crumbling and there is nothing you can do to stop it or that you made a grave mistake that is irreparable. Those kinds of thoughts might arise, and then you realize that they’re not fun to have, so then you would keep them dormant.

What are the consequences of keeping thoughts and feelings dormant? If they are negative, you can imagine resentment and internal conflict building up with no release. Like the thought that you are doomed to fail on a given project. Unexpressed, the thought goes unchallenged and thinks itself true. On the other hand, some thoughts and feelings are so positive that they consume your mental resources and in the moment you lose your metacognitive awareness. This is joy. For example, thinking that a lovely sight, like a waterfall, before your eyes is so beautiful that you can’t look away.

Communication

But even then, you may be aware of and accepting of a thought, but be unable to communicate about it either to yourself or someone else. In that situation, you may not be able to say to yourself, “I am having this thought, but it is not necessarily true or useful.” But if you were to communicate about it with someone else, they may reveal to you that there are alternative ways of looking at it, more interesting and helpful ways. Some thoughts seem like they are inalterable or foundational. You question some but not others. For example, a thought may arise about your posture: “I am sitting like this” or “I sense my muscles working in this way to keep me standing.” And the thought will be of little importance. It doesn’t capture interest and you don’t wonder why you are having that thought.

Meaning

The mind seeks meaning in what it experiences. If a thought arises, like “This glass of water has a nice shape,” and you tell someone, their mind automatically seeks to understand the meanings of each component of the thought. Of course, it depends on both your intention in telling them and their intention in listening. A more inquisitive listener might ask: What does “glass” mean in this context? Does it apply to this experience? How does it apply? And why? The same goes for each word (“water,” “nice,” “shape.”) While these questions may seem trivial, they are fundamentally implicit to communication. We just don’t inspect all the moving parts day to day.

Takeaway

The mind is both the observer and the observed. I think the benefit of understanding these processes can help us live more satisfied, more curious, and less confused lives. If that’s not a good thing, I don’t know what is. Don’t overthink your thoughts and feelings, but sometimes it could be helpful to examine them more closely. This reflection enables us to see, hear, speak, and live more clearly.