The Nature of Thoughts

 Part 1 - Introduction

Our rational mind (RM) is really our external expression, in a way it is our consciousness' clothing. It is what interacts with the world, continually changing as it does so. Thoughts and the relationships among them and other aspects of our awareness are the substance of our RM. The key to being able to work with thoughts is knowing their nature - what they are and how they interact and change. There is great benefit in understanding more about thoughts as we use them for pretty much everything we do and cannot function without them. We first touched on the mind and thoughts in the essay The Rational/Thinking Mind (RM). The mind is the key to so much that we delve much deeper over the course of the material on this site starting with this essay.  

Our minds, and the thoughts they are comprised of are greatly misunderstood and grossly underestimated. This is primarily because their nature is mysterious, personal and difficult to share even if you can find the words. Science can now “read” some thoughts with very sophisticated equipment and have developed some understanding of how the brain processes thoughts along with the sensory information it receives. However, this tells us little about their synergies and dynamics.

We take them for granted, much like we do our arms and legs and so on. While we know we add and change thoughts yet to us they still seem rigid like our appendages. This is the main reason people make statements such as “that is the way I am”, or “I cannot change that about myself” even though neither are accurate.

Thoughts can be limiting, scary, hurtful and angry; however, they can also be compassionate, powerful, enlightening, mystifying, beautiful and wondrous. I am sure most would choose the latter set of attributes. Having a better grasp of the nature of thoughts and their dynamics helps us have more of the latter and fewer of the former. By doing so we begin empowering our RM and its active awareness enabling us to explore further into our thoughts and their affect on us. With some effort, we can become aware of the consequences of individual thoughts and how they affect the choices we make.

At any moment in time the nature of each thought we have, at both the conscious and non-conscious level, is an aspect of "who we think we are". To grow, either personally or spiritually (which requires both), we must work with our thoughts; they truly are the window to our souls. Awareness of our thoughts enables us to gain deeper and broader access to the experiences, memories and associated thoughts that gave rise to them. Such self awareness is the best way to clarity regarding the sources of our issues and resolving them.

Through our awareness of our thoughts we begin to see connections among and within events and in the process gain new and powerful insights into ourselves. For example, we can perceive the relationship between ideas and intent, how they affect our emotions and eventually our choices. We can also start to understand how our ideas and beliefs manifest in apparently random but connected ways. They are one of the main sources source of what we attract in life and the reasons we act and think the way we do. Learning about thoughts is knowledge we can use to make fundamental change in our lives. Consider that the statement “I think therefore I am” implies that “I am what I think”.

To meaningfully examine thoughts we must talk about what they are and their impact on us and in our lives. We will begin with the common understanding of what a thoughts is. The Wikipedia definition of a thought is:

 

"Thought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively ("thought" is both.) Thinking allows beings to model the world and to deal with it effectively according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination. Thinking involves the mental manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions."

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought

 

The above definition identifies a thought as a mental form and thinking as a process that involves thought. While this definition is adequate it is also vague and does not even begin to examine just what kind of “thing” a thought is. Nor does it adequately explain what a mental form is. If we want to understand thoughts more and be able to work with them more effectively we need to learn more about what kind of “things” they are.

At this point it is not necessary to define the physics of thoughts or examine them in great detail. We already know how to work with thoughts, we have been doing it our whole lives. However, just as a map helps us get to a destination we can take more conscious control over our minds with a better understanding of thoughts. This is very helpful in general and even more so if we are working on personal or spiritual growth.

To gain a better understanding of our minds we need to spend some time thinking about them, primarily their dynamics, for we are mostly interested in training our RM not educating it. It inherently knows its own nature. When it comes to growth understanding the mind helps us learn now to use its qualities or properties for our benefit. 

Thoughts are nebulous and in the normal scheme of things do not appear to be things at all. While we have and use them one cannot see or point their finger at them. We do not think spend any significant time thinking about the nature of our thoughts as we tend to be far too busy using them to pay attention. If you examine your beliefs you may well find the assumption that thoughts are things of some kind, like data or software on a computer, or that they are beyond our control or mostly so. This presents a problem for us as we know that both of these are not true yet we rarely examine them in any detail. Why is this?

Our thoughts are mysterious virtual constructs and it is easier to not dig too deep into them. Further, if our thoughts are rigid and essentially beyond our conscious control it is easier to disavow responsibility for them. The problem with this is that it makes resolving our issues and developing our awareness far harder. We may not want to admit it but at some level we are all aware that our thoughts lead to the issues we face and the various filters and blocks we have to deal with. By taking ownership over our thoughts we can we can start to deal with these challenges.

There are numerous reasons why greater awareness of how our RM works is not common knowledge. Some of the reasons are we are very externally focused, they are almost invariably subjective in nature and we cannot share (save through speaking), measure, examine or capture them in any form.

I see their subjectivity as the fundamental reason for our ignorance of them. Science gives us some insights into the brain and psychology into some basic dynamics of them though both are still quite limited. There is little to be found in the religious or spiritual realms save beyond what thoughts are good or bad and what type of thoughts one should have. When we do not understand something the tendency we tend to search for answers in what we can either prove (science) or believe (religion).

A better understanding of the mind is not a requirement for growth but it is a powerful tool to aid us in doing so. It helps us to not just examine our own minds and the thoughts within to work on them in a more direct manner. By doing so we are able to more confidently to venture into the mostly unexplored territory that is our mind and the many thoughts within... a place that resides between the realms of science and religion or mysticism. 

