Hal Latham

Poppy, the crotchety CFO

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@atlbell929 Misery loves company 😎

[Darshak Rana ⚡️ @thedarshakrana]

Warning: Once you see this monk's 3-minute demonstration on "how to stop thinking," you can't unsee it.

Ajahn Brahm says:

"Your mind never actually stops. It just fills every gap you fail to notice."

His demonstration works because he exploits something neuroscience has quietly confirmed for years that "the thinking mind cannot generate thought and pay full attention at the same time."

Attention and cognition compete for the same neural real estate. When one runs at full volume, the other goes quiet.

Most people never experience mental silence because they've never once given attention *anything* to fully occupy it with.

What Brahm does in those 3 minutes is deceptively simple.

He asks you to listen to the *gaps between his words*.

The silence between syllables. The pause between sentences. And the moment you shift your attention to those gaps, your internal narrator goes quiet.

The reason is you directed your awareness with such precision that it fully engaged your attention and left no room for extra commentary.

Meditation traditions have circled this insight for 2,500 years.

The Pali term for mental chatter is *prapañca.*
Transaltion: Conceptual proliferation.

One thought spawns another, which spawns three more, and within seconds you're rehearsing an argument from 2014.

Brahm's technique interrupts the mechanism at its source. You cannot proliferate thought while genuinely tracking silence, because silence has no content for the mind to grab onto and multiply.

This is why most meditation instruction fails people. They're told to "clear the mind," which is like being told not to think of a polar bear. The very act of trying activates the machinery it's supposed to silence. Brahm inverts the entire approach.

Instead of asking you to stop, he asks to divert your attention somewhere so refined to rest that stopping happens on its own, as a side effect.

There's a deeper reason this demonstration hits so hard.

Modern life has trained our nervous systems to treat silence as a threat that must be filled with a podcast, a scroll, a snack, a plan.

We've forgotten that silence is the medium consciousness actually rests in. Sound is the interruption. It's not the other way around.

Once you experience even 5 seconds of genuine internal quiet, your relationship with your own thoughts permanently shifts. You stop believing every mental voice is *you*. You start noticing there's a witness underneath the chatter that was never anxious to begin with.

Please throw in your thoughts on this.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@sportsiren God love you and yours, Holly! What a precious woman she must have been.

[One hard Truth @one_hardTruth]

Jensen Huang on The smartest person he's ever met:

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@CThomasRadio I agree Turtle! We’re going nowhere with Cooper Rush. I think that it’s going to be Tua, but I think we have something in Strand.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@atlbell929 @acdc Gotta love The Fred!

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

Let us love one another.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@LeahPyron22 Amen to that, sis! 🙌

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@JohnFricke @WaffleHouse I’m like you Fricke. I eat the same WH meal until I don’t. I haven’t seen them yet, but I think I’d try them, just to see. I read somewhere that the test market locations are close to HQ.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@JohnFricke Love this, but damn brother. We are ancients!

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@MarsHomestead I have the same cotton-picking questions you do, @MarsHomestead so I’m getting in line right behind you.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@JohnKincade It’s good to have you back, John!

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@trfy1137211 @MidwesternDoc Seriously? How long does the effect last?

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@FreshAirBBQue I know. I’ll be back soon, I need Brunswick stew too.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@FreshAirBBQue IYKYK

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@Dangitjohnny31 @XFreeze My FSD always picks the safest option, which is to drift along with the drifting car. That has always worked for me so far. I’m only 25,000 miles in, so…

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

Is it coming for YOUR job?

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@CollinRugg There was a town meeting held on Tuesday, May 12 at 6:00 pm. Press coverage from Atlanta was there, but the mayor was not. The citizens of the town want the truth, and for the town’s business to be handled properly. This will have a good ending. Ain’t no place like Cohutta!

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@CollinRugg I was just at City Hall. There is court tonight, but supposedly a town meeting on Tuesday. Not everything is adding up.

[Hal Latham @hallatham]

@CollinRugg I know the people involved. I’ll be at that meeting tomorrow evening, and may have an announcement afterwards.