Wondering About Sounds/Listening/Tinnitus

Hello.

As an avid meditator, I have been very interested in hearing/listening for many years, wondering about its source, interested in/drawn to what I perceive as an array of overlapping tones, as one might listen to the sounds of the rainforest, or the sounds emanating outside a bedroom window. I've wondered about it in much the same way as I wondered about the perception of "seeing" in darkness as a child -- really not uniformly dark, but pixilated. I wondered whether I was "hearing" the movement of blood through my ears, or the sound of my nervous system, like the humming of an electrical appliance -- a refrigerator. I've never felt burdened or bothered by it, quite the contrary. It does remind me of the sensation that follows listening to loud music, a kind of muffled feeling/sensation. I still wonder whether any of us, children included, really hear silence, or whether there is always a background "noise," the result of our metabolism. I've looked for information on this, without success.

Any insights?

Tod

 

I wonder also. has this always been there in the background but just got out of controll. I don't know if I ever heard complete silence. I doubt that I have.

 

As I understand it, the tinnitus frequency one hears is the damaged frequency and the brain is 'coaxing' or 'highlighting' those lost frequencies.

 

what about those that doesnt have any damage? my ENT said i had really good hearing with no damage done.

i was also wondering about if this noise has allways been there. would be good with some info on this

 

your doctor is totally wrong and he has no way/clue how to measure your hearing at every frequencies. ;-)

 

Never really cared about listening to the silence before the onset of T, so the info might not be very reliable, but it seems to me I might actually have had some sounds in my head all along. Sometimes they would float into my attention, but immediately be suppressed by the flow of other information.

I've recently started reading the TRT book by Jastreboff, and I hope to eventually squeeze the ringing out of my attention span again. Maybe that would be enough to go back to how things used to be.

 

that's true, i'm just happy i don't have any noticeable hearing loss or lowered hearing
last time i was at my ENT i went to a mall and ate and so on, when i got back home my hearing was reduced my 30% or some, it was so wierd! thankfully it went away and i was back to normal the next morning. haven't happened since

 

I feel as if silence have always been incredibly loud. Some tinnitus comes from the ear, other from the back of your head, my silence then would be the exact equivalent of tinnitus the back of the head, just a stable internal sound in the absence of external sounds.
Now it's just present even in the environment filled with external sounds, I hear many learn to abstract from it as they have to search for it. I doubt the sound system isnt supposed to flimmer though

 

I am reminded of a book that my friend gave me when I was struggling with the onset of tinnitus. It was titled The Sound of Silence and is written by a Buddhist monk. I did not read it yet but my friend told me that some practitioners refer to ringing in the ears as the sound of silence that is already existing in our subconscious mind. I think there is another book, Inner Listening, that specifically talks about engaging the ringing as part of the meditative process.

Sometimes when I lie in bed in darkness, I do notice the pixilated darkness and at times, I can see the fluids rushing through.

 

You guys are talking about the "nada sound"

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/web-archive/2012/11/8/the-sound-of-silence.html

 

So one should basically be able to use one's tinnitus the same way aye