Two Easily Remembered Questions That Silence Negative Thoughts | Anthony Metivier | TEDxDocklands

How would you like to completely

silence

your mind? I know you came here to have better

thoughts

, not any

thoughts

, but wouldn't it be nice to just turn them off on demand in a way that creates complete and perfect well-being on demand and in a lasting way I figured out how to do this and today I will teach you the basics. I just hope you don't ignore this because I went through years, decades of mental suffering thanks to the blah blah blah blah blah in my mind. and it didn't help that I tried to shut down those thoughts by taking antidepressants and antipsychotics with alcohol day after day for years, but my biggest sin, besides all that nonsense, was being a very committed atheist, you see, I didn't.

I think it was possible to turn off your thoughts because I thought I was connected to whoo-whoo and had meditated for years, but I certainly didn't believe in something called pns II or persistent non-symbolic experience, certainly not when my friend Beneficial told me he told me about this while We were sitting outside my favorite cafe in Brisbane and I had meditated for years so I noticed the sun was shining. I noticed how good the hot chocolate with coconut milk tasted and noticed that my favorite topics were on the meditation table. philosophy the truth and what we can say about the truth in a way that makes it endure so that everyone is on the same page, which would be a blessing despite all of Ben's qualifications in meditation, the science of it and his knowledge of history. from many spiritual traditions I had nothing of this pavement has no thoughts I said and there is a lot of it is everywhere I want many thoughts radiant thoughts the most beautiful thoughts perfect thoughts endless thoughts thoughts of truth now I have to take responsibility for my ignorance in the end or at least my eye has to take responsibility but I also got trapped in a YouTube algorithm you know, the kind where you press a button and then for three days three weeks three months three years blah blah blah blah in this case new atheism science science science if he's not a scientist he's woowoo he's the enemy so he looks at me with these clear crystal eyes and says you have to read Gary Weber always says ready to tear this down completely because I know what's coming next but it turns out Weber was a very good professional scientist who needed a secular way to stop the thoughts in his mind because they had been torturing him for years blah blah blah and he needed something that would work without the need to believe in it. so I listened and they told me that really all it involves is memorizing a few things and I'm a memory guy so I thought I'd play if that's all it takes.

You see, I had used memory techniques for years. I used them in college to cope. with depression and to deal with brain fog by swallowing your pills with beer. I also used them to create wonderful language learning experiences and even ended up making my wife do one of these tricks because her father was smart enough to not let his daughter date a guy who couldn't speak his native language and sing a song at the wedding. I even sat down with a two-time Guinness World Record holder for memory and it wasn't that bad for a guy who swallowed his pills with Guinness in The Road to the Memory Contest isn't really that funny, but such was the degree to which I was trying to calm my mind, so I went home, looked up a Gary Weber, and ordered a book called Happiness Beyond Thought, soon after another called Evolution Beyond.

I thought, and sure enough, this is what Dr. Weber says: memorize some Sanskrit and your thoughts will start to slow down and if you do it right, maybe you can even blow them out like a candle so they never start again, that's a great idea. promise. but I thought if I could go from volume 11 to volume 10 it would be a great mercy and I was interested in this Sanskrit topic because I did a PhD and took some linguistics courses along the way and this was attractive to me. I like learning languages ​​like the ones we hear today it's not so difficult anymore, so I got into this Sanskrit that is at least 3,500 years old, at least many wonderful philosophical texts have been written in this language.

It is known for its precision in cutting through the noise and getting to the heart of things. but this work is not really about Sanskrit, it is not even really about words, it is about the ability of patterns to neutralize patterns and I discovered it in a very interesting way because, behind the evolution beyond thought, Weber has gathered together all the Sanskrit he recommends. you memorize and he has these English statements that I took as the memory keeper of the English translations, but also a bit of a distracted teacher, so I'm memorizing this Sanskrit and this English chipton Ava wet from Chatham Ava he Bala kaha - tomato mahatmyam chittim Ava Mahana SOT is clearly not English, but what a beautiful mistake, what a blessing in disguise, because as I work with this day in and day out, this English is very simple, my thoughts are useful, how do they behave?

As thoughts come roaring in like they used to on autopilot, I begin to respond with these

questions

: Are my thoughts useful? How do they behave? How do my thoughts behave? They are useful? The order doesn't really seem to matter and these thoughts just start to fall apart unless of course they were useful because sometimes you have useful thoughts and I found that it's very good to observe the usefulness of thoughts so maybe you can have a few more from time to time. Eckhart Tolle and the Power of Now has this quote that used to frustrate me, it says: Focus all your attention on the now and tell me what problem you have right now.

I don't know about you, but this little undisciplined mind can find all kinds of problems when it focuses on the right moment, but as we think about our future and our vision of how we are going to deal with the future, what it needed and what I think we could all use, there's not so much focus on anything in the now but rather tools that help us not destroy, not dissolve, not chase away, but simply neutralize the noise because the more I look at it, scientists and spiritual people agree. agree on one thing, they are on the same page about one thing and that is that the energy does not die, it just changes form and I discovered that the neutral form in my mind is pure happiness and it is an agreement.

Now I finally discovered my mistake and memorized the proper English for this Sanskrit and there are three sets of

questions

in total. in this book it evolves beyond thought and in this case it is really simple the mind is the great madness the mind is that undisciplined child but it is the mind that thinks it is the great man and that thought is madness that thought is an illusion and it was beautiful to work with this It's beautiful to realize because we have seen the best minds of our time roaring at each other. Keyboard warriors. Twitter storms even the best of the best.

I think they are little undisciplined thoughts. The great man is right. We have to be able to. To overcome this we cannot afford not to see and extract value even from things we don't like and I realize I almost missed this because I thought it wasn't philosophy, but it is a very old philosophy that you could call It's a self-inquiry like some people do and one of your early philosophers said that this inability to see and extract value from things we don't like because we are so caught up in the things we like, he calls it the monster that seems to dislike, so A Today I sit dealing with the Internet, not so much with Twitter storms or keyboard warriors, but with radical change.

You know you have an online business and one day it's like this, the next day it's like this, but instead of throwing my computer across the room. and jumping on it, I go for a walk and in a park not far from that cafe where they had put me on this adventure, I sat down and the same my little song in Sanskrit and then it happened, all my thoughts disappeared, they just left, it was exquisite . and it happens more and more often the more I practice, of course I still have thoughts. I have myself here today, planning thoughts. extroversion, how can we help more people?, how can we help them more often?, not so much III, but you, you, you and you. and when the battle ax of thought comes, I have this cool, simple little tool that's super easy to remember.

You don't need a ton of rote techniques to do it and these thoughts just fall apart. They are useful? How do they pay five now? Years ago, the boy who thought he was a great man would not have agreed with Aldous Huxley, who said that a totally unmistakable world would be a totally blind and mad world. I don't know if it's mystical or not, these are just words, but I was blind and crazy and we see all kinds of people on the network news on the Internet talking, they don't even talk about this anymore it disappeared in their blind and crazy ears, but we can't change them, we can't change anyone else and we know it deep down because it's the thoughts that make us think it's even possible, but you can change yourself and I think you'll be surprised how quickly it happens when you start not destroying, not to dissolve, not to chase away your thoughts, but simply neutralize them now the question is whether you have to memorize as much Sanskrit as I went on to memorize lots of it, mountains of it.

Is incredible. I highly recommend it. I don't know, but I don't think so next time. the big like/dislike monster rears its ugly head or maybe next time you are the like/dislike monster, you can just stop and ask yourself all my useful thoughts, how do they behave?