Contemplation

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I just pinpointed something crucial to my mental well-being: contemplation.
I need to spend significant time just sitting there and thinking. Processing thoughts, feelings and information, virtually anything that comes to my mind.
If I can't afford to for too long, I get suicidal.
I wonder if anyone relates.

No doubt. Contemplation is excellent.

My tendency is to contemplate way too much and too hard and too often about things beyond my control, that happened a long time ago. My brain is too distracted "contemplating" to live in the here and now. Thus far, that has just been inconvenient and made it harder to accomplish anything positively. For example, get a job. However, after a embarrassingly long time without a slave plantation, my worthless corpse finally tricked a slave plantation into making the mistake of hiring my worthless corpse. The longest job I have ever had, just over one year and counting, the current one. The second longest, 5 months, age 18. Right now 38. Excessive contemplating (along with numerous other factors), have resulted in academic dismissal, occupational redundancy, and car crashes. Those are bad things, but not the end of the solar system.

Sometimes epiphanies could be a good thing

Everyone has subconscious biases

Every precious lil "person" is different

Every situation is different

Contemplation could be a good or bad thing, just like almost everything else

I can relate completely. It's a catch-22 for me, because I spend so much time in contemplation mode that I don't get a lot of tasks actually accomplished. Then I feel like a failure for living in my head. On the flip side if I don't have the time for contemplation I get suicidal or highly frustrated.

I think I compensate by checking out when I'm doing random tasks but that leads to poor executive function.

I've had to learn to set time apart for shutdowns, but even then it's hard to manage among so many other responsibilities.

I need to contemplate things to process them properly, though I often over-contemplate and consequentially depress myself by doing so. It's both a good and bad thing for me, and I find it hard to figure out a balance.

I prefer to think of it as "thinking about things". Sometimes I don't get to choose which things. And I only have limited control about when I'll do the thinking--which is very inconvenient in the middle of the night when I'm trying to be asleep.

Sometimes I sit thinking about nothing. Just a mostly blank mind. It is the "thinking" that sometimes feels the best. I'm not sure whether that is a guy thing, a husband thing, or an Aspie thing...but I don't think my bride ever does it.

I relate a lot to not really controlling what about and when I think, though a long walk typically prompts this mode of mind.
My husband doesn't do it, he has very short thought-to-action pipeline, especially compared to me.
My thought pipeline is some kind of a refinery full of different devices and backward loops, highly processing everything that gets in and using a lot of energy to do it.
I can't shortcut or simplify it, my whole mind architecture seems not adapted to unprocessed mental content.
Which ends up in highly refined thoughts on absolutely random topics and chores not done.

I am the opposite because I have too much time on my hands being unemployed for getting close to a decade and all that all i do is contemplate and it really messes with me.However I do contemplate on future plans and ideas to give myself hope and I pray so do contemplate for my well-being too.But really I wish I could be working away from the house in the field or a big office for 40 to 100 hours a week working 5 days a week so i would not have time to think too much and contemplate but hey thats just me.

The way I see it:

Actions, thoughts, emotions, and statements have to be in some sort of balance, (in some situations), to make profess

Usually I tend to think too much, feel too strongly and too much, talk not enough, and accomplish nothing

Most precious lil "people" at my slave plantation (and elsewhere), feel and talk too much; and accomplish and think not enough.


Different strategies work in different situations for different precious lil "people"


It does, however, get on my nerves how precious lil "people" act like every thought and emotion that goes through their head is the latest greatest scientific invention. Way too emotional. Emotions are neither taboo, nor useless, nor inferior to logic, but not every situation requires the maximum amount of theatrical production. Their hysterics are like, adrenal fatigue.


If more precious lil "people" contemplated (thought) more often and talked less often, less noise pollution. I am sensitive to loud noises.


Unfortunately, precious lil "people" just love making good use of their stupidass freedom of speech.

There are different definitions of contemplation and some are reflected in the responses.

Contemplation as I practice it is attempts to quiet the mind to let it perceive the divine. Sometimes it just results in at least a quiet time to rest my mind. Or perhaps some behind the scenes processing is being done.

Over the past year I have spent 40 minutes every morning in a Quaker meeting, which can be seen as communal contemplation.

Paraphrasing the Stones, I may not get what I want, but I’m getting what I need.

I’ve missed you, BlazingStar.

I know what you mean... very well.
I do have had mystical experiences. They didn't prevent me from turning agnostic - I still don't know wheather it was God or my own psyche talking - but they did change the course of my life. They still matter.
They weren't what I wanted and I never could repeat the experience - but I still think they were what I needed back then very much and that the direction I started back then is right.

It really doesn't matter to what one ascribes the source of a mystical experience. The experience itself is what is important. There are times when they are rare and times when they are more common. Knowing what little I do about you from this forum, it does seem to me that you would find more time spent in contemplation beneficial.