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Joshuah Mills
Professor Fran Voltz
University Writing 1102 - 30
18 September 2014
Journal 3: Thinking about Thoughts
I have never spent much time thinking about thinking. Expectedly then, approaching
meditation, even for just five minutes, was to some extent daunting. Mostly because it seemed
unusual for me to give any attention to my thoughts even though it is something we all do
continuously and uncontrollably. What I discovered however, was shockingly enlightening. Our
minds are incredibly strange, and giving even just a few minutes to solely attend to our thoughts
can completely change our perspective and mindset.
What I found to surprisingly challenging was consciously entering a state of meditation.
The fact that I was intentionally giving attention to my thoughts was overwhelmingly distracting
at first; I am not used to thinking about thinking. My mind is usually focused on either what I
am physically engaged in at the moment or on a specific thought or problem that I am giving
intentional attention to, and it is only on unusual occasions, such as the last few minutes before
falling asleep, where my mind is solely occupied with random, unfiltered thoughts. However,
these unintentional meditations are almost never reflected upon and as a result any thoughts,
unless they are epiphanic or interesting, are lost completely. I was unable to meditate until some
other thought or idea came to mind to distract me.
The frequency that these new thoughts or ideas would come to mind was surprisingly
rapid. For one moment I would become mindlessly transfixed on an object of my surroundings
where my thoughts became inexplicable and were not at all in the form of words or language,

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and in the next moment I would retreat back into my mind, aware but not conscious of my
surroundings, and my thoughts were more analytical and structured as if I was communicating
with myself. I would repeatedly jump between two or three ideas, usually of no correlation, in
an unpredictable order.
Interestingly, there were never any gaps between thoughts. I was constantly thinking of
something. Whenever I was not mentally engaged in an idea or thought I was simply in a state of
awareness of myself and my surroundings; there were never any "in between" moments where
there was an absence of either of these thought forms. I almost believe I have never experienced
an absence of thought, as even when we are asleep our minds are occupied with dreams, or
perhaps I simply would not remember these absences. It seemed that being in a state of
awareness replaced the absence of thought and acted as a transition in between more specific
ideas.
The topics of the majority of my thoughts and ideas were mostly pointless with little to
no analytical value. These thoughts were short lived and cycled in and out quickly. The only
thoughts that I stayed mentally transfixed upon for extended periods, at least during this brief
meditation session, were things that I needed to do or were particularly stressed about. My mind
seemed to approach these thoughts more cognitively, as if they were problems that needed to be
solved as opposed to simply random and meaningless ideas. I felt somewhat stressed but also
more consciously engaged during periods where I came to these thoughts. It seemed as if my
mind came to these problematic thoughts as if to work through them to come to a solution.
Strangely enough, I felt as if my mind was capable of operating completely separate of
myself. In fact, many of the thoughts I experienced had occurred numerously before I gave them
any really attention, but it was not until meditating that I became intently aware of them. If there

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is any benefit from meditating, it is becoming aware of our thoughts and priorities. More simply
put, the brief five minutes I spent alone with my thoughts helped me to become more completely
aware of my consciousness.