November 10th, 2009] [
I’m going to get to the point right now.
I call our minds the torture chamber simply because it is a chamber that tortures human beings. Why? Well, because our minds are there to remind us how problematic our lives can be.
Everybody has problems right? Everybody has things that are upset about…in their minds. However, in reality, there is no such thing as a problem; there are just situations you’d have to deal with.
Only our thoughts and minds have the ability to see things as problematic and cause us to swirl into an emotional turmoil.
When we are trapped within this chamber of torture, we are disconnected from reality and truth.
That mental noise in the back of our mind can just be there constantly reminding us about:
- Our problematic life situations.
- Our troubled pasts.
- Our pessimistically unknown future.
- Our flaws of health, personalities, intelligence, image, etc.
We become so disinterested and out of focus on many things in the present moment, simply because in the back of our mind, there is a distant noise constantly reminding us what our problems are.
“There is something wrong with us” “There is something wrong with my life”.
It’s fine if you get those thoughts occasionally, as natural human beings we are expected to get impulsively negative sometimes.
But what about having your mind voicing over you with your problems and dilemmas every single second of your days?
What if there is always a constant mental noise that you just can’t seem to get out of? Every night before you go to sleep, you surrender the fight to your mental noise. Every morning you wake up, you are greeted by the problematic parts of your life.
There is no better word to describe that constant imprisonment of mindless mental noise – torture.
Living as a prisoner of the mental noise –My experience
As an imperfect human being (as we all are), I’ve had many years of being trapped within that torture of mental noise.
I just couldn’t find a “close” button to the noises that are constantly reminding me how my life just sucks to the core.
I admit, I still am somewhat like this, but writing about this topic alone definitely helps me to become more mindful, and hopefully it will help those get out of their tortured lives of mental noises.
I remember when I was younger, every morning I would wake up feeling completely tired, everything felt gray and blurry. Nothing really meant much to me, because the noise in my mind was too just dominating.
But it is because of those wretched years of constant unconscious suffering that brought me to a point where I just became desperate enough to wake up.
I don’t believe that I am fully awake (yet), but I definitely am conscious enough to realize how my mental noise can keep me in a miserable illusion of my life.
If there is one major lesson I learned from that experience, that lesson would be: It’s true that the mental noises are a part of you, but they are not part of who you are.
The noises may be inside your head, but they do not define who you are, and definitely not your reality.
Once you start to distinguish between you and your mind, that illusion of “personal problems” would slowly dissipate, and you’ll eventually melt the illusions and tricks that your mental noise cast upon you.
You’ll slowly start to see that your background noise is nothing but a crazy lunatic who likes to mess with you…if in real life a crazy lunatic starts to tell you the things your mind does, how would you react?
You’ll treat the crazy lunatic as a crazy lunatic and not someone that is like you. You’ll disbelieve the junk he tells you and move on with your own life. And that is exactly what you are going to do with your mental noise.
Being the addict to compulsive thinking
Sometimes it is just too hard to simply ignore the things that our mind keeps telling us, because it is just CONSTANTLY THERE!
It is almost as if we are addicted to thinking compulsively and that it is completely out of our control.
The “close” button to our mental noise just seems smaller and smaller as years pass by with the on-going mental activities torturing our daily lives.
We become more mindless as we maintain the habit of compulsive thinking, so in order to stop the compulsive thinking, or at least slow it down a bit, we must first become mindful.
You’d become more mindful when you are no longer the actor of your thoughts but instead a watcher of them.
Instead of reacting to them and feeling bad, note down what you think about without your awareness, find out a pattern to your mental noise. Once you start to observe your mind, you are already a separate entity from it.
And once you become separate from it, that illusion cast by the noises slowly begins to melt, and another form of stronger and meaningful presence will arise – the true you.
Mental noise and alcohol
Why did I mention alcohol? Because it is one of the most common sources that people go to in order tune down their mental noises.
This is why people drink when they are stressed, because when they drink, they become so drunk they can’t even remember their problems anymore, and so that background noise eventually dies out…for a little while.
