Mental Masturbation

[Cado]

A short while ago I shared a model with Andrew which painted polarity in terms of masculine and feminine. Now, in the actual topic, it occurred to me that while it sounds lovely on paper it has no practical use. The feedback of our resident Prince confirmed those feelings and so I think any further deliberation deserves its own thread.

What is mental masturbation? It's what happens when the mind runs wild but doesn't produce anything of worth. My post is a great example. It's well constructed, mostly consistent, and from that point its easily defensible. However, what can you do with it?

It works as a thought experiment. In my case it helped me gain an understanding of polarity which served me to an extent... But it's an understanding I could've gained without constructing the model at all. In fact, as I've had more firsthand experiences it's become less relevant, as in I haven't referred back to it at all since starting my disciplines in earnest. If it was founded on solid principles that wouldn't be the case. The principles would become easier to grasp and utilize but they would never become irrelevant.

Take the The Foci Exercise-it's a basic emotional control tool that everything else is built upon. You ignore it at your own peril-no matter who you are or what path you walk, you will need to be able to leverage your emotions in order to be effective long-term. Excluding that from your foundation puts you on shaky ground. It's a lot easier to start there than it is to shoot ahead only to rubberband back because of an emotional hang up.

The one good thing about all this is that it can calibrate the mind to accept what currently lies beyond its scope. At that stage it's less masturbation than it is an experiment, the difference being that you don't get attached to the model, you just immerse yourself in it until you can see the world as the model presents it. From there you can either step out of it or deconstruct it from within to gain a deeper understanding.

Being that this is the Steve Pavlina forum, most of you are probably familiar with identity constructs and overidentification. For that reason I won't go in depth, I'll only say this: overidentification is what happens when you make a concept part of you and you zoom in so close that you lose sight of the larger you. This is one of the primary dangers of mental masturbation-it limits your growth. At some point you will have to expand beyond what you call "truth" but since you think it's part of you your own progress is viewed as a threat.

The other potential downfall is that gurus and religious leaders can use it against you. All they have to do is create an emotional hook alongside a vague mental construct, usually one that's familiar but unique enough to get you thinking, "this time will be different!" Once you're in you do the overidentification yourself. Even if your critical mind kicks in all they have to do to shut it down is remind you that getting out means destroying yourself. It's an effective lie because it's based on a half truth: your concept of self has to change to break its hold.

For me, the key to breaking out of this pattern was pragmatism: do what works, period. Stop doing what doesn't work or is clearly flawed. Leave everything that cannot be confirmed for when it can. That doesn't mean I've completely stopped the mental wankery, obviously, there's more to it I've left to uncover, but it does mean that when I see what I'm doing I move in a different direction. That's an important first step-being able to change course puts you in position to never walk that road, period.

[Michael Chui]

"What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" -- Heinlein.

[Karanime]

I really like this.

"But what if...?"

It doesn't matter. What matters is what happens, nothing else.

I'm a thinker, and the thing I've learned from thinking so much is that thinking is useless.

/<3

[ellie]

Can you give me example or a scenario of this mental masturbation and how you controlled it? I'd like to understand it some more.

[OlderWiser]

Originally Posted by Karanime

I'm a thinker, and the thing I've learned from thinking so much is that thinking is useless.

A Blackadder quote: "I think thinking is soooo important..." Spoken by the stupidest character on the show, of course...

I'm a thinker, too. I used to go round and round and round with all the "but what if" and "but how can" and "i have to know" and all that stuff. Eventually, I learned to stop that. I do still think about things sometimes, but I gave up the mental masturbation habit, for the most part. It's just thoughts, it's just a big pile of blah blah blah. I've found that thinking doesn't even generally lead to any sort of resolution. It just leads to more thinking.

[DBV]

Originally Posted by ellie

Can you give me example or a scenario of this mental masturbation and how you controlled it? I'd like to understand it some more.

Well. Reading tons of self-improvement material one after another non-stop and thinking you now know everything and you have improved yourself without results actually showing the improvement is mental masturbation. Also thinking too much about some topic (let's say starting a business) and not taking action until you "learn enough theory" can be another example in my opinion

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by OlderWiser

A Blackadder quote: "I think thinking is soooo important..." Spoken by the stupidest character on the show, of course...

