Mind

I may have asked this here before, but why do we finish the sentences in our mind?

Putting aside the question as to why our inner dialog is even in sentences to begin with, I've never surprised myself with the ending of one of the mental sentences I've started.  I've never thought, "Oh my gosh!  I was anticipating that I was going to think this one thing, and then I totally surprised myself at the end of the thought with something completely unexpected!"  Once we know what we're thinking, why drag the thought out to it's bitter end?  And when I just referred to the end of a thought, why did you automatically understand that I meant the end of my mental sentence?

Actually, cutting off one's mental sentences is a pretty good meditation technique.  While sitting, as soon as you realize that you're constructing a sentence in your mind, cut that sentence off mid-thought right at the moment of realization.  And then as soon as you realize you're thinking, "Well, that ended that," then cut off that sentence, and then the next, and then the next, and so on.  To be perfectly honest, they never really stop, at least for me, but with enough cutting off, the voice does get very quiet and the thoughts get fewer and further in between, allowing one glimpses of the silence in between.  Try it some time.   

If that doesn't work for you, you may go the whole other way and engage the mind by asking yourself some of the questions research scientist Philip Johnson-Laird asks in the prologue to his 1983 book Mental Models:

• Why is it that we cannot think everything at once, but are forced to have one thought after another?  


• Our memories exist together. Why can't we call them to mind all at once?


• Why are there silences when we think aloud?  Are we thinking at those moments, or are we unable to put our thoughts into words? 

The more we search for our mind, the harder it is to find.