My Thinking Cap

I’ve been thinking about thinking. After being asked how I thought, I said verbally - in words. But I have noticed I can also think really quickly and then translate it into words afterwards. Is this pictures or what? And how do creatures/pre-language humans think? They clearly weren’t reaching for the thesaurus.

There are ways of changing your thought processes, like meditation, or subvocalising – which vastly improves how fast you read. People are taught to read by saying the words in your head. This is much slower than scanning it. But no one teaches us how to think – we each figure it out on our own.

We use only 10% of our brains, for the rest presumably is used for controlling the systems of the body. Only during epileptic fits do we use all 100%, and this is clearly not a good thing.

Meditation lets us reflect on our thoughts, and is a method that we can gain control over parts of our bodies, breathing for example. Experienced practitioners of meditation can slow their breathing to twice a minute. This doesn’t sound advisable, but must help relax the body.

The brain is born untrained, always active, but undisciplined and tiring, flitting from one thought to the next. This must mirror the unconscious thoughts which are uncontrolled, at the back of the mind. If conscious thought therefore becomes better and disciplined, ordered and efficient, this could help the unconscious. Thought becomes slower but more well-intentioned: relaxed and more able.

If animals cannot use language, they must think in pictures, or indeed just unconsciously, like when we sleep. This is not necessarily worse, and may in fact be better. Maybe it is just instinct. Humans though it appears are the only conscious beings in the world, although there is no means to test this. This means though the back of our minds is quite capable of thought and survival on its own. Why are humans able to think independently of this? Evolution has forced our hand – changing each species – and we have grown bigger, better brains.

Mindfulness and yoga teaches us how to change methods of thinking, more positively, and constructively. Habits are ingrained and then the unconscious mind is affected. And our cap grows and develops. And who knows where the cap goes when we die? And when we sleep? It doesn’t disappear I suppose. It merely gets put on hold. And then if we’re lucky we get to put it back on.