How to Achieve a Quiet Mind Amidst Digital Chaos: Steps Toward a Larger Awareness

Lyn Lesch Executive Insider March 11, 2020

The Tudors on Showtime is an immensely popular series focusing on the reign of Henry VIII in sixteenth-century England — and its characters often face typical problems of the day. But in one episode, they discuss a problem that could just as well be happening now: the search for a quiet mind. Charles Brandon, the king’s great friend, commiserates with Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, on the fruitless effort to find peace and quiet. It’s an eternal human complaint, they both realize. Flash forward to the twenty-first century and they’re still right.

But the bombardment of information and noise we experience today would have been unimaginable in Tudor England. We live in the era of the Internet and digital devices; a cyber world that comes at us in a relentless stream on our phones and our PCs. It’s not just an inconvenience. There’s literally too much information to assimilate. Our ability to process and absorb the information we’ve just come in contact with is being hampered by this endless onslaught. As we lose our capacity to keep our thoughts organized, we also lose our access to true peace of mind. But there are simple strategies to develop a quiet mind, including these three:

Deliberately disengage.

A recent study by professors at Drexel and Northwestern universities found that students could better solve a series of anagrams if they went into a resting state beforehand. By settling into a state of rest instead of information loading, their right brain activity — associated with creativity — increased. You can better control your own thought process and achieve more mental creativity when you disengage from the stream of information coming your way in the digital world.

Today’s status quo is to allow ourselves to remain receptive — and therefore subservient — to the perpetual flow of scattered information on the Web. This also puts us in a position where we’re at the mercy of algorithms and coding — and trapped in the cycle of digital delivery. The more we receive, the less control we have of our own thought processes, the more fragmented our attention span and the more fragmented our focus.

To disengage, take a moment to sit quietly after you’ve just been online, and consider whatever knowledge and information you have just assimilated. Go over it in your mind. Reviewing it will bring a greater feeling of control over your thoughts. It may also better focus your ability to access relevant and related information when you go back online. Recent studies have shown that people actually need to rest their minds in order to effectively make the creative connections between different areas of knowledge and information. This increased focus will invariably lead to less mental chaos, and the more you practice, the more skilled you’ll become at the process.

Follow your own thoughts.

Too often, the chaotic stream of information encountered on the Internet hijacks our own thought stream. Either after being absorbed by the digital world, or during any other part of your day, find somewhere quiet to sit, and simply follow the stream of your own thoughts, no matter where they lead.

Psychologists who have studied human consciousness have known for some time that in order to awaken creative energy, we must erect barriers against distraction, dig mental channels so that mental energy can flow more freely, and find ways to escape interruptions. Following your own train of thought allows you to experience it more fully as your own. When you return to your smartphone or PC, you’ll have a heightened awareness of the difference between your thoughts and the chaotic stream of information coming from the Web.

Pick up a book and read.

In a 2015 report from CBS News, “Books vs. e-books: The science behind the best way to read,” Anne Mangen, lead researcher at Norway’s Stavanger University, told the Guardian that reading on paper provides a tactile sense of progress and a better connection to the story or text. If you genuinely want to maintain peace of mind and settle your thoughts in this digital age, one of the best things you can do is simply read a book — a real, physical book. Holding a bound book in your hand lets you dive into the writing more deeply as you experience the text in a fully embodied, physical state. There’s a vast difference between type on paper and on a digital screen. While text scrolling has been found to make remembering information more difficult, paper pages give spatio-temporal markers while you read. Touching paper and turning pages aids the memory, making it easier to remember where you read something.

Sinking more fully into the content you’re reading will result in a far clearer focus on the material. Then, when you return to accessing information on a digital device, you should be able to retain a similar level of absorption. After significant experience accessing information in such a fully embodied manner, the information coming from the digital world may be easier to assimilate in a less fragmented way. Instead of disruption, you experience absorption, leading toward a mind that is growing quieter.

There’s a profound connection between limiting how the Web’s chaotic stream of information infuses and controls our thoughts, and developing a quiet mind — and it has far greater implications than just being able to focus. A truly quiet mind allows for self-reflection, and more. It allows for a far more expansive awareness — one that rises far above the digital noise. This is the mind that can, on occasion, peek over the edge of our own mental processes toward a larger consciousness that exists beyond the often illusory bounds of thought and memory, and enables us to perceive a larger sense of meaning.

