EvF,
You can stop thinking without expiring from the experience. I have never held myself in that state for more than a few minutes without the assistance of weed or large amounts of alchohol and I should point out there is a difference between being too blissed out to think and being consciously aware of not thinking. Ok, I know, that's nice but practically the mind always spins so what of overanalysis...
The trick is to move to another subject once you come to conclusions about what you were thinking about. It is better to be able to take small amounts of data and arrive at conclusions; this will make you a productive member of this society. In almost every job I have worked it is much better to arrive quickly at a solution that is not the best than to meditate for long periods of time on the perfect solution and get passed up by others who arrive quickly. Strike a balance between deep thought and quick action and you will be golden!
I used to do the same thing as you and get fixated on words such that they lost their meaning in my head. It was frustrating to me but was probably a good exercise to show the true meaningless nature of the sounds we make that relate to objects in our heads. I am to the point now that, if I pay attention, I can "see" the thoughts form a few nanoseconds before I form words. One thing I did to speed up my thoughts was to confound my speech centers through programed nonsense thought, purposely spoken gibberish. The side effect was a growth of a nonsense generation area of my brain that STILL acts up every once in a while and I utter nonsense to people instead of words. The idea is to avoid verbalization and think about things pre-verbally. I think this is why pentacostals feel a surge of "god" when they speak in "tongues", they are simply moving their thought process back a step and thinking pure thoughts without verbalizing.
Yes this is all raw assertion but backed up by ideas in memory science relating to how our brains DO NOT remember well without attaching the memory to an object.
Rhizo
You can stop thinking without expiring from the experience. I have never held myself in that state for more than a few minutes without the assistance of weed or large amounts of alchohol and I should point out there is a difference between being too blissed out to think and being consciously aware of not thinking. Ok, I know, that's nice but practically the mind always spins so what of overanalysis...
The trick is to move to another subject once you come to conclusions about what you were thinking about. It is better to be able to take small amounts of data and arrive at conclusions; this will make you a productive member of this society. In almost every job I have worked it is much better to arrive quickly at a solution that is not the best than to meditate for long periods of time on the perfect solution and get passed up by others who arrive quickly. Strike a balance between deep thought and quick action and you will be golden!
I used to do the same thing as you and get fixated on words such that they lost their meaning in my head. It was frustrating to me but was probably a good exercise to show the true meaningless nature of the sounds we make that relate to objects in our heads. I am to the point now that, if I pay attention, I can "see" the thoughts form a few nanoseconds before I form words. One thing I did to speed up my thoughts was to confound my speech centers through programed nonsense thought, purposely spoken gibberish. The side effect was a growth of a nonsense generation area of my brain that STILL acts up every once in a while and I utter nonsense to people instead of words. The idea is to avoid verbalization and think about things pre-verbally. I think this is why pentacostals feel a surge of "god" when they speak in "tongues", they are simply moving their thought process back a step and thinking pure thoughts without verbalizing.
Yes this is all raw assertion but backed up by ideas in memory science relating to how our brains DO NOT remember well without attaching the memory to an object.
Rhizo