As for the folks who think they can’t stop thinking – there’s an element implicit in the post above that seems to be missing from some of your own experiences – and that’s nonjudgment. This might not work for you, but non-judgment, or self-compassion, was missing from my earlier attempts at reaching a meditative state/flow state/temporary period of non-thinking/period of no verbal thinking/sense of spiritual connection. It can be a huge leap, in itself, for it requires deciding, at least for the space of a few thoughts, that you will neither judge yourself for thinking, nor for particular thoughts, nor even for judging yourself for thinking when you are meant to be “not thinking.”

If you do try to explore this again, perhaps check out something like iRest yoga nidra guided meditations? It’s available online for pretty cheap and it helps with three things: returning focus to the body’s natural experiencing of sensation without encouraging the brain making a storyline, encouraging welcoming of experience and nonjudgment – and for people who find their inner experience intolerable in the silence, it also walks you through identifying an “inner resource” to mentally return to if the sensations that arise are not tolerable.

I know this is long and I hope that this is in the spirit or vein of the types of posts that are welcome. I applaud your courage – not your uniqueness in this – for you’re right, it’s available to anyone – but still the essential, ordinary courage it takes to face life without our running storyline.

Tolle is a weird case. Certain things make obvious he doesn’t know the full meaning of the words he’s saying (otherwise he’d not say and do various other things). But he may or may not be repeating them from someone who does know what they mean. Unfortunately he’s part of a whole industry that causes a lot of confusion (although it’s always possible to take some of his words the right way even as he says them for the wrong reasons, hence the weird).

http://abnormaldiversity.blogspot.com/2008/05/letter-to-kid-like-me.html

Basically, I imagined that there was a kid, somewhere between 10 and 12 years old, who was *exactly* the same as I was at that age, and wrote what I wish someone had told me then.

Anyway, I seem to be taking over the discussion, so I’ll try to bow out now!

I’ll just add that my own practice isn’t easy, often doesn’t go well, BUT has improved my life beyond measure, and everyone who knew the “before” me as well as the “after” sees it, many people have commented over the years. I’m nowhere at all near perfect, but in terms of quality of life there’s just no comparison.

As for the subject you chose, Long nights and what you need to get through them,it brings up one unusual night for me when I truly knew despair. Somehow I ended up in a quiet space devoid of input and out of that grew a strength and calmness I took as a gift. Since then I have had a few encounters with dangerous conditions or what seemed like insurmountable circumstances and have been able at some point to let go and trust that whatever came next was just a part of life going on. It always seemed there was more given to me in that moment then I could possibly receive regardless of what I went through. It is a hard thing to talk about but I think good comes out of talking.

As for your warning, I think it could just stand alone. No one can confuse it then. Boot it down a few lines so it stands by itself and see if that makes more sense to others. You could even box it in like a warning on a medicine bottle.

Another method some peope use successfully, which might counter the failure thought of “Stop thinking! You just had a thought” etc is that when a thought comes up you gently label it “thought” and let it drift off. And the same with the next one and the next. If you’re trying to focus on something else you might think a gentle “thought, breath” to get you back to just feeling the breath.

These things are, for most people, practices, rather than instant successes, but practise, with the right support and guidance does work. Minds actually work very very similarly – you find this out if you go to, for example, classes where meditation is dicussed: lots of people having the same issues. And where meditation etc is taught teachers can tell you how to help yourself with these issues. Reading around can do it too, but it’s harder to select what you need to persevere at and what you’d be best to drop, at least for now.

None of the issues raised here so far stands out from the ones I’ve heard raised by NTs without mental health issues.

Again I’m not saying you *should* do this, just that if you wanted to I bet it wouldn’t be impossible! I’m autistic and have repetitive thought issues, and some of these techniques have worked wonders, even if at first I’ve thought, *I* can’t do that, I’m different to everyone else. Sometimes feeling different can become a sort of pride that needs to be got over in some situations! A Buddhist teacher I knew put it “so Buddha taught 84 000 different teachings for different problems of the mind, but left out specifically what *you* need?” You can generalise that beyond Buddhism to other mind practises, it can be an art of humility to realise that you’re not all that different at every single level! Believe me, I’ve been through it.

I can’t do the not-thinking thing either. I’ve tried, and while I haven’t had as much distress as you have, I’ve failed enough in unhelpful ways that I know it’s not a good thing to keep at. (Trying to shut down all of the conscious, active thinking leads to the “Stop thinking! You just had a thought! You’re doing it wrong! That was another thought! Stop having thoughts!” problem.) I also tend to have three tracks of thoughts running at once (one main one, one background one that processes verbal information, and one background run that covers non-words. So if I get some sort of focus-stimulus, like a mantra or a rhythm or a texture to focus on, I’ve still got at least one mental track actively producing thoughts. People’s brains are complicated and variable things.

Different people have minds that work in different ways, and it’s okay that something that’s beneficial for Amanda to not work for you.