[smallerfish]

> When you speak, what comes first, the idea or the word? Do you first feel a thought inside you, and only after that go searching for the right word to wrap around it? I think we all do. The word is never the start. The word is just the skin. The idea, the consciousness, is the thing sitting under it.

In (at least once school of) Tibetan Buddhist meditation you observe the part of the mind that is producing ideas, and then suppress it in order to explore deeper layers of consciousness. The "lights on" "you" that is observing is _not_ the idea producing part of the mind, which to me at least seems to be more mechanical.

I do agree with the author of course that a concept isn't necessarily wrapped with language from the start, and can be a skin; but equally it is possible to think in a verbal mode.