Disunity of inner voices

I have basically one voice which gets monotonous at times (at which point I tell it to "Shut up!"). It can take on different tones or personalities though depending upon my mood.

Generally, I agree with Pythagorean, but I've also noticed change over time in those tones and personalities. Thus I voted "Tons, it's loud in here".

I have a couple to a few, sure.
I feel "myself" to be dominant, though.

Tough question. I don't want to sound like the strange guy on the forum. I find it hard to create the fine line between emotions taking over, or observers taking over. If emotions equals observers we have unlimited observers for we can have many emotions. Can you maybe define observers more accuratly in your context?

I feel like I have three axes, or dimensions in my brain, and my personality (or voice) is created by the coordinates on the caffeine axis, affect axis (happy/sad), and the anxiety/confidence axis.

observers? Don't think I have anybody in my head but myself... Ofcourse I argue with myself in my head from time to time when a part of my personality wants to do one thing while another might want to do the opposit.. Is all of those sides of your personality one "observer" then? cause in that case there's plenty in there man... Then it's all up to the situation and mood on how things are going to go down... So I guess I'll answer "alot" then...

I was intentionally vague as I didn't want to rule out anything interesting. So far the responses are interesting, and within what I was thinking about

You should never worry about being as you are Vasska, regardless of seemings to others.

I've asked this question in many places, and people are generally unwilling to answer if in face to face contexts. I guess for reasons similar to Vasska's for the most part. Those among my close friends thought it was a trap of some sort, though I'm not sure why they would think that. :rolleyes:

I'm glad most of you feel comfortable enough to share your experiences.

Well what you ask is the following

"How many observers do you have in the sense of you."

However the term observers often is used in combination with external influences, these external influences can be emotions.

You stated
which excluded the schizophrenia but not necessarily emotions here.

My question to you is what do you consider observers in the sense of you? Many "observers" are external, or externally triggered for that matter. People who are angry often change because their "you" is taken over by this external observer for a short period of time. I don't think those observers should count unless you have them frequently and are definitely a part of you. If you are angry only once in a while i do not consider it a part of the "you" you described so vaguely.



However in society having more then one you is often catagorized in schizophrenic, alter ego or mentally ill. If we start talking about these "observers" of ours we are often labeled one of above. Internet Forums or IM often has the problem that we can only guess the intention of the message. You can completely misinterpret my comment as sarcastic, or vica versa.



I'm not unwilling to answer, but i don't want to answer to the wrong question. If you ask about the external observers I've got quite a lot, like everybody. If you talk about the observers that are part of me, I've got two. One that rationalizes situations and one that is pure anxiety.

Why people think it is a trap is because you don't answer your own question. So i think you owe it to us and yourself to answer the question as truthfully as some of us did.

The 'inner diagogues' represent (opinion) a fragmented consciousness which includes 'sub-personalities'.

In our 'natural' state of being there is NO internal dialogue. An inner dialogue represents a problematic context that should be addressed.

Why should it be addressed? Because it saps power from the dominant personality.
If our hi-tech audio system had 'mysterious voices' we would be checking our cables and electrical system for power adaptors generating 'noise' in the audio cables, etc.
The problem is that this 'problem' is so common (inner dialogue) that we do not recognize it as a problem. We see this situation as 'normal' because it is commonplace.

The yogis call this 'inner dialogue' by the name 'monkey mind'.

If our hands or feet suddenly flew up into the air or our head twitched we would be running to a neurologist. When our 'mind' does this we accept it as 'normal'... but it is not.

If I were sitting on a bus next to someone who kept shouting 'shut up' (to their internal dialogue) I think that I would change seats.

In Western culture we teach ourselves how to walk, how to use the bathroom (toilet training), how to ride a bicycle, etc., etc.... but we have no formal education about how to get control over our constantly chattering mind!

Author Carlos Castaneda, via Don Juan, tells us that the chatter emanates from 'the alien (foreign not extraterrestrial) installation'. Meaning, something that is inside of us that has no business being there.

How to get free (rid) of this 'monkey mind' is a matter of metaphysics (meditation) and religion. Otherwise, we are left with an 'inner dialogue' that often seems to have its own agenda (distraction from the here and now).

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Well since you've called me out I did intend to answer myself in any case but my purpose was primarily to collect some experiences others may have. And I'm thankful to all of you who offered responses.

I myself have experienced several things which could be answers to this question, some rarely, and others more or less constantly. I'll go with more common first.

I experience three or so "observers" most of the time. I consider all of them to be me, but one more so than others, which is strange (to me) because it is the one that "speaks" the least.

This one is mostly unemotional, and not primarily verbal. It seems to make judgments that are never lies (they can be untrue) it's the voice that tells me when I'm trying to lie to myself. It's the voice that holds and retrieves knowledge for the other voices. It's the one that is always watching the world. It's the one that thinks when the rest of me is not paying attention, and often returns answers fully formed long after the rest of me has forgotten the question entirely. It is the warden of memory, and the dreamer of dreams. It decides on the rules, and ensures that I follow them.

