A lot of us have a voice in our heads that constantly complains, criticizes, judges, and attacks ourselves. We would NEVER tolerate such toxicity from a friend. We would block that person immediately. So, why do we tolerate this toxicity from the voice in our heads?

That's so weird to me. In my misspent youth I might have dabbled in something I shouldn't have done but during my 'journey' this character emerged where when I looked at my friendship faces they had this mental grin on it, like the troll face, and then called it the 'poker-faced joker' and for the next couple of hours it was like I kept having to work out a riddle about life and the answer turned out to be me. My friend said at one point I turned to him and just shouted "IT'S ME!" and that was the answer to the riddle that the poker-faced joker had set. Weird afternoon that one, but your comment is a reflection of the idea. It's like it's some sort of universal archetype in our heads or something. This was 20+ years ago now but it does pop into my head sometimes.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything from it. It just seemed to be some insight I gained then but lost again the next day.

/r/Meditation Thread Parent