Quieting the Mind: How Stilling the Inner Voice Brings Clarity
What is that certain special quality about quieting the mind that people who are able to practice it find so alluring, centring and fulfilling?
A noisy mental state is what most people experience most of the time. The internal voice that never seems to stop talking can often get in the way of our very progress through life.
However, quieting the noisy mind brings a real sense of relief, relaxation and peace.
How do people achieve that inner quiet that is the result of stilling the inner voice?
Muting the Noise
I personally find the best way to shut off that often irritating internal narrative that likes to chatter on and on inside my head is to purposefully ignore it.
I do that by first getting into a relaxed state. Then I turn my attention onto an internal blank screen that I position figuratively right behind my eyes and focus all my conscious resources on it, to the exclusion of all else, aside from my breathing.
That probably sounds a lot like I'm meditating. You'd be correct in that assumption!
Meditation can be different things to different people, but one of the common aspects of the practice is the focusing of the consciousness onto nothingness and stilling the inner voice. That is achieved by a number of methods.
Which you choose is what works best for you.
Breath Work
For me, the beginning stages involve turning my attention onto my breathing. I literally force my conscious mind to take over from the subconscious for a short while and intentionally regulate my breathing to mimic a natural relaxed state, like that experienced right after a physically stressful event.
The way I do that is to breathe in deeply at a moderate pace, hold momentarily, then exhale very slowly. As a rough guide I aim to spent about twice as long breathing out as breathing in.
This naturally forces my whole attention on breathing a certain way. While that's happening, my mind can't busy itself doing anything else, like carrying on an internal monologue with itself, which is exactly what I want to prevent it from doing.
After several breathing cycles, I allow my breathing rate to gradually slow to a normally relaxed pace. I then allow some internal dialogue to commence, but it isn't any idle chitter chatter.
Affirmations
I begin repeating some simple positive affirmations, similar to what I use when inducing self-hypnosis. You can use whatever is easy for you to remember and repeat.
I sometime like to make good use of the simple, but effective ho'oponopono mantra of,
″I love you. I'm sorry, Please forgive me. Thank you.″
You can learn a lot more about that kind of mantra by reading my article that explains a ho'oponopono certification course by Dr. Joe Vitale by following that link.
But back to the process. After several repetitions of my chosen mantra, I am becoming even more relaxed and still inside.
My attention can then move to a deliberately manufactured, virtual blank space.
The Field of Nothingness
Even before my consciousness gets a chance to find something to start internally chattering about, I turn it to face that cleverly concocted blank screen, which I like to call a field of nothingness, for want of a better term.
The point of this is while my full conscious attention is placed on a dark void, it can't get up to any mischief. It won't either, as long as there is something more interesting to keep it busy.
What could possibly be so fascinating about a blank void, I hear you ask?
That's a kind of mind hack that has its reward in what I might experience by concentrating on that field of nothingness. I'm never disappointed.
Figuratively staring at a blank area of space while perfectly relaxed allows the mind to experience pseudo-visual instances. Like formless shapes or colours that appear out of the nothingness at random.
This period of concentration and focus further deepens the mental state in the direction of lower frequency brainwaves that take me toward a sleep state. But not quite.
The goal is to reach the point where brain activity falls below the alpha state but I'm not actually asleep. Rather, I maintain consciousness at a very deep state for as long as possible.
In this state, it is possible to connect with a higher power that seems to exist everywhere and nowhere. Many refer to it as Infinite Intelligence, a term that I also feel is very descriptive, since it is from this energy that ideas, hunches and ethereal snatches of ideas seems to emanate.
Whether you believe in this energy field or not, or whether you view it as something of a different nature, possibly in religious or spiritual terms, I personally experience its presence and its essence as an originator of deep thought insights or answers to problems that conscious reasoning fails to provide.
Summary
A still, quiet mind can be a breeding ground for insightfulness and a fertile nursery for ideas that can, when acted upon, bring great rewards.
Quieting the mind is not difficult when you intend it and work at making that inner voice go silent. The more you practice techniques like meditation, the better you'll get at achieving it.
It's certainly well worth trying if you've never done it before and absolutely worth the effort to silence the internal chatter on a regular basis if for nothing other than to experience complete, restful inner peace and traquility.
Posted: May 26, 2024
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