As someone who has grown up with and lived in the company of intellectuals, it has sometimes both scared and pained me to see friends suffer terribly when they can't mute the incessant chitter-chatter of their minds. I'm grateful that as a teenager I learnt judo, and at the end of each judo session we had to sit and focus on nothing but the ends of our noses. We learnt to quiet our minds, and stay in that quiet place for as long as needed. Now, that often isn't easy, sometimes I have to imagine a vacuum cleaner sucking the thoughts out of my mind, just to stop my mind from heading down some new rabbit hole. So I agree with you passionately that you have to be able to find that quiet place in your mind where you can take shelter from the cacophany of stimulations that besiege us as a by-product of our busy lives.
As someone who has grown up with and lived in the company of intellectuals, it has sometimes both scared and pained me to see friends suffer terribly when they can't mute the incessant chitter-chatter of their minds. I'm grateful that as a teenager I learnt judo, and at the end of each judo session we had to sit and focus on nothing but the ends of our noses. We learnt to quiet our minds, and stay in that quiet place for as long as needed. Now, that often isn't easy, sometimes I have to imagine a vacuum cleaner sucking the thoughts out of my mind, just to stop my mind from heading down some new rabbit hole. So I agree with you passionately that you have to be able to find that quiet place in your mind where you can take shelter from the cacophany of stimulations that besiege us as a by-product of our busy lives.