51–60 of 72 posts
Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with. That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that p…
I guess it goes parallell to another question i have. How is it possible for a brain without anything but pretty basic musical training to conjure up a fully functioning, never before heard, tunable symphony. This was a place i occasionally ended up in the midst of all of the nightly mental hoolahoops i had to go through. (It would collapse on itself eventually, but still, the array of instruments and sounds was way…
I ask because I often have the experience in dreams, that I experience something which I perceive to make sense until I actually try to make sense of it, whereupon it falls apart. My brain only generates my response to the input, not the input itself, and when queried for the input fails to produce it.
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You're essentially creating what some people have taken to referring as "tulpas". http://www.meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/
People in the corresponding reddit group claim they can see their tulpas and they have their own personality and will. It's a strange and fascinating place, that group.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9142246
Feel free to ask me about it.
I find that whole article manipulative and disingenuous in the extreme. A full page free advertisement for the psycho-pharma industry.
For a few years, every time my mind was momentarily still it would repeat the word "death". It never bothered me, and I always interpreted it philosophically (eg. as a meditational aid) and put it down to reading too much Buddhist literature.
Sounds a bit like OCD. If I keep my mind still, something terrible always fills the void and I have to give my consciousness something to focus on. When I was younger, I referred to this as "hearing voices"; it was a huge relief when I eventually found out about OCD and its symptoms. It's exhausting!
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I sometimes talk to myself or to hypothetical instances of other people I know. I try to do this quietly at times since I know it might not be perceived favorably by others. Mainly I do this to verbally externalize thoughts and force them back into my auditory memory (deliberately), hopefully reinforcing or bolstering a position I want to take or a course of action I need to take later. I hope I never lose track that…
> I try to do this quietly If you hold a mobile phone to your ear, nobody will give you a second look.
Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with. That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that p…
If you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear more about your experience with this.
Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with. That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that p…
You may like this article that talks about people who hear voices but who don't have a psychotic illness.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/13/hear-voi...
They too prefer to manage with meds.
We all have at least one of these voices in our heads. Like the author, some of us give them names, and fancy conversations among them. But for the most part, they simply occur to us as "I". "I" likes to think that it's running the show, but really it's at best a commentator. All too often, that "I" fucks up and sabotages. As HenryTheHorse notes, in Buddhism it's called the "monkey mind". It's a machine that evolved…
No, hearing voices is a very different experience to the regular internal monologue that everyone has. People hearing voices perceive those heard voices in the same way they'd perceive an actual person talking to them. People experience different voices, but it's reasonably common to experience the voice as male and standing behind you. But the voice could be whispering (like white noise), or robotic, and it could ap…
I often have intense fantasies about conversations with personal mentors, historical figures and/or deities (what would Buddha say? How about Einstein? etc). Obviously I can't reproduce their thoughts, but knowing a little about them, I can try to think like them Surely they're not as visceral or reflexive as the author's voices. But I have always found value in empathizing with fantasized mentors, which has given me…
I sometimes talk to myself or to hypothetical instances of other people I know. I try to do this quietly at times since I know it might not be perceived favorably by others. Mainly I do this to verbally externalize thoughts and force them back into my auditory memory (deliberately), hopefully reinforcing or bolstering a position I want to take or a course of action I need to take later. I hope I never lose track that…