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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

If I start trying, it completely goes away, replaced by my monologue. I'm sure a lot of people know that feeling where you very intentionally drive your own internal voice. I can do that.

I think it's related to my ADHD. Reading is very difficult because as I read, my voice just completely wanders off, CONSTANTLY. "Oh hey, 'gargantuan' that's a great word. Reminds me of a video game monster... Oh did you just read 2 whole pages without absorbing a single bit of it?"

To add a bit more commentary: this is the one time I consider my ADHD to be a terrible disability. I cannot read. I just can't. Grad school was HELL when I had to read. But my ADHD and associated strong independent inner monologue is immensely powerful when I'm trying to solve problems myself, such as doing software design.

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Yeah, my inner monologue sometimes feels like I'm driving it, and sometimes I am definitely definitely not driving it. I don't know if it's "my voice" or not, it's just... the the thing in my mind that outputs (silent) language.

And yeah, I can have conversations with the voice. Yeah, it can help to focus moving my thinking forwards on some problem-solving thing. But, alas, often when I'm doing that it just starts saying obviously-silly things, as if it's a Markov model. Sentences that might sound structurally reasonable but that are obviously not what I meant to say/think, and obviously not true.

But it almost never interferes with reading. Reading is too compelling. Even if my thoughts go off in some other direction while reading and I do the "just read a page but absorbed nothing" thing, there's no voice involved then, it feels like a different process.

Is that just an ADHD thing though or part of human nature? Reading in the beginning is difficult yet, after training your brain to sit and process by reading an hour in the morning you can change things. Very fast.

This is called discursive thought and is very common. The goal of non-dual mediation is to recognize these thoughts and realize they are not you.

They are you; they are a part of you, but they are not all of you. They are as much you as your foot or your eye is you. You are not an atomic entity.

Perhaps I should have written “to not identify with them” just like you rarely identify your core self as your foot.

If not you, what do you think they are?

You do not need to identify with them. They come and go like the wind. They are no more “you” than your hair on the barber shop floor.

I see now from your other answer what you meant, I thought you had meant not you in some sense of being externally created or imposed.

As someone with ADHD, I have those same experiences, just not verbally. I can verbalize them if I have to, but they are wordless.

The only time I experience the sort of word-based hijacking you're describing is with what I think of as "internal argument". I'll think of a previous or possible future discussion and structure my reply in words. Although since words are slow, often the words will sort of collapse and I'll shift to sort of a mental outline mode, where it's more a feel of structure with occasional words or phrases cropping up.

Relevant book:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Paperback – by Julian Jaynes

I also have a very constant inner voice, sometimes multiple, maybe it's an ADHD - although my ADHD I can read fine (although sometimes I need to get up and walk around absorbing what I've read and considering the implications)

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