So, alcohol is actually beneficial in a way like that, it grants us a sense of temporary freedom from the mental torture of personal problems. Nothing would be there to constantly remind us that we have life problems, isn’t that just great?
Not really, because there is a bigger price to pay for drinking alcohol, aside from the money and health factors, you will become more mindless instead of mindful.
Once you rely on alcohol to shut down that mental noise, you’ll sink lower into your thoughts instead of rising above them. Because the thought and feeling of even wanting alcohol to quiet the noises in your head is part of the noise itself.
It isn’t just alcohol that does the job of course; you could do anything you want, as long as the activity renders you so mindless that you get to forget about your noises for a while.
Some of these activities could just be you surfing through the channels on a TV when nothing interesting is on. Or when you are on the internet surfing through pointless websites that would distract you for a moment away from your problematic mind.
I admit that I used to do that A LOT. I would often go through the pointless channels of commercials that make me mindless and distracted. Then I would forget about my problems for a bit, and return to live in the misery that my mind has provided for me after wards.
Conclusion
Confront your noises by become the watcher of them. Do not escape from them by thinking that it is part of who you are, and the only way to stop them is to dumb yourself down.
Your mind is the chamber of torture, step out of it knowing the mental noise says nothing about you or your life.
I’m going to take control, are you?
Ouch! It’s a bit painful for me to see my mind as a chamber of torture. I prefer to see it as a field where you plant seeds to grow things. But I get your point
Eduard
Ideas With A Kick´s last blog ..Personal development readers vs. personal development doers
haha, yes feel the pain Eduard >:D
The mind I’m talking about is the mind that is the most unconscious. Because it is the most unconscious mind that would become defined with it’s judgment and swirl of problems
I appreciate your comments Eduard
Steven
Hi Steven.
That guy in that first picture sure is in trouble. It reminds me of some old video games.
I like the discussion here about mental noise. It can get very loud, and some do cover that noise up with alcohol, which doesn’t tackle the source in any way. Understanding that this noise is mostly just noise is one way to handle it. It is a waste to have this mental noise as our regular listening channel.
It takes a victim mentality to give in to the noise and respond like it is in control.
The thoughts in these images sure are as in-your-face as they usually are in our heads. I like that you represented them with fitting intensity.
The message is clear here.
Armen Shirvanian´s last blog ..Going With A Plan And Social Sharing Of Strengths
Hey Armen, thanks for coming again and commenting, I appreciate it.
And yes you are right, understanding the mental noise is just one way of handling it. It is a very big first step to actually become aware of thse mental noise instead of being defined by them. To finally wake up with more consciousness and control over our lives is only the first step.
Thank you about what you said about the comics, I try to make it very literal, I guess that came across in a rather very literal way
Steven
Hi Steven,
I really related to your last frame here, the hand up holding off the mental noise.
That holds a lot of truth, we need to consciously hold up that hand sometimes. I know I need to do this often, “Talk to the hand because the face isn’t listening.” (jk)
Thanks for this post, Steven. Have a great day!
Lori´s last blog ..The Webs We Weave
Hey Lori, haha I like what you said about the noises. “talk to the hand because the face isn’t listening”, yes yes, that is exactly what I was trying to do. People deserve more than to be overwhelmed by their mental noises all the time.
As simple as this philosophy is, many people still fall short with this one. They just can’t seem to get out of their mental noises. They could have read hundreds of self help books that talks about opening up their consciousness and separate their mental noises, but still end up being one with the noises. The problem is that they try to understand it with their minds, which is the source of the mental noise!
Anyways, I hope this post with this simple idea would bring another knock on the head to the people who are still being dominated by their mental noise.
Steven
Hey man, this is a great post thank you for the reminder. You are so right, that mental noise isn’t a part of us, and we shouldn’t listen to what it says about our pasts, present and future. It doesn’t know anything, the only thing we can ensure is by taking action.
Thanks.
Hey James thank you for the comment!
And you are right, one of the ways to stop the mental noise is just to take action on your problem. Because the less actions you make, the more thought you’ll have. The more thoughts you’ll have, the more irritated and negative you are going to be affected by your mental noises.
