Why You Shouldn’t Try To Silence Your Mind

[r0ckyreed]

Have you ever heard of hyperphantasia? Hyperphantasia refers to one’s ability to conjur up life-like, realistic mental images, sounds, and other senses with the minds eye or imagination. I want you to contemplate this: The greatest inventors, philosophers, and visionaries have the same quality of powerful imagination or hyperphantasia. Notice that imagination and success and creativity go together. There is no such thing as a visionary with no imagination. This does not mean that someone with aphantasia, someone who has an inability to form mental images in the mind, cannot be a visionary. It is just much harder. They might have to process their “vision” through other means such as journaling.

How does this tie into my argument against meditation? Well, meditation encourages you to essentially turn off your imagination. But not just that, but you are also turning off your creativity.

Some people will argue by suggesting that meditation can actually give rise to even more creativity. This is true. But this is a straw man of what I am trying to communicate. Yes, it is true that if you incubate, you will gain insight. But I am suggesting that long-term meditation has its consequences. Too much meditation can actually limit your imagination.
 

If you sit for a long time in a single-pointed focus on your breath, you will not engage in the exercising of your imagination. Brief periods of meditation of say no more than 1 hour a day can be beneficial to your mind, as long as you are also engaging in imagination and contemplation. If all you are doing with your mind is silencing it (or even worse, distracting with social media), then your imagination, ability to contemplate will become dull and almost at an aphantasic state.

So, just think about this. The goal of meditation isn’t to suppress your thoughts and have a quiet mind. It is really to be more present with everything in reality, which includes your mind. People say “you are already present all the time.” That is not true. You are dissociating. That is not the same. Just like how you can increase the vividity of your imagination. So you can with your consciousness. Meditation isn’t about silencing your mind. It is about increasing your awareness of the internal and external world. In other words, it is about raising your awareness to explore your own mind/imagination. 

I just had this insight and had to post it here. Hope it helps. 
 

Read this article to learn more about hyperphantasia. https://memoryos.com/article/hyperphantasia-revealing-the-truth-about-photorealistic-imagination

Edited December 29, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[Princess Arabia]

I think it's more of just letting the mind be. Not really ignoring it as much but allowing thoughts to be there and not identify with them. I'm speaking about the monkey mind, not when we need the mind to consciously figure something out, contemplate or just normal day-to-day activities.

I'm noticing how my mind continuously concoct stories and ideas about situations and circumstances that are just ideas about them and my own interpretations. When I limit this activity, or catch myself doing it and retract, I find myself to be at ease more and have less unnecessary mindless chit-chatter. 

This practice, I believe will pretty much causes us to have less anxiety and or depression. The more I catch myself doing it, I stop and focus the mind elsewhere. Since I've been aware of what the mind does, I realized how I've created a lot of unnecessary trivial mental suffering. Half of the stuff the mind says isn't true and we tend to want to believe it because we don't realize it's nature.

So now, I practice allowing it to do it's thing without reacting as much and it is slowly but surely not having as much of a negative impact on me where before I had a tendency to worry about things that were just stories and made up stuff that never even came to the light.

 

 

[Breakingthewall]

39 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

So, just think about this. The goal of meditation isn’t to suppress your thoughts and have a quiet mind.

For me, meditating is changing the focus. What is normal is an inside-out approach, of receiving an experience from outside.

the meditative approach is from inside to inside. Only you exist, everything is you since this, what happens, the life that is flowing, is you. then it is easy to stop thinking because what you think is useless, it is just a thought that arises in the flow, it means nothing. I think it's better to be in this state all time, as deep as its possible. strangely it seems that the bottom of reality is beauty and plenitude

Edited December 29, 2023 by Breakingthewall

[r0ckyreed]

I overlooked the cons that hyperphantasia can be negative too. If you are vividly imagining hell, then silencing that would be better. But you would still miss out on the fruits of imagination.

[BlueOak]

You can meditate on literally anything, even the desire to imagine something new.

I'll add I think most people go for silence or stillness, because most minds are stressed due to many different factors.

Edited December 29, 2023 by BlueOak

[Hojo]

I also found if you surpress your thoughts during day to day they will come back later with more force. Like surpassing sexual thoughts around people will make you horny later but if you just let to them go and say what they want they won't come back later. So there's no point to try to stop them think what you want to think and don't censor your mind its just a thought.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Hojo

[Keryo Koffa]

What is imagination? Same as intuition. What is intuition? Looking at the in-betweens. What in-betweens? Exactly

Meditation intends silencing to dissolve your bias. Because the more you think and imagine, the more self-referential it is.

To meditate is to go back to the source. And all kinds of crazy ideas and imaginations await you there.

[r0ckyreed]

I just think it is dangerous to sit in long periods with a silent mind. I’ve heard that people with decent imagination can actual develop aphantasia, the inability to imagine.

I formally meditate no more than 20 minutes a day. It is important to contemplate and visualize more than meditating. What I have found is that if you contemplate deeply, then sit in 20 minutes of mental quietude, insights incubate there. But if I meditate for a long time before I contemplate, it messes up my contemplation. 

It is essential to allow the mind to wander and not just have it focused on your breath. This numbs your mind’s potential. A better way to meditate is to visualize a goal in your life, an existential question, or a personal problem and just have the mind focus on that. Everytime it wanders, let a wander around that topic then gently bring it back.

Mind wandering is essential for creativity. Focus is also important too. But I think if you just focus on the breath for a long time and ignore your curiosity and imagination, you will stunt your gifts.

[gettoefl]

meditation is first realizing you're not the person in the mirror and then practicing being who you are

you need to formally practice this as long as it takes

you are not fear anger guilt ... these are all misguided impositions you place on the world because you think you are in a war to the death

you created everything you see before you for your benefit and blessing not to fight it and conquer it

merge with it don't mess with it

jump in and see that death, depth is the last duality

meditate until you finally stop letting ego run your life

you are capable of so much more

Edited January 27 by gettoefl

[Breakingthewall]

I think we have to focus on achieving openness. To do this you have to let go of everything, the mind must be able to free itself from its burden. This is not easy, the mind has structures of fear that close it, how to understand and face them requires insight and will. Each mind is a different enigma, but all those that drift towards spirituality theoretically seek the same goal: liberation from chains.

[Jordan]

It sometimes feels like I am in a dream with how realistic I can visualize things when meditating. I think just focusing on one thing like the breath helps you to focus on other things like internal images. I also do not like to just do concentration meditation. I alternate between that and mindfulness meditation allowing the focus of attention to shift fairly frequently to things like thoughts and emotions without trying to manipulate them. I have been doing over 2 hours of meditation per day average since the beginning of this year.

Edited January 28 by Jordan

[r0ckyreed]

My point still remains valid that if you are just trying to silence your mind, you will never learn how to use the full potential of it.

Everything is yourself. You are the entire field of experience.