At one end, we have the objective, physical world around us and on the other a subjective one consisting of our internal personal self. Our internal self is what we are and includes our essence/consciousness/true self, thoughts and feelings. We look to science to help us understand our physical world and self. Knowledge of these things can be shared and agreed on. We turn to other sources such as psychology, philosophy, metaphysics and religion to gain an understanding of and insights into our internal self.

Setting aside telepathy, thoughts are something we can share with others through language; however, however, words are not a perfect representation of our thoughts. They are symbols used to represent our thoughts and even with them they tell us very little about our internal self; such as what it is and how it is built and works. Knowledge of these aspects of self lie in the vacuum between the two perspectives I mentioned earlier. This is one of dichotomies we we have inherited or learned from current and past generations. An understanding of thoughts will help reconcile this dichotomy.

Science, in its broadest sense, is any systematic knowledge base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a predictable outcome. Science does not apply to personal awareness or questions such as what is consciousness or is there a God. Nor can we measure and quantify a thought beyond their physical aspect, the firing of synapses in our brain.

Scientists remain within the realms of the provable and making hypothesis and theories based on evidence. They can speak to the chemical, biological and neurological of our brains and not the nature of our thoughts or the dynamics of our minds. Psychology tries to look at the human psyche, and does an "okay" job based partially on medical knowledge as well as on models and statistical likelihoods behind behaviour. In most cases they do not succeed in no small part because they take the point of view that we are aware and conscious due to brain chemistry alone, a premise I believe is false.

Philosophers have debated many perspectives regarding the nature of mind, and while they provide ideas to consider, they have answered few questions. The religions of the world are not helpful in this regard as they are a little thin on the how's and why’s of them. Metaphysicians tend to go a little deeper but they all have different views based on their particular paradigms regarding the nature of "the self", something they share with a number of religions. None of them give us the knowledge we need to take more control over our minds and the thoughts within in, something that is essential for personal and spiritual growth.

Great spiritual leaders are rare in our age. Like past spiritual leaders they have tried to provide guidance to us through how they lived, through their words, parables, stories and by being inspirational. A spiritual leaders standing is elevated in the eyes of those that believe in them, as are their words and ideas. People do hear their words; however, hearing and understanding are not the same. We cannot follow what we do not clearly understand. The scientific perspective cannot answer this either for their concepts are limited to the brain, the physical aspect of the mind. It lacks the concepts that help us develop a deeper understanding of what we are, our minds or the nature of our thoughts.

We can move past the barriers of this dichotomy by looking at a thoughts in a way that has enough substance to help people understand, visualize and begin to work with them. To illustrate this consider what happens if I drop a normal glass onto a hard floor (Let A = “drop glass onto concrete floor”). We know from experience that the glass will break (Let B = “glass breaks”). We know that if we do A, then B will happen so long as we restrict outside influences. To prevent outcome B from occurring we simply do not do action A.

Now, consider we have a negative thought about a person (C = “negative thought”); however, nothing bad seems to occur (D = “negative consequence or outcome”). In other words doing either C or not doing C, leads to the same result of “not D” or no negative consequences. As a result we tend to overlook and not consider the consequences of our thoughts on us or others. This leads to our RM assuming the same thing namely that  there are no direct consequences to creating and using negative thoughts.

The validity of this assumption our minds make does not enter into the minds calculations because it is not concerned with whether its true or not. It will only be concerned with the validity of this or any other assumption if we consciously process all the information we consume and have trained our minds with good reasoning skills. Unfortunately, they can and do have a consequence, as I will explain.

A thought is a construct that does not exist in isolation. Depending on the nature of the thought, it will create a sympathetic response or resonance in the energy of the next lower sub-plane, in this case is emotional or astral plane. By planes and sub-planes, figuratively speaking, I am referring to energy with different degrees of vibrancy rather than of a different kind. Planes, or this case sub-planes of energy are somewhat like states of matter, we will touch on this more in other essays.

The energy in planes and sub-planes ranges from "lower", less vibrant or denser forms to "higher", more vibrant or less dense form. Lower level thoughts, we tend to refer to these as negative ones such as malice, anger, selfishness, worries, jealousy, anxiety and so on, will energize matter of the lower emotional plane. Thoughts of a "higher type" such as intellect, compassionate, affection and devotion will energize matter of the upper emotional plane.

Our thoughts will also affect our bodies directly as they are intrinsically linked to our brain and also due to emotions they stir as these will also affect our bodies being linked to it as well. The degree they affect our bodies are less than how our thoughts affect our emotional body due to the larger "density difference". However, if the lower thoughts we hold persist and are strong they will eventually affect our bodies.

The energy of our thoughts and emotions are part of what is commonly referred to as our auric field. We have higher aspects than these though they are not perceivable by most at this stage in our evolution. There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the notion that our thoughts and emotions have an impact on our bodies though it is mostly observational at this point as we cannot yet measure the energy aspect of our thoughts and emotions. 

We will look at how we create or manifest thoughts in more detail in future essays. The main point at this time is to develop a firmer foundation that can be built on. Part of this is realizing that we create the thoughts we hold and as their author we are responsible for those create and the energies or vibrations associated with them. Another important part is that thoughts are not just part of what our brains, they also have an energy component. For as long as we retain a thought in its original form, the vibrations that it gives rise to remain.

Over time, negative thoughts build up and we focus more and more of our attention there. There are consequences to this, which we have touched on, such as our how they can affect us. One of the additional consequence of this is that we also become more judgmental over time among other things. They can block us from experiences, opportunity and connections with people and the world around us.

