How to train the mind

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Are you a compulsive thinker ?

  • Yes (think too much)
  • No (I don’t think deep enough)
  • Sometimes. I know when my mind is racing
  • I think the premise until I fall down with a headache
  • I think the premise until I reach my conclusion
0 voters

I discovered recently that some serious steps should be taken to tame that wild horse that is the Human mind. For example when you catch yourself talking faster than you can think you should inmediately realize that you are ,in fact,babbling.But it seems to me that it’s the mind the one that controls that behaviour for the sake of persuasion or dissuasion.

What’s the most efficient way to tame the mind ? How can we relax it at those very special moments when we need all the focus we can get ? How do we foresee our own mind games and prevent them from happening?

Could it be that thinking too much is detrimental to our mental health ?
Is there such a thing called ‘compulsive thinking’ ?

I leave the ball at the court.

Still (Argentina)

2

I’m thinking all the time; its when there channeled that i feel inspired. Other times i cant hold my concentration down on a thought, without having to think of something else.

3

Yeah, i think regular people are pretty much the same.I don’t think that Philosophers or tireless thinkers have a particular problem with concentration.
But what happens when you learn ‘too much’ in a short period of time ?
I believe that’s my problem, later i end up confusing evrything, and I can’t remember who said what. (drag !)

Peace,

Still

4

Back 12-13 years ago I found myself in a mental institute, diagnosed with Schizophrenia.
Due to life events I had brickwalled alot of stuff, but now found that my mind was a complete blank. I still knew all the basic stuff, eg names places, likes dislikes etc. But now I saw the world in a whole new way, as if interacting with it for the first time.
But I had no concentration. I could not hold a train of thought. Things flashed into my mind and left just as quick. I had no mental stamina.

Luckily I found myself in Scotland with relatives, on a secluded little island, to recouperate.

There I sort of stumbled into Bhuddism and chess. Now on a little island with only a few hundred inhabitants, the chance of their being a Bhuddist meditation group was remote, but amazingly there was.

I learnt meditation techniques and used them to build and take control of my thoughts.

I sat many a night into the early hours playing chess against a computer chess board I had bought. Training my mind to think and to be able to control those thoughts.

When I came home I continued playing chess and meditating until my life took another route, that being getting married and having kids.

I no longer actively meditate, but have found that I do it subconciously during daily life, but it is no where as effective as actively doing it though.
Nor do I play chess, I got to the point where I could beat my computer chess board on the hardest setting every time (it wasn’t a particularly bright one).

Basically I had to do something to take control of my thoughts and gain the upper hand against any voices etc that I may hear, and the things I did seemed to work. It also made me alot more aware of how my mental processes seem to work, and to look out for danger signs that I may be heading for a psychotic episode, and take appropriate precautions.

From my experience, you CAN raise your stats ala RPG game style in real life. Not just strength endurance and dexterity but also intelligence wisdom perception etc. Those times of serendipity to me are a sort of ‘level up’ time.

I reckon it’s the same with everything, study it, practice it (the important bit!) and you will eventually get better at it/have more control over it.

Saying that, my percpective is what I concider normal, to others I may seem as mad as a badger.:wink:

MentulZen.

5

Meditation is good. As far as mental discipline goes I like to use several different techniques. Basically What I do involves forcing the mind to do things it normally doesn’t do. Trying to break it out of it’s normal patterns and make it more flexible, responsive, and just in general better disciplined.

A favorite one I like to use (but still have great difficulty doing) is imagine myself talking continuously, or doing a marathon run, but not breathing. I can’t describe it, jsut try it. It’s alot harder than you think. The key is to place yourself as if it’s really happening. Don’t just imagine it, feel like you’re actually diong it in your mind.

Another is floating above a lake sitting indian-style or lotus-position (it doesn’t matter if u can do it reall ife or not). The key is to think like it’s real. The difference from jsut imagining is you’d have to acknowledge gravity and kep the fact that it’s pulling you down constant. Then using your force of will, hold your body up. Step two would to after accomplishing that, imagine that the water in the lake is very turbulent, like a hurricane is there (big waves, think 15-20 feet) and then force the water to become calm using your force of will.

Another would be to picture standing in a field with trees all around. There is a driving wind blowing agisnt you making it hard to stand up. Your clothes are flapping about under the force of the wind. Feel the wind on your face. Yet the trees and grasses and bushes are completely still like there is no wind att all.

Basically you’re putting opposites into action, battling it out with equal energies in your mind to a stalemate, making each side stronger. Like increasing stats in an RPG (Viva la Xenogears!). Eventually you’ll be able to command your mind to do anyhting you want it to. The point of different excercises is variets. Just one will get old and boring and not have any effect anymore.

Another i do is swimming in a pool with all your clothes on, feeling the water against the skin, yet still not being wet. It’s really cool.

If you have a strong physical capacity (as i do) then you might want to incorporate strenuous physical activity into your meditation. I like to do hand-stand pushups. Go 1/3 to halfway down the pushup and freeze. Clsoe your eyes and clear everything from your mind. Keep it completely blank. You’ll find you can achieve the greatest focus when your body is being forced to prove it’s endurance.

I could go on forever on different types of meditation, but those are the easiest and most pertinent to the topic. Jsut practicing keeping you mind void of any thoughts is a good excercise. It’s also harder than you think.

6

Meditation is actually extremelly good for the inmune system among many other things, stress , etc…according to new studies recently revealed . I pefer the Zen concept, even though I do Tibetan meditation.

Peace,

Still

quote=“Qzxtvbzr”]Meditation is good. As far as mental discipline goes I like to use several different techniques. Basically What I do involves forcing the mind to do things it normally doesn’t do. Trying to break it out of it’s normal patterns and make it more flexible, responsive, and just in general better disciplined.

A favorite one I like to use (but still have great difficulty doing) is imagine myself talking continuously, or doing a marathon run, but not breathing. I can’t describe it, jsut try it. It’s alot harder than you think. The key is to place yourself as if it’s really happening. Don’t just imagine it, feel like you’re actually diong it in your mind.

Another is floating above a lake sitting indian-style or lotus-position (it doesn’t matter if u can do it reall ife or not). The key is to think like it’s real. The difference from jsut imagining is you’d have to acknowledge gravity and kep the fact that it’s pulling you down constant. Then using your force of will, hold your body up. Step two would to after accomplishing that, imagine that the water in the lake is very turbulent, like a hurricane is there (big waves, think 15-20 feet) and then force the water to become calm using your force of will.

Another would be to picture standing in a field with trees all around. There is a driving wind blowing agisnt you making it hard to stand up. Your clothes are flapping about under the force of the wind. Feel the wind on your face. Yet the trees and grasses and bushes are completely still like there is no wind att all.

Basically you’re putting opposites into action, battling it out with equal energies in your mind to a stalemate, making each side stronger. Like increasing stats in an RPG (Viva la Xenogears!). Eventually you’ll be able to command your mind to do anyhting you want it to. The point of different excercises is variets. Just one will get old and boring and not have any effect anymore.

Another i do is swimming in a pool with all your clothes on, feeling the water against the skin, yet still not being wet. It’s really cool.

If you have a strong physical capacity (as i do) then you might want to incorporate strenuous physical activity into your meditation. I like to do hand-stand pushups. Go 1/3 to halfway down the pushup and freeze. Clsoe your eyes and clear everything from your mind. Keep it completely blank. You’ll find you can achieve the greatest focus when your body is being forced to prove it’s endurance.

I could go on forever on different types of meditation, but those are the easiest and most pertinent to the topic. Jsut practicing keeping you mind void of any thoughts is a good excercise. It’s also harder than you think.
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