# How quiet is your mind?



## aphinion (Apr 30, 2013)

My mind is very un-quiet. I swear, sometimes I get the weirdest thoughts. 


"Meth users should be caused methmaticians."

"Do animals think in the sounds they make?"

"I wonder how bad it hurts to be shot."


All day.


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## Mizmar (Aug 12, 2009)

My mind is pretty noisy. There's a lot of chatter. I'll often lecture or debate myself about some concept or theory. At the same time there is _always_ a song playing in my head. I don't experience my thoughts as fast, for the most part. Most of the time they seem quite slow and plodding, like an earthworm digging itself deeper and deeper into the ground.


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## Dragheart Luard (May 13, 2013)

I don't know the exact thoughts that I have normally, as those seem to be like a haze that goes around my brain on a slow speed, waiting to be linked with the rest of my mental database, but those links happen at random moments, then I get a sudden flash that would be some idea that could be useful for understanding things that confused me before. Still those flashes don't happen always, as my mind seems to be permanently on a base energy level, plus many times I think about stuff that makes no apparent sense. 
So I would say that I never experience a rapid fire of ideas, as it's more like a permanent information flow that happens slowly. I could say that my mind is rather calm, but not silent, as I feel those whispers that bring some random data on a frequent rate.


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## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

aphinion said:


> My mind is very un-quiet. I swear, sometimes I get the weirdest thoughts.
> "Meth users should be caused methmaticians."
> "Do animals think in the sounds they make?"
> "I wonder how bad it hurts to be shot."
> All day.


^you sound Ne dom. my mind is like this too :tongue:


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

Nonsense said:


> I guess my mind is not that active (no multitasking, anyway). :/ Sometimes it feels too quiet lol. Need more stuff to think about.


...More INTERESTING stuff, anyway. I do not want to keep thinking about arguments I had 5+ years ago omg.


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## Animal (May 29, 2012)

I wrote this recently, on another website bio.

________________________

Q: I spend a lot of time thinking about...

A: I 'absorb and percolate' and imagine more than I think.. and then things emerge from the vessel in a new form.

This is a matter of priority rather than mental incapacity. I've been an achiever all my life, academically and creatively. I think quickly and efficiently when I apply my mind to a task. I'm calm in a crisis, take charge and have fast solutions. I devour fiction, philosophies, and systems and read people like a book. However, I don't think constantly the way others do. I prefer being physically present and alert. I've never watched television, and to me, television is what thinking sounds like.. an extra voice in the background distracting you from communication, your body, your actions, your feelings, and your self. My presence and awareness of body and surroundings is part of why I feel like an animal. Animals think selectively.

That being said, I would probably make more sense to other people if I would think more. Cat allergies ftw, now I must capture humans or be left all by my lonesome. =,)

__________________

I want to point out something though. I don't have constant verbal mental chatter, but I type faster than I think. The outpour is constant, but it comes through my hands or my spoken words. I don't think before I type or before I speak. I have to edit my posts later and regret my words in retrospect.

"Absorb and percolate" is constant. I am often completely zoned out into my own world, in my headphones, as opposed to 'present in the social world.' But I am present in my headphones, absorbing the music like a sponge. Or I am present in some fantasy that is happening before my [mental] eyes, absorbing the story like a sponge for subsequent outpour. If I think in words, I have to write them down - in a diary, on my iphone, on anything I can get my hands on.. because if words are coming out, that means the percolation is leading somewhere. I percolate constantly, but I don't even realize it - when it "leads" somewhere it comes to me in an epiphanic fashion. My diary, creative work, or posts end up being my 'mirror.'

This is why people are sometimes shocked to hear things I've picked up about them when it seemed like I wasn't paying attention. This is also why I can tell so much about a person from a photo or a quick meeting. It's almost scary. Because I pick up so many vibes and it registers somewhere within, even without knowing that I'm "thinking" about it. Someone's specific relationship dynamics or what they would be like in bed is as clear to me from their body language as, "the rug is brown." Their drug of choice, their sleep habits, their family dynamics... various aspects of people just come to the surface immediately for me. And it's not because I want to sleep with them or I care about their relationship or drug habits or underlying dynamics, it's that I can't help but see underneath things. Of course I do not "see all," but certain things pop out to me and others don't. I don't usually put much effort in to "figure people out." The underlying stuff is bound to expose itself to me over time. Thing is, it's pretty hard to put "what I see" into words. The closest I can come is embodying them in a fictional work, which I have done in the past, and I've made people cry for how closely I represented their inner world in these works. It's hard for me to "explain what I see" in plain words; it's something much deeper than that, more systemic, not explainable, not attributable to mental-chatter or words or conscious thoughts; nevertheless, I _see_ it.