We also do not realize that having the same types of lower level thoughts repeatedly reduces our capacity to respond to higher level ones. This helps lower thoughts become more dominant and our mind more rigid. The combination of reduced capacity for expression, and the rigidity of the remaining thought forms results in barriers to expression, awareness and limits our perception. Lower thoughts and the emotions they manifest make it harder to be mindful, which is needed to become more aware of the consequences to particular thoughts, as well as change. 

 An extension of this line of thinking is that by being less conscious of the thoughts in our mind we tend to look for external causes for our issues; to fight or take flight. The idea being that if our own thoughts are not responsible for what is going on in our lives then we are not either. This leads to laying blame or the responsibility for our circumstances on someone or something else.

Even when we do not blame outside forces directly we typically do not take personal responsibility nor attribute them to our own thoughts. We struggle with this because we often do not recognize that our thoughts are in a very real way make us what we are. Put another way we fail to recognize the full significance of the fact that we are what we think.

Admittedly it is difficult to make the connection between our thoughts and outcomes in our lives as it is a challenge to associate a consequence or outcome with a particular thought. This is due, in part, to the reality that our awareness appears almost impossibly complex. Given this it is appropriate to ask - how do I attribute an outcome to a particular thought. Or ask how can we even be aware of or think about the thousands we have every second, of every day when every thought has associations with other thoughts, feelings, memories, physical sensations and aspects of our awareness? While this is a long worded sentence it can help us imagine and consider its complexity. Fortunately, we can get past the complexity of consciousness to effect change.

We start to solve this challenge by starting with a single thought and its aspects. We can then expand this to develop an understanding of how thoughts connect to each other and how more complex thought structures evolve. The first thing to remember about thoughts is that in their essence they are not found in the brain and can be seen as independent from it though they are highly interconnected to it. A thought is not an idea, or words or a mental image; it is the result of a relationship between our reactions experience and become what we refer to as a memory.

Thoughts arise from our consciousnesses reactions to experiences. The combination of all the thought constructs we create and the relationships they form result in the construct I refer to as our RM. Do note that an experience is not a thought; the experience is in the moment. We create thoughts by our reactions to an experience. That reaction is in turn based on and connected to other thoughts (or memories) we have already had that share any commonality with the current experience and our reactions to it.

 

 

Part 2 - Thoughts and the beginnings of the mind

In order to move our understanding of thoughts forward we will connect our developing understanding of thoughts to our reality. Our focus will be on the influence of our thoughts on us, and not on the how the thoughts of others can influence us. I will cover this topic in other essay such as Our Mental House and Energy Interactions, which are found in Section 2 and 3 respectively. 

Our starting point for this is discussion is our birth, which is when the building of our mind starts. At this point we have all the vehicles or aspects of self we need. They include our physical and non-physical aspects that are not perceptible with our physical senses. They are commonly lumped together and referred to as our aura though there are more aspects to it than the vast majority are aware of or can access and use.

There are a number of aspects to our auric field that, having different vibration rates and "densities" exist on different sub-planes but occupy the same space. They are best viewed as being within one another. Of them the ones we use the most and are familiar with, even if not always directly, are our causal (source of intent, will and "higher mind"), mental and emotional bodies. Everything that exists is energy, which is movement, in various relationships and each of our vehicles has different capabilities, which enable us to be aware of or do different things.

All differences are between them are differences of degree not kind. A mundane example of differences in degree would be water in its various forms of ice, water and vapour. We incarnate with different ability to use our various vehicles, which ones we have depends on what our true self is trying to learn in our current life. You can relate to this by considering the concept of one’s karma. Simply put, for any given life, our higher self manifests various capabilities in our vehicles or our lower self. We are then born into situations that will provide our higher self with the experiences it seeks to continue its evolution.

While a very young child is able to perceive all of the aspects I mentioned it has not yet developed the mind or linkages needed to use the body. The newly born child simply begins to experience and interact with and react to what it perceives. At this point the RM is essentially a blank slate waiting to be written on results of our consciousness reactions to its experiences. These reactions are remembered and become our thoughts.

Each of us has a desire to express ourselves in life in our own unique way. When we are first born we are able to perceive energy of various planes; however, without a mind we do not yet think about them. The initial and dominant focus of our conscious attention is the physical plane. Due to our senses, the physical, sensory-based interactions are the loudest and most easily verifiable.

We observe with our senses all the while acting: we squirm, wiggle make noises and encounter with some of what we perceive. We do something such as move a part of our body, we feel it move and usually can see it moving. Gradually we connect what we feel with what we perceive and begin to remember our interactions with objects and our emotional responses to that experience as these are actions as well. We make certain noises, or cry and remember. These events, as do all events, create a number of thoughts that include aspects related to our desire to act, choices, actions and their consequences.

Thoughts exist and persist whether we are conscious of them or not. For example, we do not concern ourselves with how the brain actually achieves actions through the body. We never consider how we learned to move around nor are generally aware of all the thoughts that go into even the simplest movements such as consciously bending a finger. We just think of doing something and our bodies respond. Development of our RM occurs due to our memory of these actions and reactions with the brain being necessary for perception, enabling our awareness and the mechanics of motion.

Again, a child perceives energy of various levels or sub-planes though is not consciously aware of them in the way and older child or adult is capable of being. At this stage we have not yet developed integrated thoughts about what we perceive or ones related to control over our bodies. Nor are we aware that we are developing the interface between our consciousness, what some refer to as our soul, and the manifest universe. We are simply exploring the vibrant world around us based on our nature. To learn to walk and talk, to recognize objects, smells, tastes and so on takes a considerable amount of repetition in order for the mind to develop the thoughts to do these things. Creation of the thought forms required comes first, followed by its strengthening through repetition.

