Where Do Our Thoughts Come From | What Are Thoughts
"Out of nowhere the mind comes forth." – Buddhist Diamond Sutra
What is the source of thoughts? Can we control our thoughts?
Hello and welcome to the Ancient wisdom modern mind blog and today I would like to talk about where do our thoughts come from? And maybe you will find some answers in this blog. So let’s start.
And where do our thoughts come from? But to answer this question we first need to understand what thoughts are and what effects they have.
we associate thoughts with words and it is often assumed that our thoughts are words, but words are created by the interaction of physical and mental perceptions and needs, which then form the culture to express universal agreements and to express agreed social feelings and ideas, so when we ask the question where do thoughts come from? What we are really asking is when did we agreed on these rule for sharing feelings and ideas
Let’s start with ideas, since ideas are fairly self-evident in the sense we know what they become, Ideas become commitments, a commitment to a concept, belief, or cultural norms and can even become reality. And then they cycle around and dribble down into words and thoughts and new ideas.
An ever growing self-perpetuating cycle of complexity were ideas create words and words create more thoughts and ideas.
So ideas are really thoughts that are built upon other thoughts until they are expressed as an idea, the original thoughts which were created from a perceived physical or emotional need or necessity, is transformed from a thought into an idea and then translated into words/language to express that necessity or to share the idea. So we can see that thoughts become ideas and ideas become words.
So what we can say is that words, ideas and thoughts are abstract tools, tools created to express a need or a concept that will perform a given task, our thoughts are a tool that we created to bring our awareness from the abstract into the concrete world of perception.
We see that thoughts, ideas and words build on each other, and we can now understand that our thoughts often cycle in an endless loop that may or may not serve a purpose. This looping of thoughts is what forms the mind/ego consciousness. If we did not have these infinite thought loops that are able to build on each other, then we would not have language, culture and human invention.
These thoughts loops come from the back of our mind at the subconscious level into the conscious level via emotions, which can often make thoughts a living thing that is beyond our control. In fact the control of thoughts is also control of emotions, this is why meditation and mindfulness is so effective. By reducing our thoughts we also reduce the number of emotional links we have to words and the ideas that would have been regurgitated from the whole process of thoughts, ideas, and words and back to thoughts again.
Emotions like love, jealousy, hate, anger, fear, joy, etc. These emotions are our survival emotions, they are generated by a chemical interaction in the body with the purpose of promoting survival and procreation of the physical body and the species. But what then happens is that we attach thought and words to these chemical emotions, which then become feelings, this then strengthens the thoughts and our responses to the thoughts.
We become motivated to either recreate that feeling or to understand it and we build ideas and language so that we can explore different ways in which we can preserve and reproduce that particular chemical reaction. The thoughts and ideas, become lost in the endless loop of mind/ego. We become trapped in our own thought algorithms endless loop.
Through the association of ideas, feelings, thoughts and emotions we begin weaving a web of complexity until we birth an intelligent child which then grows into something beautiful and spiritual or something mean and ugly depending on which emotions are satisfied or denied.
Self-awareness grows from this complex loop of chemically induced emotional needs, looping thoughts, feeling and ideas within the subconscious depths of our brain and then the brains conscious area creates something that is intelligent and clever and yet so delicate that when it is denied its emotional fix, it will often panic and attack with a barrage of meaningless words. Mind grasps for something and when it finds nothing, it screams with the agony of loneliness, because mind is a false God with no roots except its own abstract thoughts.
This is the human condition, this is what we are. Spontaneous creations screaming at ourselves, because thoughts are empty loops that lead only into deeper more confusing thoughts.
Now we understand the process of were thoughts come from, the first realization that rises is the recognition that we are layers of awareness that have been layered over each other through a process of biological adaptation.
These three (3) separate and often conflicting entities are the body with its emotional and physical needs, the mind or ego which is full of thoughts, ideas, language, words and culture, etc. and then the silent, yet delicate and beautiful Awareness which is exists within this soup of nerve fibers, chemicals and thoughts.
Now the problem we have is that both the body and the mind think that they should be in charge of the whole process, each believes that since they were essential in the formation of self-awareness, that they should then dictate awareness’s purpose. The problem here is that they are polar opposites and each is so busy shouting and trying to control awareness. That they are constantly tripping over each other in their race for control.
And awareness lost and dislocated within this continuous struggle between the body and the mind, is a weak bitter prisoner waiting forlornly with its high ideals, whispering through intuition and dreams to the mind or body, hoping that somehow its superior understanding will be discovered, desperately longing for its own self-expression.
Awareness is the soul or Atman which is the word I prefer to use in relation to this third entity, Atman thinks it is the pinnacle of human evolution, God born within flesh. And yet this is paradoxically true, for it is only Atman awareness that can unite the body and mind into a harmony, a trinity of perfection.
So where do thoughts come from, they arise spontaneously because of emotions, and attach themselves to feelings, ideas, and words. Thoughts are the product of interaction within and with the world, thoughts are a product of living. Thoughts generate ideals, and ideals generate thoughts. Thoughts are of their nature cyclical and repetitive.
And here is the trinity of it. Body, Mind and Atman awareness are each self-aware, each important and each interdependent on the other. So you decide which should rule? Body, Mind or Spirit. To Understand "Awareness" see also The Impeccability of Stalking Awareness, What is Rational Thinking | Rational Side of Awareness, How to Become Enlightened and the Human Agreement and Atman Awareness is the Real Essence of Existence.
So there you have it, my thoughts on thoughts, punt intended. So Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.
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Related posts:
The Human Agreement | Impeccability of Stalking | Primordial Sound Meditation | Atman Awareness is the Real Essence of Existence
10-Minute Guided Meditation for Focus & Relaxation | What is Rational Thinking: Rational Side of Awareness |How to Become Self-Realized in a World Full of Phonies | Understand Zen throught the Story of the Samurai and the Tea Master
References
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