I'm losing my thinking abilities

[integral]

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Can you imagine parts of a song? I one time played an entire song from start to finish in my head (weed helped), and at one point, it almost felt like the sound was coming from the outside.

Yes ive had this experience a few times as well, its like orchestra in my head perfectly vivid with every note crisp and tangible, but i cant induce it at will. Of course its easy to hum a tune or play a song in the mind but its not like does rare moments when its like listening to a recording. I could play chess blindfold in my bind before i could say a sentence, it was a matter of training, i practice visualizing chess and thinking in chess but i never practice sub-vocalization so i couldn't do it.

Its difficult thinking with raw thoughts while in noise areas, you cant focus on it and i think sub-vocalization is popular for this reason that is makes thinking louder and easer to hold attention to. With training in silent environments the raw thoughts are louder by contrast and easier to focus on or its easier to not get distracted.

Then there is the ability the hear or know the sub-conscious thoughts that can only be done when meditating or maybe psychedelics, but its more like figuring out what you are sub-consciously processing, feels like back tracking your steps to where a thought came from. A knowing what we are sub-consciously working on and a chaos of many thoughts streams all happening at once, non-linear pool of ideas. 

The thoughts that actually make it to the conscious mind are the ones that pass our filter system. I cant remember what part of the brain is the gate keeper that filters the sub-conscious mind, but some people have a larger one and with meditation we can expand our field of awareness and let more thoughts/perceptions pass the filter and into the conscious. Like juggling more then 3 balls at once. I think a flow state is when the sub-conscious mind and all its sub-systems are working together in harmony. Higher brain cohesion. 

9 hours ago, amanen said:

Some people actually literally hear their thoughts, I have a friend who genuinely hears his thoughts. I'm not capable of this, I can think linearly but it has absolutely no voice to it, it's just a thought. I think I mostly use raw thoughts too, I already know what I would think before I think linearly it so I usually just skip the thinking process where I would become conscious of it in word format. Though in my default state I do not think that much at all, I never have the text I'm either reading or writing occur in my head at all for example, which is such a nice feeling compared to how it used to be when I still automatically thought about everything that I read et cetera.

How does he hear his thoughts, what sound does a thought make? 

Its so good to be able read and write with out sub-vocalizing, there are tricks like focusing on the fingers typing, distracts and i think the brain doesn't know difference between vocal words and the sequence of typing letters. The action and sequence of typing a word is a placeholder for an idea! Just like the sounds of a word is a placeholder for the idea. We have all sorts of placeholders for ideas that can replace sounds. Reading with out sub-vocalizing is about using the image of the word visual seen as the placeholder for the idea and to avoid the habit of subvocalizing it. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by integral