I'm a thinker, too. I used to go round and round and round with all the "but what if" and "but how can" and "i have to know" and all that stuff. Eventually, I learned to stop that. I do still think about things sometimes, but I gave up the mental masturbation habit, for the most part. It's just thoughts, it's just a big pile of blah blah blah. I've found that thinking doesn't even generally lead to any sort of resolution. It just leads to more thinking.

My solution was to start actually coming to conclusions and forming actions and carrying them out. I used to overthink things; now I don't, but I haven't done any less in terms of quantity of time thinking. I just increased quality.

[OlderWiser]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

My solution was to start actually coming to conclusions and forming actions and carrying them out.

Yes. That's pretty much what I do. I don't think about things all that much, I just consider it, make a decision, and go with it. Done.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I used to overthink things; now I don't, but I haven't done any less in terms of quantity of time thinking. I just increased quality.

I don't really think like I used to. I tend to see my thoughts as just random stuff that's floating around where I happen to be aware of it. Sometimes, it's actually really quiet inside my head, which was very, very disconcerting at first. Now I rather prefer the quiet instead of all the blahblahblah that used to be going on in there.

[Cochonette]

Dude. I love this post. I need to stop mentally masturbating. LOL. Includes daydreaming, fantasizing. Oh, and I also think that literal masturbation is pointless. I often latch onto thoughts and just go over them in my mind repeatedly, which is mostly pointless... but they feel good and I want to stay with them. (Although I also do the same thing with anger sometimes. At least with anger I am accutely aware that I want to stop it, whereas with good emotions I am not necessarily.)

Shunryu Suzuki said, "To do something good is enough. To say, 'I did something good,' is extra."

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by OlderWiser

A Blackadder quote: "I think thinking is soooo important..." Spoken by the stupidest character on the show, of course...

I'm a thinker, too. I used to go round and round and round with all the "but what if" and "but how can" and "i have to know" and all that stuff. Eventually, I learned to stop that. I do still think about things sometimes, but I gave up the mental masturbation habit, for the most part. It's just thoughts, it's just a big pile of blah blah blah. I've found that thinking doesn't even generally lead to any sort of resolution. It just leads to more thinking.

Oof.

I despise that kind of thinking.

I rather like the "But why do I have to?" and the "Well, why can't I?" kind of thinking.

Not all kinds of thinking are bad. Sometimes useful constructs of the universe are created, by thought and thought alone.

If, when thinking, you remember that you are incapable of defining truth.

/<3

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by DBV

Well. Reading tons of self-improvement material one after another non-stop and thinking you now know everything and you have improved yourself without results actually showing the improvement is mental masturbation. Also thinking too much about some topic (let's say starting a business) and not taking action until you "learn enough theory" can be another example in my opinion

It's impossible to change the way you think and have it not change the rest of you.

Doing so, however, doesn't need books.

I agree with the "learn enough theory" part, though, but isn't that more fear than thinking?

/<3

[OlderWiser]

Originally Posted by Karanime

Not all kinds of thinking are bad.

Of course. Just the chasing your own tail kind of thinking, which is what an awful lot of people engage in.

Originally Posted by Karanime

Sometimes useful constructs of the universe are created, by thought and thought alone.

I find that when I stop thinking and let go, understanding comes. The more I gnaw on it, the less likely I am to figure it out.

[Cado]

Originally Posted by OlderWiser

Of course. Just the chasing your own tail kind of thinking, which is what an awful lot of people engage in.

I'd also like to add that if you're doing it just for the stimulation I don't see an issue. When mental masturbation is a problem is when you're wholly convinced that you're going somewhere when in fact you're spinning your wheels.

I find that when I stop thinking and let go, understanding comes. The more I gnaw on it, the less likely I am to figure it out.

The same is true for me. This is getting a little mystical, but the thinking you do inside your head isn't really thinking, it's thought energy crystallized. All you're doing is rearranging inert energy within a particular frame.

If you want to go beyond that you've got to quiet the mind and tap into the energy which flows into it. The point is not to shut down the intellect but to put it in its proper place-it's an interpreter. It doesn't do the heavy lifting on its own, it only tells you what you're getting out of the energy you've poured into it. And similar to how a good interpreter would use equivalent grammatical quirks to retain meaning, the mind distills energy into a useful form.

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by Illustro Cado

If you want to go beyond that you've got to quiet the mind and tap into the energy which flows into it. The point is not to shut down the intellect but to put it in its proper place-it's an interpreter. It doesn't do the heavy lifting on its own, it only tells you what you're getting out of the energy you've poured into it. And similar to how a good interpreter would use equivalent grammatical quirks to retain meaning, the mind distills energy into a useful form.

