50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...
by Tyler Volk
Tyler Volk’s “Mind Watching” Series Table of Contents
Day 46 Thinking like a Lizard
For a last big hike of the summer I decided to repeat the route I took nearly six weeks ago, when the lightning storm forced me into a frightened huddle on top of a ridge (Day 5). The first half of this all-day loop follows the river trail downstream, and crosses the big river a dozen times.
Just before the first crossing, I told myself to cease with the inner words, and just make slightly audible grunts. Well, not more than a few seconds later, I stepped into the river and said aloud, “Ugh, it’s cold.” So much for self-control of my mental states and body actions. How difficult it is to willfully alter deep patterns of behavior.
I’ve discovered it’s easier to quiet the inner voice and stay out of the mental whirlpools by making sounds with my mouth. A throaty, rhythmic “hmmm” during each exhale does the trick. So does a grunt, occasionally during some of the exhalations, just a soft javelina sound, whenever I feel some inner voice start and I “read” that it will likely be a powerfully sucking whirlpool. Best to do this type of preventative measure when alone. Muscle activity, as well, such as tensing the arms, seems to block the chimes of inner speeches and imagery.
Having some freedom from the whirlpools helps me explore to what extent thinking can be done nonverbally. How far can the nonverbal go with its ability to ponder? I can’t walk along and say “more flowers in September” if I don’t have the word September. But I can picture in my mind’s canvas, an unusual abundance of flowers and a time of year relative to the period of high-sun summer, perhaps using what the memory expert Baddeley refers to as the visual-spatial sketchpad. That all can be done in images.
Also, while walking the path and crossing the river the first several times, I found I could dismiss the whirlpools not with my voice but with my hiking stick. I used it like a windshield wiper. When I felt myself near the lip of no return at the edge of a mental whirlpool, I would wave the stick from left to right in front of me, like clearing a spider’s web from the path in front. With this wand of dismissal I could cleanse the window of existence from the whirlpools and the splatter they create. All this was nonverbal cognition. I waved away whirlpool after whirlpool, as the wand swept its arcs, and I was saved from going over many edges into my inner swirls.
My eye caught a lizard looking at me. I carefully took out my camera and approached it. The creature seemed curious. The first click of the shutter seemed to make it even more bemused, as it tilted its head a bit as if to see me better. The second click made the lizard scurry off. Because I could see its eyes and watch it watch me (as well as myself watching it and a larger me watching the entire experience), I suddenly sensed what the lizard sensed. I had been quite close with the camera. With the second click it had had enough. At first entertaining, the situation had become uncertain or at least annoying. The lizard did all this nonverbally, so I assume.
What can I do nonverbally? I can make certain types of plans. After the encounter with the lizard, I thought about swimming at the swim hole further downstream. There would not be many people around this late in the summer, so sure I could strip down . . . and this all took place as pictures—my plunging into the cool stream an hour away, the absence of hikers. I could therefore run the inner visual stream without the inner verbal stream. I also thought to myself that I should take more landscape photos. That plan was accomplished nonverbally as well, as a series of imagined photo opportunities with the camera clicking away. So if plans require actions with the body, apparently they can be thought about in images alone. My imagery then took me past the upcoming swim hole, to the eventual uphill climb out of the river valley at Alum camp. But as I imagined myself on the climb, I also then heard inner speech, along lines of “Yes, and then I’ll have that uphill climb.” I noticed that the images preceded the words. It’s almost as if the words were confirmation of what the images had already “said.”
If words are based on images, how do we understand abstract concepts, such as justice and truth? Some cognitive psychologists have suggested, building a theory from experiments, that abstract concepts are constructed from previously honed concrete concepts that are close to imagery itself.
My entire relationship with the concept of mental whirlpools is largely nonverbal. I can feel them as images, as physical situations in the mind. Earlier I also called them “comforting,” and as I say that, I feel how they soothe (though in another way they cause anxiety). Along these lines, I feel an analog body of mine at ease in the whirlpools, because then I don’t have to worry about decisions of how to spend the next minutes. And I can almost physically sense the difficulty of staying out of them, the effort to maintain strength against their inward pull when I’m in an in-between zone, a place that presents its special kind of discomfort because of the effort that staying there takes. Feeling and imagery are very wrapped up with each other, a likely example of braided streams of mind.
After the anticipated, cool swim and several more river crossings, including a long stretch of trail east of the river in its valley, I started up the previously imagined Alum Camp trail up toward the road. More whirlpools trapped me. I noted again that one often led into another: they come in clusters. In fact, there does seem to be larger, encompassing whirlpools that contain smaller ones. One of those larger whirlpools is the whirlpool of being in whirlpools.
As I fought off being pulled into a mental zone of propensity for being sucked in and shoved out of whirlpools, the idea came to focus on breathing. It came nonverbally, as an image—abstract and complex with vague components but imagistic nonetheless—as felt but unspoken instructions to concentrate on breathing . . . out . . . then in. The nonverbal image contained an intention—to have willpower to be conscious of each pulse of breath.
Psychologist Zenon Pylyshyn (as well as others) have experimental evidence that the mind has a small and limited number of basic slots that can be filled with things that occupy attention. The slots are typically cited as four in all. Perhaps issues we are dealing with often occupy those slots. The classic meditation technique of concentrating on breathing might counter the pull of the whirlpools by filling up slots up to four—perhaps one for exhales, one for inhales, one for counting from one to ten and then re-starting, and the final one for the overall sense of self. In any case, occupying attention with a stream, frog, or lizard changes what else attention can possibly attend to.
An answer to what seems to be the paradox about the stream of consciousness knowing the stream—but which we now see is a paradox integral to who we are as level-creating beings—can be approached by thinking like a lizard, in other words, nonverbally. I am both a parcel in the stream and the stream. All right, that’s taken alone presents a paradox. The Zen way out of this paradox might be to see both as possible. Hover above not only the parcel of the stream but above both the whole stream and the parcel, as well above the stream that is knowing the stream. See all situations. By seeing all, you can be the individual states and be beyond them as a super-state. That’s all do-able in inner pictures that use inner pictures as parts. In mindfulness you can step into a realization that is outside any of a number of possible states that are built from each other in what seem to be conundrums if not outright paradoxes.
Mindfulness can have another meaning, which also can be grasped visually, which, again, often means viscerally. Not outside the products of mind, we are full of mind. This is not always positive, not always negative. It’s just who we are. We are pine needles, caught in their tortuous paths, but also above them, aware of them. We are their totality as well. The individual paths can lead us to realizations that are about the nature of the paths. Sometimes we walk in words, sometimes in images, sometimes with tunes, with emotions, and almost always with senses streaming us along. We can picture ourselves within and beyond, and encompassing both the within and the beyond. At times it’s jolly fun.
At the top of the uphill climb, I hit a paved road, but immediately switched to the dirt road that the power company uses to service its electrical poles. I sat for awhile near the spot where almost six weeks ago I waited out the lightning storm. No rain in sight today.
Growl and grunt
to mind’s front.
© 2025 by Tyler Volk
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Ed -- yeah, I'd vastly prefer not paying close attention to politics. I've always liked to keep up just enough…