Live meditation with Danis Bois – 10 November 2021 – Precious thought – Inner dialogue or internal dialogue (#37 replay)

Introduction

This theme follows on from the meditation on “thought management”.

In the context of meditation, thought is most often seen as an obstacle. The emptiness of “no thought” is constantly sought.

The problem at hand: an observation

Why is thought so valuable in meditation practice and in everyday life?

• Because there is no distinction between thought and knowledge (according to Descartes)
• “By the word of thought, I mean everything that occurs in us insofar as we are aware of it.”
• Thanks to thought, we have the primary certainty of being self-aware.
• Self-consciousness is the human faculty of thinking about oneself, of representing one’s thoughts and actions.

In this meditation we will explore inner dialogue or inner speech talking to ourselves

• Inner dialogue is one of the characteristics of human thought.
• We spend a quarter of our time talking to ourselves. We spend more time talking to ourselves than to others.
• The relationship to thought is different for everyone

For some people, thoughts are like sentences that they hear, others just have abstract thoughts that they discover at the moment of verbalisation.

Inner dialogue, from a scientific point of view, allows us to plan and control our behaviour, regulate our emotions and encourage our creativity.

The meditation

Preparation phase

Installing of the three conditions of meditation with emphasis on silence as a revealer of our thoughts of the moment (automatic, voluntary, reflexive, irrational, cognitive distortions or calm, quiet thoughts)

Immersion phase

1. I invite you not to stop thinking (some people talk to themselves a lot, others rarely or never)
2. Focus on the motionlessness of your posture, this will put at a distance the disturbing thoughts, worry, concern.
3. Find in yourself a welcoming attitude, an open attention that allows the thought to appear in your consciousness.
4. Do not have any expectations, do not filter anything, do not judge. Do not expect anything special.T
5. Tell yourself that you are in daily contact with your inner dialogue, that you often converse with yourself without self or with self.

How do you recognise that you are in your inner dialogue?

• You recognise that you are in your inner dialogue when:

1. Your gaze is lost in your thoughts. You think you are absent from yourself, but in reality you are talking to yourself more or less consciously.
2. You remember certain tasks that need to be done
3. You plan your day’s agenda in your head.

• More in tune with the inner dialogue that is taking place in the moment of your meditation:

As soon as you perceive in consciousness the slightest sensation, the slightest thought. In short, as soon as you perceive something. As soon as you are aware of your state and it triggers an appreciation in you.

As soon as you are aware of your state and it triggers an appreciation in you

For example, for some of you, your thinking has become so discrete that you feel as if you are not thinking, not accessing your inner dialogue.

When you say to yourself, in the heart of your silence, that you have the impression that you are not thinking, you are in contact with a thought that gives itself in the form of an inner dialogue.

Danis Bois

To try not to think would be to deprive yourself of yourself. It would be to disregard yourself.

Danis Bois

Contacting the thinker within you who speaks to you

• Now we are going to put our consciousness on the thinker that is in us.

1. As soon as you look at the thinker within you, you put yourself above your experience
2. You raise your level of awareness and presence
3. to access your thoughts, emotions, feelings, physical and psychic states, is to think yourself, to experience yourself, to feel yourself, to dialogue with yourself.
4. You can also take advantage of this moment to debate with yourself, to negotiate between yourself and your thoughts.
5. You can enter into a relationship with yourself, install a climate of understanding, of benevolence with yourself
6. This conversation with yourself is a social relationship.

But sometimes you have a bad relationship with yourself in the same way as with a person you don’t value.

Sometimes the way you talk to yourself is incredibly harsh, in the form of

• outright judgement
• devaluation
• pessimistic conversation
• worry
• parasitic thoughts

If or when this is the case, you can change the nature of the relationship that is not doing you any good, that is influencing your current mood.

• Become aware of this bad relationship with yourself.
• Make a decision to talk to yourself as you would like others to talk to you.
• Make sure you change your relationship when your tendency reappears – taking action.
• Reflect on the effects felt

Conclusion

• Now we are going to prepare ourselves to welcome the day ahead, a good day.

1. Today, try to be more attentive to your inner dialogue
2. Before you act, take the time to take stock in your head
3. Dare to encourage yourself in your actions
4. Give yourself credit whenever you can
5. Dare to be kind to yourself, as you are to others.