Saturday, March 02, 2024

The Harmonics of Thoughts

When I write longhand with a fountain pen in my journal, I get to examine every thought with precision. Writing, like meditation, allows you to recalibrate your mind. The mind is an instrument that needs to be handled with care. It is a powerful tool which, if used correctly can affect changes in the world.

The mind filters our perception of the world.  It is like a language model that interprets what's out there and attempt to see order out of the jumble of chaos.  Our perception is coloured by experience and ego.  Meditation, and journalling helps you to identify the tendencies of the mind and its many biases.
The mind abhors uncertainty. It wants to be decisive and is thus prone to making snap judgements on people and situations. Once an opinion has 'snapped' into place, it is difficult to dislodge it. Prejudices are examples of such snap judgements, which have been elevated to the level of 'facts', in the person's mind. We do not question them anymore. They are as real as the object sitting right in front of us.
It is important to be vigilante of this tendency of the mind. Remember, the mind likes the world to be binary. Yes or no; white or black. Nuances are expensive to keep track of. They consume compute time and memory. The mind wants to decide fast, so that it can get on with the next thing.
By slowing down a thought, you perceive all the properties that make up its composition.  You observe that a thought is the superposition of many sub-thoughts. Break them down; do the equivalent of a Fourier Transform of your thought signal. You will then identify the fundamental thought frequencies that are constantly reverberating in your mind.
Your fears and prejudices manifest as distinctive frequency bands in every thought. Once you see them, you can then apply the necessary filters to eliminate them.  At the same time, you'll also be able to pick out the good tendencies that you want to accentuate. Filter out the bad, amplify the good.
Every thought is rich in harmonic frequencies. Through meditation, you catch a glimpse of these underlying harmonics and be able to trace their subtle origins. Writing in longhand with a good fountain pen enables us to expose these harmonics in a tactile and visual manner.  
And how do you shape the spectrum of your thought signals? Through writing too. Put forth a proposition. Materialise it in the form of a sentence. Shape every letter and word slowly and watch them manifest on the page.  That's the best way to control what thought comes into your mind: you simply inject the thought through the physical act of writing. By physicalising a thought, you accentuate it. The pen is both the transducer and the actuator.
So be sensitive to the harmonics of your thoughts. It is through their control and mastery that put you in harmony with the universe.