I have something in my head. It natters all day long. Sometimes it is critical of what I’ve done; sometimes it tries to enthuse me or sooth my wounds with words. At all times it is a voice that talks in the first person; as if it were me. I actually believe it is me who is talking to myself

I’d like to look into this a bit deeper and explore what is going on. You might find this interesting. If I – I can only talk about my own experience, and assume many people have a similar experience, but I know there are those who do not experience the incessant chatter as much as me. Watch your mind and see if you have the same infliction…

From dusk till I’m fully asleep I have this voice – that I fully identify with and believe is me – chattering constantly. Often it is narrating my ever action, and then repeating the day’s events.

If I watch this narrator, I can see that it carries on without my consent.

It will just keep on going, even if I want it to stop. I can observe this narrator – and it will narrate the fact that I’m watching it! I can go from a 1st person identification with the narrator to a 2nd person watcher of it. I can watch my narrator doing its stuff. However, what happens is that the narrator stops its chatter and becomes quiet, only for a quieter narrator to whisper a narration (as if it were me) of me watching the chatter box!

When I read, this voice repeats every word my visual sense has already seen and understood.

My thoughts are also repeated in this voice. It is as if there is an extra loop of programming in my mind that funnels everything through the channel of words – that I need to hear in my head – before I can recognise my own thoughts or understand the words on the page. Yet, speed reading proves that one doesn’t need to vocalise every word in order to understand the words on a page: our visual understanding of the words is enough.

It has been shown recently , through scientific clinical study, that people in general make decisions about things well before their conscious mind gets the message. On average, this is a ten second delay between our subconscious mind has processed all the information and come up with a response. And I think this is probably because this extra loop in the system, that feels the need to filter our thoughts through words and repeat then to us for us to hear in our head, is what may account for the delay.

This extra loop makes my thought processes very slow.

I am a thoughtful and consider things carefully, so if all this has to be channeled through the filter of words then voiced in my head before I can feel like “I” have made a decision – no wonder I am ultra slow in all things…

According to some Buddhist teachings*; this voice, this chatterer, this narrator, is actually an impersonator, an imposter pretending to be who we really are, a tyrant who has taken over our life!

* I mention Buddhist teachings only because they are the ones I studied – and then only because I couldn’t easily find the teachings of the Christian mystics (the actual instructions on how to get there rather than the descriptions of the Ultimate).

When I meditate on this...

.. and just try to watch the narrator (then the whispering narrator), I can see where they are right on this one. It is as if this narrator has, by our habitual use of it, become an entrenched squatter in our mind. And the insidious thing about it (which isn’t anyone’s fault) is we actually believe this trumped up piece of programming is who we truly are.

Meditating, and watching the narrator has been proven to quieten the chatterer. Recognizing that it is not YOU, while doing the watching will help to disentangle YOU from the software. A Buddhist would say this is the beginning of YOUR liberation, and mystics from all religions (including Christian mystics) would probably agree.

If you have thoughts on this, or need help with the use of this kind of self analysis, let me know.