Thanks for dropping by James
Steven
“It’s true that the mental noises are a part of you, but they are not part of who you are.”
Steven has is it exactly! We are not the noise. Unless we choose it. For good or ill.
My method of escaping hasn’t been alcohol, it’s was in MMOs. For a few years now I had been a living “mmo-wiki” with a couple games and as long as I could think about all -that- stuff, I wouldn’t have to face all my stresses/illness in rl.
Just recently I have begun to face some of my deeper fears and regrets. It’s crazy how lighter I feel now. It’s as if the stupid self-defeating thoughts were 100x’s heavier than the actual ‘problems.’
While I’m not perfect, I’m now more open to jumping at the opportunity to find these darker thoughts. I’m still scared, but also a little excited to see how light I can get!
Btw, I didn’t see the ‘hand’ in the last image, I saw ‘the bird’.
Hey Eirien,
I know EXACTLY what you are talking about with MMOs. For me it used to be that and a bunch of useless time consuming youtube videos…or MSN. Even though I felt bad doing those activities, I couldn’t stop them simply because I needed something right away to distract myself from the irritating mental noises I have inside.
It’s definitely great Eirien that you’ve come to face the demon inside of you, I hope one day you will have absolutely no worries at all! and live a life of liberation and excitement!:D…So you quit the MMOs? xD
Anyways, I thank you for reading my blog and commenting on it, I really appreciate your contribution Eirien.
Steven
PS: fly like a bird and rise above the clouds of your mental noises – Eirien
Steven:
Wow this is an insightful post and I love the illustrations that accompany the copy. You are so right about drinking and vegging out in front of TV as escape. I’m not just talking about a little escape (because we all need that) but the type of escape that becomes a bad habit. I am happy to say that, lately, I am becoming more aware of these torturous mind tricks. I’ve heard it said (I forgot who)…the mind is capable of making hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell. Thanks for a great post!
Hey Tim Thank you so much for the comment!
I’m very glad that you are becoming more aware of these mental noises behind our consciousness. I am starting to get out of it too just like you, and hopefully we can both use our minds for our advantage.
Steven
Steven, thank you for your words. I’m truly enjoying visiting here.
And yeah Youtube got me too.^^
I still play MMO’s (was WoW/LoTRO, now Aion) but went from 40+h/wk down to about 10h/wk. Less this month though as I’ve been doing other rl hobbies and working on my blogs. With the way the future looks however I’m not sure I’d ever completely wean myself off of MMOs.
I use my current MMO as a way to reach out to people (I’m rather shy irl), as well as a writing/art muse. While Aion is rather ‘grindy’ I don’t ever tell myself I -have- to play it.
I pick what I want to do that session and just go with it.
Wow good job Eirien for cutting down on the hours!
I haven’t been playing games for a long time now, because I think I’ve actually conditioned my mind to make me feel worse when I do play games than not. But yes, we should maintain healthy hobbies that make us grow as a aware being instead of always being immersed in useless hobbies that lowers our consciousness instead of raising it.
Lol and Eirien I know what you mean, for some weird reason, I used to feel obligated to play games. As if there were some sort of competition going on, and that I needed to be better than others…that was horrible. IF you turn anything that you like to do into an obligation, then it isn’t something enjoyable it’s just work clearly.
Anyways, thanks Eirien for the reply
Steven
We are slaves of our mind. Whatever our mind perceives it lets it manifest into our action. We have the choice of taming our mind, but it takes awareness and wisdom to attain this.
Our minds are excellent slaves but terrible masters.
Hey Walter, thanks for the comment.
You are absolutely right. Those who are successful are the ones who are the masters of their mind. They have trained their mind to be under their control and have tamed them for success and happiness.
I think I might just make a post similar to that idea next
PS: “Excellent slaves but terrible masters”…nicely put lol
Steven
Amazing, I love miley and her hot new album. I’d need to say that either Every Rose Has Its Thorn or Can’t Be Tamed are most likely my best liked songs. She is blossomed from her Hannah Montana days!