How do you know if your thoughts work?

The more I meditate and practice self-hypnosis, the more my brain surprises me. Like the fish who doesn’t know what water is, you don’t know most of how your thoughts work.

Sometimes the only way to tell that you do something is when you stop.

After all, it’s not easy for thoughts to think about thoughts. They can, but how much detail do you lose? How inaccurate are they?

Example:

When I first heard of synesthesia – the neurological quirk where some of your senses express themselves as other senses – I thought it sounded cool.

Sure, I knew that some folks didn’t enjoy it.

Others did. Seeing musical notes as coloured gave them perfect pitch. Seeing words as coloured made them a superhuman editor.

It’s almost a superpower.

It took me, what, decades to realise I had synesthesia too. I wondered why others loved gifs, while they made my skin crawl.

That’s because I hallucinate sounds based on what I see – and I never realised it. That might sound odd but since it happens all the time, how was I supposed to notice?

Is it an almost-superpower for me?

Let’s break it down…

Minor disadvantage: I struggle with gifs, like I mentioned. Or anything that loops every few seconds. Imagine someone took a random three-second sample of a random song, looped it and played it at full volume.

If the visual pattern loops, it might be fine because then the sound loops too. Most gifs abruptly stop and restart, and so does the noise in my head.

Major disadvantage: it’s sometimes hard to hear what someone is saying over all the noise.

Major advantage: it’s a whole new data channel for me to play with. If you think that isn’t useful for problem solving, then you don’t know problem solving.

Major advantage: by forcing me to learn to listen to people, I’m better at it than I might otherwise be.

Major advantage: I can write like a demon on coffee. Once I learned to use the inner soundscape, (it used to be a huge distraction,) all I have to do to write is listen.

Minor disadvantage: I’m prone to homonym-based typos. After all, I’m not writing – I’m transcribing.

Ten years ago, it was all disadvantages – all those advantages are new. Now, it’s a handy feature – one I’m not keen to part with.

That’s not the only way I have synesthesia. I also hallucinate felt-senses based on some strange stuff.

It’s mild… for now. I’ve found that by playing around with it, I can think more creatively. I’ve had more ideas for books, programs, games, parties and wild adventures in the last month than in the last year.

I feel so limitlessly creative that I’m going to try all sorts of new outlets for it.

Hooray for me, right?

But… what does that mean?

“Play around with it”?

You can’t choose or change how your senses misfire… right?

Oh, you certainly can.

The easiest way might be using module 5 of my Monster Mind Edukaré program.

If not that, then module 16.

Find them here:

https://guided-thought.com/monster