Oakville Zen Meditation

#396 Self-talking is Self-hypnosis May 1 22

Talking to ourselves and listening to our continuous inner voice is, by far, the most common activity of our mind.

It is estimated that around 90,000 to 140,000 thoughts are produced every day.

A very small proportion of this huge amount is decisional, but most of them are self-talking and listening to ourselves with w/any specific decisions. We entertained ourselves non-stop. A true affliction.

We are chatting with ourselves because our minds cannot remain silent and still, impossible.

This is a permanent daydreaming state unless something is requested our attention.

At this point, we are landing back in the current space-time.

Self-talking and self-listening are the default mode of our minds.

I call it self-hypnosis.

This ongoing little voice in your head can be entertaining but also is creating a significant amount of negative emotions from fictional problems.

Fictional because being most of the time in the past or future, w/o possible and objective solutions.

Does getting out of self-talking possible?

We cannot stop our mind-made self-talking the same way we cannot stop our heart from beating.

But we can learn how to be aware, to pay attention to our chatty minds at least for a short period of time. How?

This is where the practice of mindfulness will give you the tool to put your mind on mute.

Just be mindful of your current space-time that is

      Where you are in the present moment, and

      What you are focusing on.

You can experience the factual realities of the Now, and the components brought by your 5 senses.

This is exactly what we do while meditating: focusing on our breathing--or something else --,

and be aware of this little voice popping, and going back to our breathing,

Finally:

To awaken is to wake up from our daydreaming state called “Self- talking” by paying attention to our mind-made chatting made of thoughts and feelings.

By doing so, you put your mind on mute, and become in control, at least temporally.

During this short period of time, you are Awake in its spiritual sense, the antidote to self-hypnosis.