It feels like you're saying something along the lines of--intelligence and thought don't give you any new information. They just organize input (all input, not just information) into something simpler and more structured.

Right? XD

/<3

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by OlderWiser

I find that when I stop thinking and let go, understanding comes. The more I gnaw on it, the less likely I am to figure it out.

That's interesting. I love thinking, and when I let go, it doesn't matter anymore, but I don't necessarily understand it more.

Usually when I have an issue, I'll pull up a text file and keep asking questions until the answer clarifies absolutely everything. Or, in cases where I need it, I'll create an outline, a step-by-step, or keep simplifying an idea until it's down to either a sentence or a couple words.

I guess it's not as much figuring things out as clarifying what I already know, which I think is what Illustro was talking about. Does that count as "figuring it out"?

/<3

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Karanime

It feels like you're saying something along the lines of--intelligence and thought don't give you any new information. They just organize input (all input, not just information) into something simpler and more structured.

Right? XD

/<3

It's more like there are many kinds of intelligence and the mind is most effective when its working with them instead of on its own. In truth it's never working on its own, it's just easy to think it is.

This explains it better than I can in the time I've got.

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by Illustro Cado

It's more like there are many kinds of intelligence and the mind is most effective when its working with them instead of on its own. In truth it's never working on its own, it's just easy to think it is.

This explains it better than I can in the time I've got.

Ah. My wording was wrong but the idea is the same.

"And, that you show up to the “event” and go through the motions of deciding, not to make a choice, but to understand why the choice was made."

The text files I pull up are for understanding, not making choices. I've known that. It's just interesting that someone can voice it beyond a vague knowledge.

How are there many kind of intelligence if the mind never has intelligence of its own. Where does the intelligence come from, if not the mind?

/<3

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Karanime

How are there many kind of intelligence if the mind never has intelligence of its own. Where does the intelligence come from, if not the mind?

And there's the million dollar question.

I'll tell you that when you're tapping into emotion you've gone deeper than thought. It's much more primal, much closer to the source. Doing meditations which focus on emotions, specifically on shifting the emotions, helps you experience that.

If you've never done something like that I highly recommend The Foci Exercise.

[Andrew Gubb]

Hey Cado, cool thread.

I write a lot about finding truth on my site Long story short, I did go through a MASSIVE mental masturbation stage. I alchemy'd that f*cker out of the water.

In Finding the truth in a world of lies, I detail 4 truth finding "protocols" - believe what others tell you based on your evalutation of the trustworthiness of the source, believe the belief system tied to something that works for you, believe experience, and use intution.

I think part of the problem is taking truth too seriously (which comes from tying it to your identity as you put in the OP. Also ideas are tied to collective egos like the church and Science/modern school. We are taught that what we memorise in school is very important and is what makes us worthy of getting a decent job or not). But there IS no absolute truth. So what's left is just to play with ideas.

By the way, I started the darkworker/lightworker masculinity/femininity thread with that in mind... just because it was fun. I didn't believe in it and didn't care much either way.

Andrew

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

By the way, I started the darkworker/lightworker masculinity/femininity thread with that in mind... just because it was fun. I didn't believe in it and didn't care much either way.

Yeah, I know. But something odd happened in me once the thread got going-I was taking it way, way too seriously so I sacrificed the idol. I think of it as crucifying my way to a better me.

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by Illustro Cado

And there's the million dollar question.

I'll tell you that when you're tapping into emotion you've gone deeper than thought. It's much more primal, much closer to the source. Doing meditations which focus on emotions, specifically on shifting the emotions, helps you experience that.

If you've never done something like that I highly recommend The Foci Exercise.

The intelligence comes from the source, then, doesn't it?

Emotions are another step closer from thought, but that becomes irrelevant when you notice the bottom of the staircase.

And in case you're wondering, I spend my time looking for the bottom of the staircase.

/<3

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Karanime

The intelligence comes from the source, then, doesn't it?

Emotions are another step closer from thought, but that becomes irrelevant when you notice the bottom of the staircase.

And in case you're wondering, I spend my time looking for the bottom of the staircase.

/<3

But have you actually gone to the bottom of the staircase? Doing is different than looking.

[Karanime]

Originally Posted by Illustro Cado

But have you actually gone to the bottom of the staircase? Doing is different than looking.

Lol, no, I haven't. Otherwise I wouldn't have much to search for, would I?

>.<

/<3