We take for granted the act of consciously choosing to reach out and grasp an object though it actually takes a long time before to learn how to get our bodies to do this. We do not need to learn to move, this is inherent in our bodies; what we do is direct and control our movement towards an outcome. The ability to do this consciously is part of the natural progression of thought development in our RM. We do not think about how to grasp an object either. When we want to grasp something we reach, open our hand up the appropriate amount and so forth and grasp the object.

Our reactions to our early experiences and the memories that result from them become foundation elements of our RM. As adults, we take so much for granted and usually forget about and do not consider how how our awareness has developed over the years. Genetic variations aside, we tend not to consider that we construct our own RMs based on our reactions to our experiences. It is no different in terms of our conscious awareness. Before we can use a thought forms to act in any fashion we must create it. We can then express the newly created thought forms. This means that through our childhood experiences we build more thought forms than we use, some of which we may never use. This is why we do not remember much of the first few years of our lives.

To reiterate:

• See that our incarnate consciousness has aspects (higher aspects, will, intent, mind, emotions, bodies) with different capabilities and potentials.
• See our lower vehicles (causal, mental, emotional and physical) as the "house" for our incarnate soul
• See our rational mind as the bridge or interface between our consciousness and its lower vehicles.

We do not need to concern ourselves with the underlying “physics” of reality to begin to work with thoughts at the conscious level. If we want to work with them more consciously we are aided by having a better understanding of them. Our RM is very powerful and best activated with a deeper understanding of them. While our minds are very complex we can reduce the complexity of the problem by arming ourselves with a broader awareness of thoughts. Specifically, in reference to thoughts, I am referring to the below.

• What they are
• How they are created
• How they interact
• How they are changed

 

How Thoughts and Memories are Created

Major Factors that affect how conscious we are of a particular thought

 

  

Part 3 - The development of mind

We have touched on not just what thoughts are, but also how they we create them. Let us explore thoughts further, both intuitively and figuratively by considering how these structures interact and combine to form more complex thought structures. 

To begin I will start with the points below, most of which we have touched on in some fashion already:

• Everyone’s experiences are based on their unique nature and circumstances of birth
• Experience (action and reaction) and memory create a vibration we call a thought. Included in the thought are our reactions to all aspects of the experience (ex. every detail of our surroundings: the temperature, colours, scents, our state of mind, our feelings etc.)
• Thoughts of “similar vibrations” or that share common attributes are inherently connected by their nature (like tuning forks of the same pitch)
• Our reactions depending on the nature of the experience relative to our own nature and previous experiences
• A thought will excite matter of various planes of matter depending on its nature
• We perceive and interact with the world around us based on what our experiences enable us to
• Our rational mind is the cumulative summation of all our thoughts and the dynamics between them.
• A thought is not a word, a word consists of many thought structures

Each of us has a unique nature, and we express ourselves based on that same nature from the moment we are born. When we are born everything is potential rather than actuality. We do not have a rational mind and though we are conscious without thoughts we cannot interpret what we perceive. Our first experiences after birth create a soup of thought constructs, as we do not start out with a framework for our RM. We build our RM, based on the rules of how consciousness works, from the ground up. For this essay, we will not consider the pool of thoughts we have to draw on nor the affect the thoughts of others have on our development. We will cover some of this an essay in the Spiritual Development section titled Energy Linkages.

The overall nature of this pool of thoughts finds its basis in the uniqueness of the consciousness that is incarnating, the nature of their environment and the physical capability of the body, primarily the brain, and our sensory capabilities. In addition, thoughts are energy, and so pre-existing thought constructs created by humankind are an influence. The types of constructs we create are dependent on numerous factors, including our experiences, their type and the level of vibration of the interaction. Our experiences and reactions to them condition (program) our developing mind.

The simplest constructs to image are those related to physical interactions with the world. We learn to connect to what we sense around us. During our early years they are the singularly most important ones as they are needed to interpret input, communicate, move around and survive in the world; however, there are many more. This includes constructs related to emotional, thinking and reasoning processes and there are constructs that interconnect them.

As we have touched on, our first thoughts are rudimentary almost like free atoms floating around. They are not thoughts adults would recognize in part because of this but it is also due to the fact the RM has not developed enough to be a cohesive whole. At this point, we are creating more thoughts than we are integrating and synergizing. Our rational mind is just developing the constructs to try to interpret experiences. Repetition of experiences creates sufficient rudimentary thoughts with strong commonalities to enable combinations and connections between them. Over time, the complexity and strength of thought structures grow.

Early in our lives, the most rigid thought structures are those related to movement and the interpretation of input. Our thoughts around them can have strong emotional components if we had reacted significantly to some experiences. As our early thoughts become foundational elements of our rational mind, traumatic events that happen in the first years of our lives become deeply rooted. This is what makes them so challenging to overcome.

The more we experience the more connected and cohesive our thoughts become. We continue to integrate our thoughts using whatever basic thinking and reasoning processes we have learned. These too are thought constructs and the totality of the thought forms we create is our rational mind. It is how our inner true self or consciousness is able to express itself. This interface, while not “us”, is critical. We need it to think about and interact with the world around us.

What we perceive as an infant is vibrations of various forms. Through continual touching, smelling, hearing, feeling and so forth with the world, we begin to sort out different vibrations. The RM does not treat each experience as a separate event; it connects them by their commonality to all other thoughts within our awareness including our thoughts about our experiences. When the rational mind integrates its reactions to experiences, it creates new thoughts (which includes ideas and concepts).