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How to Find Meaning in the Age of Coronavirus

Posted by clnews MARCH 30, 2020in Conscious Living, Inspirational, Thrive with 0 Comments

By Lyn Lesch

The coronavirus is now a concern to us all. We’re facing the possibility of diminished health and possibly mortality on our front door. It’s understandable to want to take stock of the meaning of what is occurring in relation to our own lives.

Yet this health crisis is happening in the digital age, when the Internet and our obsessive use of digital devices may be not only shrinking our attention spans but also negatively affecting our long and short-term memories. And they may impede our capacity to conceptualize important knowledge and information. As a consequence, we begin to lose our perspective on what the world may be teaching us, assimilating these lessons only through isolated, atomized facts with little or no relation to one another. With much of the information we experience being transmitted visually on the Internet — from youtube videos to photos on social media — we don’t have the chance to consider words, language, and complex ideas in depth.

These dynamics mean that at a time many of us are seeking a greater sense of meaning and purpose, we’re less capable of doing so. A search for meaning requires a capacity to dive into thoughts and words, not simply pictorial representations. But there are three approaches that can help us circumvent the visual overload, and find the information we need to truly think:

Focus on written information, not the photographs.

Visual illustrations can skew our interpretation as well as our understanding of information. For example, you’re reading an article about the current coronavirus that is discussing progress being made on reducing contact and discovering a vaccine. But the accompanying photograph shows somebody riding in a subway car with a worried look on her face, standing a foot away from someone wearing a mask. The impression of the image is far more cynical than the article itself — and as you process the photo you’ll be reading with a far more jaundiced eye. But the article has been carefully written and researched — presenting a valuable and thoughtful discussion. Best to overlook the tone of the photo, and focus on the article.

That means taking the time to conceptualize information in order to do so. When one receives information and knowledge within a limited context, we can’t glean all of its meaning. For instance, there is a great amount of fear and uncertainty about the coronavirus, which has led to panicked reactions in some people. But in order to fully understand information we need to set it against a backdrop of related events and circumstances. Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds explored this back in the 19^th century; the Scottish poet explored how self-deceptions and delusions originate in times of crisis. He looked at things that had once seemed reasonable to people at the time — alchemy, haunted houses, and fortune telling — that turned out to be entirely fictitious. Consider this as you take in information and disinformation about the current crisis. Setting the information in context, you can see delusions more clearly.

Read those who think deeply about certain issues.

To fully grasp the level of tenacity involved in defeating a dangerous virus like COVID-19, read (or attend) AIDs activist Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart. Kramer was the one who pushed Dr. Anthony Fauci (now a familiar national face) to develop the AIDS cocktail that has saved many lives. Fully understanding information means seeking those who have pondered it, explored it, written about it. As one realizes the full context in which certain unsettling situations have existed over time, they become exponentially easier to comprehend.

As the late, great writer Susan Sontag said in 2004, “Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

About the Author:

Lyn Lesch founded and directed his own democratically run school for children ages six to fourteen for twelve years, one that received widespread attention in the Chicago area as a unique approach to education. He has written four books on education reform, all of them emphasizing the importance of what occurs inside a young person while they learn. He has a lifelong interest in pursuing a larger consciousness. His new book is Intelligence in the Digital Age: How the Search for Something Larger May Be Imperiled. Learn more at lynlesch.com.