The other two are less interesting, mostly chattering at each other and the primary. These are entirely verbal, but don't have an auditory quality like my physical voice. These are the observers that shout "shut up" especially when the primary is judging them. These are the ones that lead me to new things, and through which I explore topics. These are the thoughts that prepare dialog for the outside world, and attempt to translate the innermost thoughts into words. The two sometimes become more when I'm thinking through difficult problems (academic or emotional.) In contrast to the quiet one these voices are entirely verbal and colored by emotion and momentary fancy. These are the parts of me that enjoy life, and hate it.

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Another set of experiences that could qualify:
Involve language and I think they are just tools, serving the secondaries I mentioned above. There is an outer voice that speaks internally along with what I say out loud, behind which are several competing versions of what's being said. They run along beside each other one replacing the other as each has better or worse phrasing to offer. They sometimes are used to hold ideas temporarily for comparison, or dissection. These voices all "sound" like my physical voice.
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On a few rare occasions I have heard voices that felt completely external calling my name when no one was present. I think these were just common misconstructions of sounds in the environment.

(I am slightly deaf, so in normal every day conversation I often have to reconstruct what words are being said, especially when people are facing away from me. I think all this practice has made me more prone to mentally constructing words out of sounds. Alternatively I'm mildly insane, I could accept that too )
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Several of you have characterized your emotions as in some way separate, I've never experienced them quite that way. Emotions for me add shades to some parts of my thinking (as I mentioned above) but I wouldn't call them separate. I'd love to hear more about this experience several of you seem to share.
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If any of this is nuts, that's fine feel free to tell me so. If any of this is familiar I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Play_Dough: Your words profoundly offended me, possibly because you are right, who knows. I'm keeping my demons though either way, they keep me warm at night.

I do know that I have a generally unpleasant view of eastern mystical practices, which springs from my dalliances with several such forms in my youth. I did not enjoy the experiences I had and don't want more. Peace of mind is not for me, unity can wait. It serves many well, and I'm not knocking it for those who either enjoy it or haven't tried it.

Let's say your love breaks up with you. At that point you are devastated and will feel like the world has collapsed. At this point certain emotions that you don't normally have will start to occur. You can start crying, or start to become angry. Either way, you lose your normal control to your emotions, even if this is a short period of time, you are at that particular moment not the "me" you have described. You inner voices will be quiet for a short period of time. This is what i describe with emotions being apart from the inner voices.

Of course if one of your inner voices is angry this emotion can be seen as an inner voice. My theory about emotions being separate is only limited at the time.

For the forum members and visitors who may wish to investiagte a (only one but highly effective) method for 'vanquishing' the inner voices then I recommend downloading this pdf file (Self Clearing.pdf) and, at least, reading it and, at best, doing the exercises as the booklet recommends.
http://www.freewebs.com/clearing/Self%20Clearing%20Book.pdfhttp://www.patheticgeekstories.com/images/beverage-Kool-Aid.jpg ....... sorry, I simply couldn't resist.

Get the .pdf >>> http://www.freewebs.com/clearing/Self%20Clearing%20Book.pdf but, but.. the 'voice' said "No", "Don't do it" ........ "Let's get a cookie or a pizza instead"..... "Are you trying to make me homeless"....... blah, blah....

Best wishes to all,
Play_Dough

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I have schizophrenia but im the only one of me

Psychosis is really interesting; linguistic delusions really seem to take on the form of another person talking inside one's head - except the person is incredibly familiar, almost like a teacher made out of oneself4. I think we would probably find that everybody has a psychosis at some level, their paranoia might be 'rational' in the context of today's culture (like a fashion addict or drug dealer being afraid to go outside 'like this') yet in many ways paranoia circumvents reason. However, I think this process of paranoia/delusions is part of a survival mechanism that has helped people to get this far - it is delusional to be afraid of the dark, but it is delusion founded in fact, so we fail to categorize such ideas as delusions, instead they are 'reasonable fears', yet they are devoid of reason (reasonable fear is an effect relative to a known cause, and not to a possible unknown cause, surely unreasonable fear is relative to our imagination and not to any objective thing).

So in terms of inner dialogue I think we all share some degree of delusion and paranoia, so although simply symptoms of varying degrees of emotional/concentrational intensity, it is probably the case that we all have multiple 'voices' or personality orders - I think though that attempting to categorize these different orders is wildly silly, I doubt they are separate at all, they are likely to be all part of the same subjective mass, as it were.

Are we speaking of an inner conscience here, or actual voices?

Jiminy Cricket type voices, I can understand, and relate to in some aspects as I have a good grasp on my self awareness and as a result of that, my conscience.

But yeah, multiple voices in that regard since my conscience doesn't always agree with my principles...it's what makes me human.

most of my voices are people i know so i have a feeling that it has to do with a nurochemical misfire inside my mind that acts as a sort of secondary functioning level of consciousness that aligns with creative actual and current experience

Its interesting because the voices are very reactive to the thoughts in my mind but i can still differentiate the true from the false due to the fact that I have experiential knowledge of human nature

people your friends with usually don't for example come out with (in a serious tone) your burning in hell right now and yell i hate you you mother f#!*?%

also voices and hallucinations are two dimensional they sound and look hollow to me for the most part so its kind of easy to tell the difference what gets me is the tactile ones