Essentially the process is our mind perceives what we experience, be it external to us or internal such as sensations, emotions or thoughts, and reacts to it. When it does it reacts to it using existing thoughts and its reactions to it are more thoughts about what was perceived. The mind will use existing thoughts to process elements of the experience with which it is familiar otherwise. Any new or unexpected elements in the experience will need to be integration though the mind can also choose to ignore these new elements. If the mind chooses to integrate the experience it does so using existing thoughts.

The mind does not always come to will do so as it can ignore require integration. The mind will use existing thoughts to try to integrate or make sense of the experience. When the rational mind lacks a strong correlation with other experiences it will take create a new thought about it that contains elements of the thoughts it considered due to their having some commonality with or relation to what was perceived. This process can be virtually instantaneous though some new experiences can take a long time process. It can also happen that the mind never does "get its head around the experience".

It is important to note that the thoughts our mind creates are not necessarily true or valid unless the thoughts our mind uses to react to what we perceive, think about and analyze experiences include ones related to good reasoning. A mind that does not possess good reasoning thoughts will struggle to integrate the new experience "properly" by using black and white thinking that often triggers fear and the fight or flight mechanisms built into the brain. This makes reacting rationally even more difficult that lead to more lower emotions, erroneous conclusions and poor choices.

Being aware of how our mind processes experiences helps us understand the importance of being mindful of the thoughts we hold and their validity as well considering our reactions to experiences (both the thoughts and emotions they create or trigger) before jumping to conclusions. Doing so is not just very beneficial, it helps us to grow. 

An example of how the mind can come to erroneous conclusions would be:

A young child is feeling lonely, perhaps unloved. The child over hears a parent saying “we never wanted a child when we had did him/her" The parent may have even stated that they were not prepared financially for it, but love their child none the less. However, the child hears the words when they are feeling lonely and fixates on the "never wanted" part of what was said. The combination of feeling lonely and hearing the words can lead to the child creating a thought form such as “my parents do not want me... they do not love me”. The interpretation is false; however, it is as real a thought to the child as any other they may have. If reinforced it will become part of the child's mental programming and can continue despite it being false. 

 

Every act we make in life is based on an intent of consciousness. It uses the mind to direct how its intent is expressed. One of the paradigms of life is that we are born with a greater awareness of our intent unimpeded by the limitations of mind, which means we do not understand nor can direct it. We then build our minds to the point where we are capable of doing both of these the ego we build within it, the constructed "I", takes over with its limitations. This leaves us caught up in a noise world with our thoughts and personal desires, needs, wants and expectations and so on and we lose touch with our ourselves and core intent. 

During the course of our life our RM interprets what it experiences and creates thought structures for everything, including reasoning processes as well. We learn about choices and results or consequences though we do not always accurately associate one with the other. The integration of thoughts happens quickly and continually even if our perceptions are erroneous due to lack of thoughts to fully integrate our experiences.

This process is at its peak during our early childhood years and our minds are extremely fast learners. They soon lack our awareness of things in its mental constructs. At first we lack the thoughts needed to analyze what we perceive. The result being most of the thoughts we create have to do with connecting our consciousness more fully with our body and its ability to make sense of the inputs we get from our senses including our awareness with the few thoughts already created.

Early on we how to use our bodies and recognize shapes, distances and so on as our mind and brain sort through all the various inputs. Our mind continues to develop from every experience resulting in more complex thought constructs that enable us to develop our reasoning and thinking skills. We have the capability or potential to do almost anything, how much we end up being capable of depends on the experiences we have and how we react to them. Our reactions, more precisely the thoughts we create through them, either support the development of a good mind or not. 

Our reactions involve many thoughts. They interact with each other based on their vibration rates and other commonalities. Our mind reacts to experiences and it recognizes relationship between and draws inferences from them. The nature of the thoughts our reactions trigger affect how it does so. Emotions activated or manifested by our thoughts also affect this process. 

Depending on the nature of our reactions, we can create enabling strong supportive connections or build blocks to experiences and the memories associated with them. Blocks, just like our thoughts, are the result of interpreted experiences, hence are secondary to the experience. This means that we change our thoughts and our rational minds if we choose to.

When we experience repeated positive results or outcomes from our choices and actions then we will continue to express ourselves in a similar fashion. I do not mean positive and negative in a "right or wrong sense" as all our perceptions are personal. We are born with the awareness of our nature; however, we do not have an inner template for right or wrong, or what is good for us or not. Right and wrong, as we know it is a subjective determination. We simply have experiences and remember the outcomes, which we either like or do not. 

Negative responses to experiences results in the creation of protective thought structures (a form of gestalts) that act like mental blocks and filters. Our rational mind creates such structures when reacting to experiences we found find irreconcilable, uncomfortable, painful, and unpleasant and so forth. They can be strong or reinforced enough to have us reacting in particular ways depending on the experience though we are not generally are not conscious of doing so nor most of the thoughts involved. Such thought structures act to inhibit what we consciously perceive further affecting our responses and actions. As I mentioned, the rational mind integrates all our responses to everything we perceive in a particular experiences. This includes, potential, all other thoughts within our awareness.

