Noteworthy preface: In the below post, when I use the blunt phrase "overthinking", I am using it without any judgement, prescriptive, or negative connotation. In other words, I'm not saying it is a type of thinking that people "shouldn't" do (whatever that would be), or that they are "evil" or "immoral" for doing it (whatever that would mean). Rather, I am using the term in a merely descriptive non-judgemental sense, similar to explaining to a customer that they accidentally overpaid before giving them a refund for that overpayment, or if while teaching my sons a sport lovingly mention to my son that he "overshot" the the basket on that shot as a reference to a specific type of missing the basket. That is an important note of clarification, because otherwise (e.g. if I was saying or believing that people "shouldn't" overthink, or are "immoral" or "evil" or "resentment-worthy" for doing it), then I'd be thereby doing the very overthinking of which I am speaking. It would be inherently hypocritical and paradoxical and self-contradiction. It would be like saying, "You shouldn't say should," or saying, "try to not try". To negatively judge or resent or hate or moralizingly condemn overthinking is to overthink.
With that clarification in my mind, let's proceed...
In an earlier topic, I pointed out that concepts of preference only make sense when it comes to your choices (i.e. what's in your control).
The other side of that is this: concepts of truth (and falsehood) and agreement (and disagreement) only make sense in regard to objective propositions (i.e. meaningful statements that have an objective truth value).
The human mind is prone to something often called "overthinking", which produces a lot of anxiety, superstitions, worry, and confusion.
Consider these absurd incoherent questions:
- "Do you agree with that hurricane that happened yesterday? I know you agree that it happened, but do you agree with its happening?"
- "When a same-sex couple has consenting sex in the privacy of their own house, do you agree with them doing that?"
- "Do you want to change the past? I know we both agree that changing the past is impossible, but don't you want to do what you cannot do?"
Those are just a tiny few examples of infinite, where the words and/or the human mind itself incoherently apply concepts that only work for a certain type of function to something else, such as applying truth concepts (true/false/agree/disagree) to non-propositions, or applying preference concepts to non-choices.
Inner peace is, in part, simply a state in which you've let go of all of those kind of incoherent questions, and by extension thus let go of all the incoherent judgementalism, needless worry, and anxious overthinking that that kind of exhausting nonsense and exhausting superstition entail.
Many people behave as if they have unlimited space in their brain to give away rent-free.
In contrast, one reason I am so wary of superstitious judgementalism is that, if I am going to give away rent-free space in my very small finite human brain by thinking about you (or something else), I'd at least tend to prefer to give it to coherent thoughts that actually make sense. Even if you ask me a question that makes sense and has an objective yes/no answer, I'm not obliged to spend valuable time and limited mental resources thinking about it and giving you an answer. But it's usually all I can do to hold in my laughter when the question is something as incoherent and thus unanswerable as, "Do you agree with homosexual sex?", "Do you agree with the hurricane that happened", "Do you want to change the past?", "Wouldn't you prefer if 2+2=5?", "Are rabid dogs resentment-worthy and hate-worthy? Don't they deserve to be hated and resented?", or any question with a word like "should", "ought", "immoral", "evil".
Especially for those who don't meditate and practice mindfulness and/or who aren't deeply in touch with what we could call their inner or spiritual spaciousness and the conscious silence between words, and especially for people's whose minds are crowded with loud rushed thoughts, the human mind is prone to asking questions that don't make sense and to giving incoherent answers to questions that don't make sense. Sometimes it's the asker of the incoherent question, sometimes it is the incoherent answerer of the incoherent question, and often times it's both at once: the incoherent self-asker and the incoherent answerer. That is often called "overthinking", or sometimes 'stewing' or 'ruing'.
In analogy, I am the type of human that if I ate every time I was hungry and didn't stop eating until I wasn't hungry anymore, I would die of morbid obesity within a year or two.
For me, that would be overeating in that it related to eating in the way overthinking relates to thinking.As this human we call Eckhart, my genetic code and bodily urges didn't evolve in an environment where that instinct to eat so much was so deadly, but rather the opposite. In a sense, this human body I have was designed for an environment where food was often scare and unreliable, and death would only come from not eating enough versus having too much. The caveman who stuffed himself until he felt sick and almost threw up was the one who survived when a few days later the food runs out and he doesn't get to eat for weeks. Not having an absurdly strong appetite was a recipe for death, and having some kind of urge to moderate the food was effectively pointless.
All humans experience a similar pattern when it comes to the brain's urge to think, judge, and explain. I don't know if curiosity killed the cat, but I know evolved instincts make a lot of modern humans miserable. It's like living in a world of USB-Cs when all you have there's old USB-B chargers. It's like living in a world of Androids and Android changers when all you have is an original iPhone and iPhone charger. It's like only having a ancient flip-phone in a near-future world where all charging cords and ports are gone and all phone charging is done wirelessly, similar to the move from cabled TV and cabled internet to wifi. Sometimes it can even feel like you weren't made for this world. It can feel like you were made for one that existed a long time ago.
