Happiness beyond thought

[Rose]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and have a number of ideas I'd like to write about so bear with me! Some of them tread a fine line between spirituality and psychology - hopefully this will be acceptable. I've never quite known where one stops and the other begins.

I've been practicing mindfulness with varying degrees of consistency (mostly in a Buddhist context) for the last few years but have recently started taking it more seriously.

I recently encountered a technique that I've found to be extremely helpful with informal mindfulness practice and wanted to share it and find out if anyone else had encountered it.

I'm interested in the neuroscience of mindfulness and encountered this technique in an oblique sort of way while doing some research on this subject for a talk. There was a study conducted at Yale University ('Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity' - J.Brewer et al). where they performed fMRI scans on a number of experienced meditators. They found that while meditating these subjects had deceased brain activity in the default mode network (DMN) which is the part of the brain that activates during mind wandering and daydreaming. Gary Weber participated in this study and was found to have an extraordinarily quiet DMN, even when not meditating.
So after hearing about this I was curious and looked him up. He has written a book called 'Happiness beyond thought' and advocates a practice called self-inquiry.

Self-inquiry basically consists of repeatedly asking yourself 'Who am I?' or 'Who is thinking?' whenever you notice your mind wandering during your daily activities. Although he doesn't seem to be affiliated with any religion this ties in with some fairly esoteric concepts such as non-duality and non-self. Gary has been teaching this practice to students and the results seem to be fairly extraordinary. By all accounts when the default mode network is genuinely quiet and the egoic mind stops its constant internal chatter there is a feeling of enormous peace and well-being. One of his students reached this state after doing the practice for a year - his correspondence with Gary has been published as a book called 'dialogues with Dominic'. Reassuringly, both he and Gary have families they support and were able to work in fairly high-pressure jobs while undergoing this process. They even stated that they thought it helped them to perform better at their work.

I've been doing this practice for a few weeks now and have experienced some enormous benefits. The social anxiety that I often experience seems to have largely gone and I'm generally feeling far happier. I'm by no means 'cured' of all my psychological ills but I feel like I've found a very helpful tool going forward.

Just wanted to share this and perhaps get a bit of feedback.

Rose

[Peter]

Hi Rose,
Welcome to the site. Thanks a lot for sharing. I certainly find it very interesting, and will definitely check it out!
Peter

[Gareth]

Self-inquiry basically consists of repeatedly asking yourself 'Who am I?' or 'Who is thinking?' whenever you notice your mind wandering during your daily activities.

To me, this exercise is sure to bring about decoupling from the mind, which is surely an objective of any kind of meditation practice?

This decoupling is surely one of the greatest benefits; it benefits me every day. Just this morning, a colleague appeared to ignore me twice in close succession. My mind tried to start up a 'she's ignoring me!' story, but I was quickly able to identify it as just a (probably untrue) story, and get back to what I was doing.

[Spikeycloud]

Hi Rose, welcome to this forum - and very interesting what you tell here. It definitely sounds something for me. Going to check it out for sure

@Gareth
I'm very sceptic about decoupling from the mind. Because the mind is still part of you – and always will be a part of you in my experience. If you decouple the mind (which I really doubt is even possible because 95% of us is unconscious) you are basically not truly accepting fully who you are. The mind is there for a reason, it is there to protect you and store all the things you learned so that you don't have to think about driving, walking, swimming etc. That most of us have bad programming is as clear as water imho. That's the reason why I think it is better to shape the mind in a way that it helps and supports you. In a way that you create patterns and behaviors in the mind that serve you or other people - and that the mind will be your ally in creating your best possible version of yourself. Curious about your perspective on that.

[Gareth]

Hi Spikeycloud,

I don't disagree with anything that you have said; I think that we are probably using different meanings for the word 'decoupling'. It might not have been the best choice of word on my part.

My mind is still a large part of who I am, if for no other reason that it is so loud and incessant. By decoupling I just mean that I am now able to recognise it for what it is: loud, judgmental and often wrong. Decoupling allows me to (sometimes) see what the mind is up to and say "whoa, we're not going there".

Do you get what I mean?

[Spikeycloud]

Yes I do. Thanks for clearing that up