A list of what the mind might encode in the thoughts and thought structures it creates when reacting to experiences help you grasp the significance. Below I have included examples of some of the more important ones for your awareness:

• Every detail of the experience without interpretation
• Our state of mind and how we feel at the moment (how we feel and are acting physically, emotionally and mentally at the moment of the experience)
• How feel about each and every object in our field of perception as well as their individual aspects such as colours, shapes and smells
• How we have felt in the past about any elements of the current experience that we have experienced before
• The energy around us at the moment
• How we feel about our reactions/responses in the moment 
• How we feel about the potential consequences in the moment
• Higher level mental groupings of thoughts across time intervals through commonalities such as during a prolonged experience (this occurs when our minds perceive events that seem to repeat themselves or we have a series of events with enough similarity in a short period of time)
• All previous experiences, with their associated connections, that share commonalities to the connections listed above.

 

In addition to the above, every thought affects us on different levels depending on the nature of the thought. Thinking about highly abstract concepts leads to the activation of energies and potentials at the causal level (lowest level of our higher self) and with it a sort of blissful feeling on the emotional level though we may not always be conscious of it. They can also activate higher emotions. At the other end of the spectrum thinking "negative thoughts" has little impact on our higher aspects and manifests fear based emotions such as anxiety, worry, anger or even hate and malice.

Now, when we think about it we realize that we can access a particular thought through a memory of it, or by touching on any of its aspects. For example, if we remember a particular event from the past we experience the emotions we felt when it happened no matter how long ago, though we may not be consciously aware of them. Conversely, if we allow ourselves to feel sad but not about anything in particular we can find ourselves remembering a few past events that share that same the same emotion.

The interesting point to remember here is that we do not actually encode the feelings with the thought. Thoughts and emotions are comprised of matter of different sub-planes with thoughts being more subtle than emotions. Manifestation occurs on the downward arc from more subtle to coarser/denser matter and activation on the upward arc, the reverse one. The energy of thoughts activates existing emotions or manifests ones by a form of harmonic resonance. Emotions can only activate existing thoughts and no manifest them save indirectly. By indirectly I am referring how our consciousness can react to emotions and manifest new thoughts by doing so.

Thoughts are connected to any emotions they manifest or ones that they resonate with. You can imagine this like vibrations of different octaves. A helpful consequence of this is that we can access an emotion through our thoughts or even more helpful, we can use an emotion itself to locate the thought that gave rise to it. This is an important point to remember, as it implies if we reintegrate thoughts to remove their "negative aspects" we will cease to activate the corresponding emotion(s) though we still need to release the emotions already created. The valuable point here is that while the thought and the feelings seem inseparable they are not. Meditating on this concept will help you grasp it and give you a powerful tool.

Contemplate our reality and you will come to realize that we are a very powerful consciousness. That part of us that is permanent, which our higher self/consciousness, seeks to express itself. Its vehicles for doing so our our minds, emotions and body. How well it can express itself is mostly dependent on the quality of mind it creates. Poor programming, which comes from the mistaken results of faulty, superficial self-conscious observation, greatly affects its ability to so. 

In order for us to express highly abstract thoughts, we need to build thought structures that enable their expression. For example, consider the idea of repose and a physical manifestation of the concept, a chair. In order to build a chair you must have the idea of repose, a higher-level thought form. Ask yourself “can one create a chair consciously if they do not have the concept of repose in their awareness? Certainly, you could duplicate one, build one by accident, but could you create one if you do not have the concept of sitting (part of the concept of repose)? Try to image this and I am confident you will find you cannot.

The concept of repose is a mental construct, and in a sense a general one. However, to make a form, or thought construct at the concrete mental level we must reason from the general (repose) to the specific (a chair), and then reason from the specific back to the general to correlate them and complete the form. We understand something only when we have been able to see it both on its involutionary or downward path (general to particular) and evolutionary or upward path (particular to general).

 

Part 4 - The dynamics of thought

The common notion of thoughts is that they exist in the brain, hence the idea that thoughts are actually energy or vibration separate from though intrinsically connected to our bodies primarily through the brain may be new to many. We tend to see a universe or Cosmos defined by finiteness, by “things”, yet we live in a universe of only energy, of vibration. We see objects, hear sounds and so forth yet the atoms that make up the world we perceive are not particles they are not “things”; they are energy. Our minds do not process what we see with our eyes, they process vibrations and relationships between them. They process what we perceive through our experiences resulting in the development of more and more complex thought forms.

Our rational mind consists of energy in various structures and the relationships between them. We do not assimilated simpler thought forms into larger ones, they are associated with each other like combinations of gestalts. For instance the thought forms for finger movement are part of the complex thought form of grasping yet both are separate thought structures. The term I used for such thought forms is vibrational-template. The experiences we have enhance or modify existing templates and, through integration, create new ones.

Imagine atomic thoughts combining to form basic structures, ones the mind uses to interpret and act at the physical level. The thought and act of consciously reaching to grasp something only happens after we have built a variety of root thought forms. The child needs to learn the component elements of the complex activities such as object recognition, shape, distance, and muscle movements in order to reach and grasp. Each of these elements are independent templates or gestalts we can us either separately or as part of a more complex construct. 

Every thought is a combination of the vibrations that gave rise to it. We know this to be true as everyone can think of a time where some similarities between a current experience in the present and a past one can trigger a memory of the previous experience. This happens continually, though our RM generally filters or blocks conscious awareness of this when we are not mindful enough, it deems them irrelevant or they are painful memories we/it have chosen to block. 

Now, as I implied earlier, a vibrational-template is a multi-faceted and complex structure. The level of the thought structure is dependent on its nature. As mentioned earlier, conscious manifestation requires enabling thought structures. We saw this in how we need to have the mental construct or construct of repose to manifest a chair consciously. At the higher level we have the concept of repose and at a lower one the reasons to repose. In turn this leads to the physical manifestation of a countless variety of chairs, stools, benches, beds and love seats and so forth to repose on. We have the innate capacity or ability within our awareness to think conceptually, abstractly and at a very high level; however, unless it is a gift of birth one must build the thought forms to develop and express this potential.

