I have already talked aboutthis to some degree, but I have also realized that this "chatter" isn't always productive. Sometimes it is the equivalent of a nagging housewife. My thoughts wear me down sometimes. They also keep
me from following a line if thought for more than a few moments. If I let these tendencies go unchecked there will be little hope of clarity.

I have been reading a book on Buddhist Tantra the past two days and it has been very helpful in pointing out this tendency. It has also pointed out how much suffering we bring on ourselves from the mere appearances of our mind. How we allow ourselves to be stressed out about uncomfortable situations we are not in (but might happen in the future) or how we imagine how a significant other is off doing something when we don't know if it is actually occurring or not or how we might be financially ruined if this or that happens (but are sitting in a nice home with a full stomach). Once I considered how silly it is to stress about something that isn't happening, much of the stress we put on ourselves melts away.

Also, along those lines is Meditation. It's simply the process of slowing down these cycles of bad thought so we can enter a state of peace. I used to think the point was to stop all thinking, but simply slowing down the nonsense and following the lines of thought we want is in itself an almost equal benefit - clarity.