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Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

I used to play a game as a kid where I'd close my eyes and try not to see or imagine anything. To keep a black empty universe as the only thing I see, for as long as possible. It isn't easy!

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I did the same as a kid. Like if I was in a classroom with noisy classmates ("study hall") I'd shut my eyes and actively try to not hear them and embrace the nothingness "around" the voices. Kinda interesting that I have distinct memories of doing this _years_ before I was ever exposed to "meditation".

IMO a lot of stuff humans have 'invented' (like meditation) are really just sort of tied to our nature as animals. I think meditation is something we're all (most?) inclined to try in some way, but then some specific geeks studied it really hard for thousands of years and turned it into what it is.

Yeah, that totally makes sense to me.

I have a similar thought experiment where I try to imagine the true essence of 'nothingness', down to even the removal of the 'idea' of nothingness and even the thought that I'm trying to imagine something. It's a weird feeling.

I do that too!

I did something similar but always tried to imagine things - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it etc. - not easy.

I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not thinking.

I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking about problems in general.

If that's what 10% of your brain is capable of, imagine what kinds of miracles are possible once you tap into the rest of it.

What you're saying is a myth that gets repeated like an old wives tale by people who never check it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth

Oh, but I did check it out, spent 9 months doing nothing but yoga and meditation out in the forest; and there's definitely more in there just waiting to be activated.

Don't forget to gather up the world's leading neuroscientists and let them know that they're wrong because you 'checked it out' by doing nothing but yoga and meditation for nine months.

If you use 1% of your brain imagine what would happen if you’d use all of it.

> odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind

Rest is part of exercise

Sleep is good for rest.

Very easy for me, never managed to see or imagine anything when I closed my eyes. It's always black no matter how hard I try.

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