While we do not have the language to articulate a thought when we are in our first year or so, we are processing language, and we do remember our experiences. We learn and mimic what we see from people around us. Scientists have observed this phenomenon and are studying it in more depth. Our ability to mimic, in a fashion share the experience, aids us in assimilating new experiences into our growing matrix of vibrational-templates.

We experience life moment by moment. Through our experiences new templates come into being even as others cease to be active. Even if we do not use them they do not suddenly cease to be. They remain because energy cannot be created or destroyed. The cessation of activity can be due various reasons including a lack of experiences necessary to sustain conscious attention to them or the experience itself is blocked.

There are connections between the thoughts we hold and between thoughts and emotions, as we have already touched on. They are connected with each other through commonalities though the "mechanism" that connects them are different. Essentially we can imagine each thought as a bundle of different actively vibrating tuning forks with each one representing an aspect of it. Every new thought adds a new bundle of vibration that existing bundle of tuning fork will resonates with any other thoughts or their aspects with the same or similar "pitch". How strong this connection is and how broad it affects us depends on a number of factors, most significantly the strength of the vibrations/aspects themselves. 

Commonalities of the sort described above are intrinsic. We also create both conscious and non-conscious commonalties by consciousness', via our our minds, attention. These connections can link disparate thoughts together. This is not so hard to understand when you think about it. If you can remember a time you were angry. The anger you felt at the time would have become associated or connected with to one degree or another to all the thoughts that you had during the time the emotion was active. We notice this when we find something we experience triggers a memory that shows no obvious connection to it.

Such connections can be forged regardless of whether they have anything to do with the cause of the anger or not. It can also affects previous thoughts notably those that share any connections to the thoughts that were activated. We see in his how our reactions to experiences can change how we view things, which are thoughts, and what we remember about including our memories of other past events. 

The stronger our reactions the more likely it is that we will create new thoughts that connect even more thoughts, whether the connection are direct/intrinsic or not. When strong emotions are stirred it can affect our entire auric field including thoughts that were previously "positive". This is how strong negative emotions can act like a poison in our aura and our rational mind. Of course when we have strong positive emotions the opposite occurs, which is why the wise remind us of the power of positive thoughts and thinking. 

Any of the vibrations from a new experience that we have encountered in prior experiences will cause those other memories to be re-activated. The relationship between thoughts that affects their ability to resonate together is very complex and will be explored more in later essays. In non-technical language, the relationship is dependent on the nature of the thoughts and each of the various aspects or vibrations contained within them.

The complexity of thought interactions is obvious, and even more so when you consider that an exact match (or harmonic relationship) is not required to make a connection. Earlier I touched upon how the mind creates virtual structures during integration. Additionally, connections are established when the thoughts we have around a new experience are “close” in vibration to other thoughts we hold. However, when there is not a direct relationship between thoughts the mind may create a new and separate vibrational-template to connect them. These types of thought forms, while real to us, are more imaginary or virtual than “real”, as they are created by the integration of the related constructs all of which may also be virtual. 

The purpose of the above is to help you gain a little more understanding of thought structures. It will help you start to take more ownership over your own reactions to experiences and hence the thoughts that arise from them. Applying this understanding helps us keep our mental house in better shape enabling us to find and resolve issues more quickly and completely. We can do so with even issues we do not remember having and those we are not even consciously aware we created.

We do need to develop our sensitivity to vibrations in order to track and work with the thoughts better. It take time to build up the new templates needed to elevate our awareness and sensitivity; however, it is well worth the effort. If we become sensitive enough and clarity of cognition we can learn to find a single thought construct among the millions in our our mind.

There is no index or look up table to finding thoughts. We do it by creating the same vibration, feel or thought, if you will, in our mind. We then focus our attention to it. Doing so acts like striking a tuning fork that causes related thought constructs to resonate sympathetically. With adequate sensitivity we can become aware of the thought constructs or emotions that are related to it. The more subtle or fine the vibrations are the greater the degree of awareness control and sensitivity is required. Meditation is the best way to do develop the sensitivity to do this.

When working with particular energies or vibrations, it is important to avoid letting other memories, ones that though influenced by it did not initiate it, sidetrack us. I will explain. Our biggest issues often have strong emotion associated with them. Consequently, many thoughts have become associated with them though they have nothing to do with the original vibrational-template(s) that our reaction gave rise to.

In addition, there are typically other events where our thoughts stirred the same emotion. It is important to clear the thoughts associated with these other events as well; however, we could be chasing phantoms for a very long time. Think about the number of times experiences trigger a particular emotion, and the potential sources of it. We need a way to get to the thoughts of the core experience(s) that gave rise to the thought or vibrational-template in order to clear the emotional baggage.

Getting at a core event(s) allows us to resolve or balance the energies at the source. When we do this we access the thoughts foundation vibrational-template, which is structural and affects the attributes of it. It is the template that becomes associated with those of all connected memories. Balancing a core template modifies all associated thoughts at the same time. In a very real way this is what happens when we has an epiphany. When this happens we may even feel mentally and perhaps even emotionally “lighter” as if a weight has been lifted from our shoulders.

