From Mark Epistein’s Thoughts without a Thinker pg 109-110:
Meditation is ruthless in the way it reveals the stark reality of our day-to-day mind. We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming, or wondering to ourselves under our breath: comforting ourselves, in a perverse fashion, with our own silent voices. Much of our interior life is characterised by this kind of primary process, almost infantile, way of thinking: “I like this. I don’t like that. She hurt me. How can I get that? More of this, no more of that”. These emotionally tinged thoughts are our attempts to keep the pleasure principle operative. Much of our inner dialogue, rather than the ‘rational’ secondary process that is usually associated with the thinking mind, is that constant reaction to experience by a selfish, childish protagonist. None of us has moved very far from the seven-year old who vigilantly watches to see who got more.