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Calming Your Mind in the Digital Age

The endless onslaught of digital content in today’s cyber era is fragmenting our mental ability to focus on, organize and process relevant facts to creatively solve problems. With 24/7 search engine access, calming the mind is becoming increasingly difficult. Consciousness expert and author Lyn Lesch describes simple steps to help you detach from today’s digital […]

Regaining Our Memory in the Cyber World

April 27, 2020

Written by Lyn Lesch

Although many of us have may not have fully realized it, we are now living in an age in which we have lost a certain amount of psychological freedom. The dynamic is less obvious than a loss of physical freedom, simply because its effects are much more indirect in nature. But we are being conditioned by powerful algorithms and coding inside our digital devices in ways in which our working memories may be under assault even before we realize that is what is occurring.Formerly, before the advent of the current cyber age, the neural pathways in our brains that direct our thinking minds were only the product of long-term memories created through our personal experiences and short-term memories. Now we are increasingly outsourcing our working memories to Google and other search engines by obsessively gravitating to them for information, rather than attempting to pull that information out of our own working memories. And those same neural pathways are being controlled and directed externally. That is, they are being determined by virtual algorithms and computer codes that are entirely non-organic.

Furthermore, as the networks of thought that make up our working memory become increasingly assimilated by the digital pathways inside our phones and PCs, we may well be increasingly losing our capacity to apprehend this sort of digital conditioning of our minds and brains. As a result we may be losing our capacity to remain free enough to avoid it. So what can be done, if anything, to reconnect with our working memories, and in so doing retain our mental freedom? Here are some suggestions:

Access forgotten facts and information with your working memory.

When we use Googleor some other search engine to access knowledge or information we may have forgotten, we are very much at the mercy of the virtual links inside whatever digital device we are using. We can still decide which link we will follow, but the domain within which our search takes place has become extremely limited by whatever algorithms or coding the particular search engine is employing to lead us to the information.

At the same time, the neuronal networks inside our physiological brains are becoming conditioned by the virtual pathways inside our phones and PCs. As we mistakenly believe we are exerting free will by employing Internet technology to access the details of our world, our minds are being conditioned to not only follow particular pathways to certain knowledge and information, but also in terms of how to use our working memory to learn and gain knowledge.

So when you have forgotten some bit of information, instead of going immediately to a search engine, try using your working memory to backtrack and follow related information that might clarify your search naturally within your own mind, or investigate other relevant information that might do the same thing. By doing this, you will be keeping the neuronal networks in your brain alive and functional.

Prevent information overload in your short-term memory.

Although our long-term memories have a nearly unlimited capacity to store information, our short-term memories have only a limited capacity. This means that when facts and information are coming at one too quickly, we’re less able to store it in our short-term memory, where it can then be passed on to our long-term memory, which we use to think intelligently about our world by separating relevant from irrelevant information.

In order to prevent this sort of information overload in your working memory, take time to conceptualize facts and information that you have just had access to on the Web by putting them into a larger context. In so doing, they will be more likely to be stored in your long-term memory, and in the future be used to think intelligently about your world.

The depth of our intelligence depends upon our ability to access information and knowledge from our working memories so that we can then turn that information into actual concepts. So when one takes time to view information that one has recently received conceptually, one is not only facilitating one’s working memory. One is likewise expanding one’s intelligence.

Pay attention to the details of your world.

Unfortunately, as many people skim through all of the information coming at them so quickly on the Web these days on their phones and PCs, that same information — because it gets so quickly dismissed— is never stored in our working memories. Consequently, a habitual pattern is generated in people in which they are are likewise being conditioned to skim through the experiences of their lives in much the same way; dismissing experiences they have just had or people with whom they have just had contact without fully attending to these things.

Because attention and memory have a profound relationship with each other, a short, jumpy awareness is being conditioned into many of us by how the Internet often presents facts and information to us in short, fragmented bursts. Our shortened attention spans are also affecting not only our working memories, but likewise our ability to use them insightfully.

Yet if one is willing to take time during one’s day when they are not online to pay greater attention to the details of one’s life, both attention and memory can be positively affected in a way in which one can begin to regain more control of one’s working memory. Take time to stop during the course of your day and pay attention to interesting people who you might pass by, beautiful natural settings, or possibly the architecture of certain buildings. You will not only be sharpening your capacity to attend, but also the strength of your working memory.

About the author:
Lyn Lesch founded and directed his own democratically run for children ages six to fourteen for twelve years, one that received widespread attention in the Chicago area as a unique approach to education. He has written four books on education reform, all of them emphasizing the importance of what occurs inside a young person while they learn. He has a lifelong interest in pursuing a larger consciousness. His new book is Intelligence in the Digital Age: How the Search for Something Larger May Be Imperiled.

