In my “Our inner voice is linked to our various selves” blog post (August 2022), I described the decidedly strange experience I had after imbibing an excess of marijuana.
Most of us have an inner voice speaking to us inside our mind.
It can either be voluntary, as when I read “Most of us have an inner voice” and can hear those words silently echo within my brain. It can also be involuntary, as when I do something wrong and hear “You’re an idiot” admonishing me without my consciously willing those words.
This inner voice generally is taken for granted. It’s just part of our mental background.
But a few years ago, when I was into vaping cartridges filled with concentrated cannabis oil (marijuana is legal here in Oregon), I overdid a new cartridge that was more potent than what I’d used before.
After a few inhales, I started to feel strange. Well, let’s make that stranger than usual. In my high state of mind, the thoughts being spoken by my inner voice suddenly seemed really bizarre. Who the heck was doing that speaking inside my head?
I didn’t exactly freak out. However, I was hyper-conscious of my inner voice, which now felt more like a mental intruder than a companion that was part of me. It took an hour or two before I felt like my usual self again.
This experience helped me realize how weird thoughts can seem, if we’re in a state of consciousness where we stop taking them for granted. Another way I’ve come to realize this is walking through downtown Salem on the way to my Tai Chi class. Often I encounter a mentally challenged homeless person standing on the sidewalk talking to no one in particular in a really loud voice.
I’ll think to myself, really, the only difference between them and me is that when I talk to no one in particular, I usually do it silently inside my head. What to have for dinner tonight? Lasagna, tofu and rice, Pad Thai… don’t feel much like cooking… easier to microwave a frozen dinner… can decide later… hungry now.
Who the heck am I talking to? Me? But why would I talk to me when I’m both sides of the conversation, the speaker and the listener? Yeah, for sure, thoughts are strange. Reading further in Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, I came across a discussion of inner speech that further complicates my view of thoughts — which for me often manifest as words spoken inside my head.
Inner speech, which many of us — including many philosophers and neuroscientists — believe is the common currency of consciousness, may actually not be all that common. Hurlburt estimates that only a minority of us are “inner speakers.” So why do we think we talk to ourselves all the time? Perhaps because we have little choice but to resort to language when asked to express what we are thinking.
As a result, we’re “likely to assume that’s the medium for inner thought.” We’ve also read so much about the importance of words to thinking — words written by philosophers and scientists (not to mention novelists) for whom it may well be true.
Some people are visualizers. When they say “I’m thinking,” they mean that they’re seeing a mental image of something. Or several things. I sort of experience this when concepts seem to float around in some inner mental space, arranging themselves in wordless patterns. If that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t be surprised. It barely makes sense to me.
Pollan writes:
Even more than we ordinarily realize, we are indeed alone with our thoughts — and with our way of thinking about them…. And while we may exchange the contents of our thinking with the help of shared symbols — words and images and gestures — the thoughts themselves remain forever sequestered on their separate islands. One of the roles of the arts, and literature especially, is to ferry us to other islands to learn what — and how — other islanders think.
Often meditators view thoughts as the enemy. Or at least, unwelcome guests. But thought are more accurately viewed as inescapable aspects of our mental landscape, along with perceptions and emotions. This passage in Pollan’s book fits with my own extensive meditation experience.
In an attempt to pin down the unconscious origins of our conscious thoughts, Christoff Hadjiilieva conducted an experiment with long-term meditators (mindfulness practitioners). These are people who have been trained to still their minds but also to notice the precise moment when that stillness is broken by an errant thought, which Christoff Hadjiilieva found happens every ten to twenty seconds or so even in these trained minds. (“The big lesson of meditation,” she said, “is that the mind cannot be controlled.”)
Thoughts are part of what makes us human. So are perceptions. So are emotions. Thoughts, perceptions, and emotions are our constant companions, ever-changing, coming and going, unceasingly manifesting in fresh forms during our waking hours. To stop thoughts is to stop life itself. Such will happen naturally when we take our last breath. There’s no reason to hasten that moment by attempting to stop thoughts.
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