In the background, my mind constantly bounces around between different thoughts and ideas. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. The overall feeling is usually negative because it's distracting, but every now and again something fun or potentially useful pops up.
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And how does it feel when there's nothing going on at that level of experience?
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I can't recall ever experiencing that. There's always some kind of noise there. I suppose sometimes if I'm really focused on something the topic of the various 'voices' can be more similar, which is a little less annoying - but there's never silence.
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(Sorry, no idea if this is useful, but you seem to have mostly had replies from smart meditators, so I thought that I might be a contrast)
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You do! Ever experienced a flow state, though? Or a severe physical emergency?
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A version of a flow state, yes, I think so - quite often, in fact; with enough time trying to focus on something and tuning intentional distractions (typically music through headphones), I can ignore the noise enough for intellectual tasks to seem almost effortless.
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But you still have mental chatter??????
That's almost sort of impressive in a way.
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It's very time consuming! Waiting for the stars to align so your brain actually works at something approaching its potential is less than ideal. I've learnt to fill in that waiting period with less taxing tasks.
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TBH, I think I'm just very bad at using my brain! I have lots of ideas, which the Internet makes it easy to dismiss or catalogue for a future hypothetical magical time of easy focus.
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(You can see why a lot of this meditation stuff sounds absolutely heavenly, but getting there seems near impossible).
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Nah, you probably just have more unresolved shit than usual!
This is a tractable problem.