The human doesn't tend to say, "I don't know", and then be quiet with a smile, even if that is the most accurate answer and most reasonable response. When asked what it thinks about something, it doesn't tend to say, "I don't think about that," and then be quiet with a smile, even if that would be the most honest, accurate, and reasonable response.
Rather than be quiet and peaceful, the brain tends to incessantly judge things by applying rating concepts that don't even make sense to things to which they obviously don't even apply (e.g. applying truth concepts such as true/false/agree/disagree to non-propositions, or applying preference concepts to non-choices).
All human minds do that to some extent, which is part of why all humans are on the addiction spectrum, but the path of inner peace my book teaches isn't primarily about reducing let alone eliminating the outdated urges, bodily feelings, and judgemental nonsense the brain tends to incessantly think, but simply realizing you don't need to believe it or be attached to it. If the mind lies or says some judgemental gibberish, which generally all humans do a lot, you can just notice it with a spiritual smile without agreeing with it and without believing it. In other words, that form of inner peace is just a matter of realizing you aren't the thinker of those judgemental or nonsensical thoughts, or any thoughts, but rather the listener.
There's a sort of beautiful strangeness to the fact that there even is a listener, i.e. that you, the real you, even exist. In philosophy, that's called the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
It's deeply connected to--and in a way the same things as--something that even 99% of PhD scientists just don't get or continually forget: That there is no universal now; that there is no objective now; that there is no universal or objective present; that simultaneity is relative; that events don't even have an objective order, meaning what comes first, second, or third between three events is like the difference between what is to left or the right; that time, at least as it's commonly understood, is a total and utter illusion; that without consciousness there is no present or presence at all of any kind. That's all mostly just different ways of describing the same one Hard Problem of Consciousness: The fact that the human you see in the mirror has this seemingly transcendental listener (you) that sees that particular one human at that particular one age (not even an hour older or an hour younger) as the center of the universe in 4D spacetime whose nose happens to always point forward, whose clock ticks at one second per second, and whose and age and position determines left vs right, past vs future, space vs time. It's the seeming paradox between the objective unreality of time, the relativity of simultaneity, and the undeniable of presence (i.e. consciousness). Roughly speaking, it's the problem people get at when they ask, "What makes the now now?" It wasn't as much an obvious mystery and seeming paradox in classical physics and Newton's physics, because Newton's physics (which turned out to be utterly wrong) had an objective now. There was a "the now". But when you accept and understand the fact that there is no "the now", in the same sense there is no "the left" or "the right", then you really start to understand what that question scratches at and why the Hard Problem is so Hard: "What makes the now now?"
Another way of saying the same question is this: Since Einstein proved there is no "the now", why do I (a conscious being) have this conscious experience of there being a now, as if a certain chunk or certain slice of the block universe was realer or more highlighted than any other. Another way I've heard people describe the Hard Problem is this: Why does it feel like something is happening? If all-aged versions of the human I see in the mirror live in the same unchanging timeless block universe as each other (and as all other humans ever from Jesus to Martians in Earth year 3,000), why does it seem like I am only this one specific-aged version of this specific human, and what is that--from here looking through this human's mind and eyes--I seem to know more than I know anything that something is happening?
But be careful not to overthink it.
Remember that just because a question can be asked, doesn't mean it can be answered or that even has an answer. Remember that even if a question has a non-verbal answer that doesn't a verbal one.
Not all sentences have truth values, and not all truths can be expressed in sentences or even with words at all
Indeed, when people ask me any question with sentences that use very equivocal words like 'free-will' or 'god', I often like to say is this: What I know more than I know anything is the futility of words and the reality of the indescribable.
When describing the indescribable, I suggest being flexible in the words you use; that is, if you use words at all and don't instead choose to enjoy the space between words, and the dimension of infinite depth to be found there, such as one finds in the conscious silence consciously experience in a conscious but silent and thoughtless meditating mind.
You can have invincible inner peace and be acceptingly and appreciatingly present (a.k.a. conscious), and be more present in your unique present, all without fully understanding what presence is.
It might seem unaswerable or to scratch at the indescribable to ask, "Considering there is no objective now, hat makes the now now?"
But if you ask it without words, and answer it without words, maybe it's easy. Maybe it's infinitely easy. Maybe it's harder to explain science itself than it is to explain consciousness. Maybe the easy answer was in there all along in each and every one of all those many different ancient spiritual books and texts by great empirical scholars and thinkers thousands of years ago, from all over the world, all saying the same thing in different words, despite living so far apart and having no contact. When so many people come independently to the same conclusion that says something. Sometimes we have to look past the differing words to see the shared meaning and the easy truth.
When someone asks you, "What do you think about X?", feel free to just say, "I don't."
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
- It's okay. It's just an artifact of memetic evolution. ;)
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program, both for the free option and the paid option.