Featured artwork:
All the images used in this article are made by the fantastic Julian Majin. Check out his work on Facebook and Instagram.

LYN LESCH Author of Intelligence In The Digital Age For Book Click Here

Read my recent article on Elephant Journal about how we can avoid the conflicted, accusatory discourse on social media that has been part of our culture after the coronavirus is over.

3 Ways to Improve Social Discourse After Coronavirus

Lyn Lesch

James Baldwin’s brilliant long essay on racial disharmony, The Fire Next Time (1962), proposes that if relatively conscious whites and Blacks insisted on creating the right sort of consciousness in others, it might end America’s racial nightmare. In other words, things could be genuinely changed if people of both races worked to meet each other halfway, and better understand the personal dynamics and history that has led to so much hatred.

Beyond race relations, this country and the world are dealing with the current Coronavirus, and as we do, there appears to be a certain amount of unity happening. The question is, after the virus has been at least temporarily abated through the discovery of a vaccine, or through some other measure, will that sense of unity continue? Can we increase our sense of connection? Or will we revert to the endless conflicts, division, fragmentation, and recrimination that have been part of our social/political discourse lately, particularly on social media? And will we refuse to meet others halfway whom we consider to be adversaries?

Seek out other perspectives on social media. Our addiction to social media has greatly narrowed our perspectives: we often seek out only those with whom we agree to get immediate confirmation from the “like” icon, or simply because it is a much quicker digital fix to find those who are like-minded.

Instead, make an effort to find people on social media with different points of view. In the movie Gandhi (1982) starring Ben Kingsley, there’s a powerful scene: during the Hindu-Muslim riots following India’s independence from the British, a Hindu man kills a Muslim child in retaliation for his own child being killed by Muslims. He tells Gandhi he will go to hell for his violent act. Gandhi tells him there’s a way out: adopt an orphaned Muslim child, but be sure to raise him as a Muslim.

Attempting to walk in the shoes of those whom you oppose in the digital world, even if only temporarily, can have a curative effect. You can see more clearly how their thoughts on certain matters may have evolved, even if you don’t agree with them. You can potentially introduce yourself to others whose ideas you may not have considered. Following someone with whom you don’t agree may even force you to look more clearly at your own ideas and beliefs.

Avoid the blame game. Social media has made it all too easy to blame other people, particularly those with contradictory values, for one’s own troubles — and with increased animosity. Likewise, it’s also thus made it easier for people to avoid taking responsibility for their own difficulties if instead they can view these as the inevitable result of someone else’s actions.

But social media wasn’t set up to facilitate the blame game. In fact Twitter was originally developed as a microblogging platform to enable people to share information, while Facebook was originally developed so college students could more easily connect. Through no fault of Twitter’s creators, the platform has often descended into being the perfect environment for blaming one’s troubles on someone else. So take another approach, make the effort to understand just how contentious exchanges on social media have become, and work to avoid them. Tap into the original intent and practice sharing information, rather than pointing fingers.

Look for those who think outside the box. If you want to keep your thinking limited to the same box it’s already in,then simply look for people online who you know will likely agree with you — and feed you information that just confirms what you already know.

But if you look for those on the Web who think outside the box on certain social/political issues, that’s one of the best ways there is to expand one’s horizons. Famous examples of outside-the-box thinking include Martin Luther King, who applied Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence to help integrate the American South. Feminist Naomi Wolf asserted that physical beauty is really a social construct perpetrated by both men and women alike. Bob Dylan penned the classic song “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” in which Civil Rights leader Medgar Ever’s real murderer isn’t just one man, but the entire hierarchy of prejudice that exists in this country.

After the Coronavirus has been controlled, people can either continue to feel connected to one another, or they can resume returning to their respective corners on the Internet. Let’s hope for all our sakes that it’s the former.

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Lyn Lesch |

Lyn Lesch founded and directed his own democratically run school for children ages six to fourteen for twelve years, one that received widespread attention in the Chicago ar… Read full bio

Read my interview at the Magic Pen, a site for readers and writers:

http://www.themagicpen.com/exclusive-interview-with-lyn-lesch/