For this reason I can also have trouble when someone asks me for an opinion on their e-type or something in their lives. If it hasn't "come to me" then I probably don't have an opinion, and I have to force thoughts that weren't there. Or I have to put words to something that is beyond words and feels instinctual to me. I can also have trouble answering very straight forward questions about myself, because I haven't put the answer into words before, and scrambling for words that didn't just "come to me" is not my natural way. My natural way is to just absorb, percolate, and mirror.

I am capable of a quiet mind and a tremendously focused mind. I have also dedicated ample time and experimentation in the past to obtain mind control. It's not that hard for me, even if there's stuff going on subconsciously that isn't registering as "thoughts."


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## g_w (Apr 16, 2013)

Guu said:


> This is something I have felt guilty about since I was a child. My mind is like a lazy peon, who refuses to work. This is why Ti frightens me so, because it seems like so much WORK! Ew. I never sit down and think hard. If i do, it is only a part of protocol to solve something, and even then it is like my lazy peon brain got up for once and serves me the answer on a silver platter. I have felt so guilty all my life for having it so easy.
> 
> My perseverance levels are extremely low as a result.


My God, all of my instinctive alarm bells are going off on this one.
I think you're an *exact* fit for that INFP guy of yours -- if I remember rightly, INFPs live for Fi/Ti ... but you're a type 8, so you're a "doer" -- the two of you can tag-team at the world with each others' _souls_...

(I can haz popcorn?) 

http://www.smileyvault.com/albums/forum/thumb_smileyvault-popcorn.gif


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## aphinion (Apr 30, 2013)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> ^you sound Ne dom. my mind is like this too :tongue:


I've wondered... My Ne and Ni are pretty even, so that might explain some of it...


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## g_w (Apr 16, 2013)

aphinion said:


> My mind is very un-quiet. I swear, sometimes I get the weirdest thoughts.
> "Meth users should be caused methmaticians."
> "Do animals think in the sounds they make?"
> "I wonder how bad it hurts to be shot."
> All day.





Mizmar said:


> My mind is pretty noisy. There's a lot of chatter. I'll often lecture or debate myself about some concept or theory. At the same time there is _always_ a song playing in my head. I don't experience my thoughts as fast, for the most part. Most of the time they seem quite slow and plodding, like an earthworm digging itself deeper and deeper into the ground.





spectralsparrow said:


> My mind is a circus.
> Not very quiet.
> Ever.





Grau the Great said:


> Mine's pretty loud, but in a good, entertaining, and useful way. Picture an endless wikipedia spree from topic to topic and you've got a pretty good idea of what it's like. The useful part is that my thoughts need something external to focus them. Seeing a particular image--a map for example--could call forth a whole list of related information about the particular country the map-image displays. The external object isn't optional though. Without something external as a filter, my thoughts are unfocused and noisy. With something to use as a foundation, it's easy for me to call up lots of relevant information at will.
> 
> Now that I've said the positive side of it, I should add that it's not always so great when it isn't possible to focus on something external (like when lying in bed). Falling asleep with a stream of thoughts about hell knows what (cheese rolling festivals, for example) trolling around my head is next to impossible. It's like a mental cheese rolling festival happening inside my head every night, if you will.
> 
> I enjoy it though, loud and obnoxious or not :3





jadedtortoise said:


> I have racing thoughts & flight of ideas that are very precise and clear to me. I rarely get to enjoy the peace of silence, unless I have smoked marijuana or taken a sleeping pill.





OrangeAppled said:


> I do this with the tangents too, but mainly I get overwhelmed when I decide it's worth recording in some manner. Trying to remember where I started and how I went from one thing to the next suddenly seems tiring. And it's never as interesting as the first time. It's like when I backtrack and gather my ideas on something, some of the tastier bits get lost forever. I pretty much have to record or act on the ideas as they emerge for them to retain their spontaneous charm and to keep the more insightful bits from becoming stale.


 @_aphinion_, @_Mizmar_, @_spectralsparrow_, @_Grau the Great_, @_Guu_, @_Animal_, @_kaleidoscope_, @_jadedtortoise_, @_OrangeAppled_, -- (and others)

Thanks for your thoughts & contributions to this thread, even if I haven't quoted them (since they didn't tie in to the point I'm about to make), I have read and appreciate them.

This is to @_OrangeAppled_ as a real-life example of what my thoughts may be like when I am not engaged in conversation or on a work topic, and not reading or listening to music.

If you read it, I think you can understand my post elsewhere in this thread

http://personalitycafe.com/enneagra...167795-how-quiet-your-mind-3.html#post4305717

to see *how* thoughts form a linked set of train cars...and how by finding the vertices method, I was able to recreate (I assume pretty accurately) an internal monologue / train of thought that I had two days ago: which didn't last any more than 20-30 seconds when I was living through it.

Warning: truly bizarre. 

Full Disclosure: I have NEVER done any narcotics, nor am I on any prescription medications. I am at most a social drinker. 
_
My mind likes to wander at the most inopportune times.

Recently, I was making a pit stop in the men's room, and
recalled seeing a teaser headline on a website about an
article which explained why most male mammals urinate
for about 21 or 22 seconds, across species. I hadn't
read the article, but this was enough to send my mind 
"off to the races."

My mind first went to the capacity of the bladder relative
to the size of the animal, and hydrostatic pressure vs.
the probable shear strength of the muscles and other
proteins which make up the bladder.

Moving "upstream" my mind then considered the kidneys:
now there is an evolutionary dynamical bottleneck: how can
animals attain a certain size BEFORE a kidney has developed?
How would kidneys have evolved by chance -- no, this was not
a Hume-like "argument from complexity argument" but one
about *logistics* -- I first wondered what systems in the body
cleaned away the filtrate from the kidneys (by analogy to
a sintered glass crucible in chemistry lab), before I remembered
that kidneys do not filter out *solid* particulates; rather, they
are a convoluted system of membranes which work on 
concentration gradients.

But this brought up two other questions: what was the 
"nucleation center" if you will (by analogy to synthesizing
crystals in organic chemistry labs), what was the element, 
which made *that particular part of the body* the site
where a bunch of membranes decided to develop in order
to filter out waste? (Presumably, a bunch of membranes
scattered throughout the body would only work if there
were a separate sewer system kind of like the circulatory
system to convey the wastes to the outside.) And speaking
of conveying wastes, wouldn't that mean that the ducts
from the kidney to the bladder, and the bladder, would have
had to develop at much the same time as the kidney?

And then, finally, what about things such as spiders or insects?
I realized with a shock, that although I know from 7th grade
that spiders have book lungs, that I didn't even know if spiders
had a heart or circulatory system: and without a circulatory
system, then, what of the kidneys? My mind trailed on
to thoughts of comparative anatomy and physiology,
and then flashed through a scene in The Agony and the Ecstasy
where one of the monks hides a key to the mortuary for young
Michelangelo to find, in order for him to further his studies
in anatomy to make his art (paintings and sculptures) more
realistic...and from there, to dissections, and then a brief,
painfully stupid thought of the first hardy souls to attempt to
dissect spiders, and how they would *ever* be able to identify
a spider's kidney as compared to any of the other internal organs.
What kind of person would do that job, what kind would volunteer
for that job, and who would *PAY* for it anyway?

But by this time my 22 seconds were up and I went to the sink
to wash my hands: not only of any germs I had been exposed to,
but of the whole train of thought. I left the musings on spiders'
kidneys in the rest room where they belonged._


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## Sparkling (Jul 12, 2013)

Dead quiet, I'm feeling gut though. In the sense, you know, not analyzing but following instincts


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## an absurd man (Jul 22, 2012)

My mind is like a noisy radio. Tune in to a certain station, but there is always noise in the background.


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## Satan Claus (Aug 6, 2013)

My mind is always racing and thinking.


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