The above is a simplification in that there are typically many “issues” going on at a time, some dependent on or related to each other. In order to release core issues, it is likely that most or all these issues will have to be resolved during the process. We do this in a similar fashion to how we unravel a ball of tangled thread. We do not yank on one piece as this tightens the ball. We pull at it, tug a little bit here and a little there to loosen the ball. This creates room to get at the tangle and sort it out.

As we go through this process, we gradually lose our fear of seeing or learning something about ourselves, we begin overcoming our self-judgements. It is these judgments that help keep us locked into a room or a few rooms in what can be a virtually boundless mental house. Through the course of this material we will have further discussions about emotional baggage and some ways to identify and work on clearing them.

 

Part 5 - follow up

We can work through our thoughts and emotions, resolving some of the conflicts we find. Even as we do resolve issue we need to remember that we continue to create issues for ourselves until we correct the flaws in our perceptions and/or interpretation of experiences. I cannot stress enough the importance of understanding the relationship between the kind of person we are, the awareness we have, and the way we perceive the world around us.

Considering what we covered in a previous section, when we want to change ourselves we turn our attention within to such things as our thoughts around how others view and think of us. We know we can work on the issues our view creates for us; however, we continue to create such issues until we realize that they come in no small part from our allowing others views of us to matter so much. Our growth is tied significantly to how we observe and react to our experiences.

Along the way we learn how our dependency on approval, validation and the like, can run very deep. They arise more from how we think rather than what we think as it is the former that leads to the latter. The tendency we may have to overcome is our minds tendency, for better or worse, lies in its seeking to maintain things as they are. Hence to overcome the momentum of our past we work on our powers of observation and developing our will to work on clearing the blocks and filters our minds have developed.

We must benefit greatly from working on how we integrate what we perceive and how we react to experience. Reducing erroneous thinking and improving our deductive, logical reasoning and objectivity help immensely. We can modify these if we choose by taking a path that includes re-examining our beliefs about life, its purpose, and our goals in it and so on through active contemplation and meditation. Our understanding of our own thoughts grows the more we consider them. I have tried to use symbolism and figurative models that help train the mind more than inform it. Through words, I hope you get the sense or feel of what I am trying to convey as it is is important to starting the process. 

Developing sensitivity to subtle vibration is also very helpful and well worth the effort. By perceiving a vibration directly we get beyond the limitations of our mental constructs and follow it back to the experience that gave rise to it. We could refer to this as accessing "core memories”. This is one way we can learn what program in our mind may  have set up an experience in the first place. Reintegrating our experiences with our new awareness and understanding of things imparts a different “spin” to the original energy. If done properly the energy we have created will have a counterbalancing force that neutralizes the poor program allowing a new balanced understanding or thought to come into being. 

Essentially, our personality is the clothing our soul wears during a lifetime. We can change our clothes, though to do so we first accept that it is possible and then focus our attention on doing it. Our personality can seem rigid, that we are the way we are; however this is an illusion as we just are not connecting the dots. We can get past this by accepting the fact that over time some aspects of our personality do change. Well, if some can change then they all can change. 

We create some new thoughts with every experience for no two are exactly the same. Over time they gradually change the overall makeup of our minds. The changes can be minor affecting few thoughts or, if the experience leads to a strong reaction, they can affect huge swaths of our thoughts. Whether the changes are helpful or not depends on the nature of our reaction and what thoughts are affected.

The structure of the mind, the mental house we build for ourselves, takes shape as we learn. How well our mental house functions depends on the capabilities and qualities we build into it. The stability of its foundation, the quality of the walls, floors and other features how well the utilities needed to keep it running are build in and the ease of moving about it affect how well we can use the house. To understand how we can end up with poorly functioning minds think about it this way...

We start out with a pile of lumber, nails, various components and the tools we need to put it all together. We do come in with awareness of what the tools do and what the various pieces are, but without a plan to build our house nor any concrete notions of how to go about it nor how to use the tools we have to do so (the capabilities of mind). With each experience our mental house develops and grows. What gets built depends on our reactions to experiences; however, without a plan or conscious understanding of the tools and materials we have to work with we do not generally build fully functional mental houses.

We may have built rooms to play in, to work in, and to interact with others in, even a room to escape into; however, the floors may be weak or unstable, rooms unconnected, or there is no electricity or running water. We may hoard too many thoughts of no consequence, come to erroneous conclusions and get stuck in routines that have us building in small restrictive houses. This will close us off and we generally do not realize we have done so and do not see how we can change the house we have built. Yet, people renovate their homes all the time.

It is helpful to see our mental house in a similar light, that we can change it. Admittedly, the house analogy loses some of its value in that a house is seen as rigid, fixed in place. Renovating a house can mean tearing some or perhaps even much of it down, including aspects of foundation and rebuilding one that is more functional. It is not much different with our mental house though we need to be somewhat careful for our mind remains even as we renovate it and we do not want to render it dysfunctional as we go about making changes to it. 

A core principle to remember is that our mind is literally our "house of being" while we are incarnate. The thoughts they are comprised of are both a needed and unavoidable part of our existence here. Cellular memory aside, we will not find a thought in some cell or cells in our brain though they "realize themselves" through them. Our thoughts are the body of our minds. They are what our consciousness uses to express itself. They are the lens we need so that we can function and experience phenomenal reality and learn from it. 

We have our consciousness, our bodies and a rational mind to connect the two. Our thoughts define who we are here at any point in time and though they have immense capabilities, those same thoughts can limit us. Personal growth and spiritual growth, regardless of what tools one uses, help us reduce any limitations we have build into the minds we have created. The task of working on our thoughts lies on every growth path. Take the time to meditate on the this and concepts and ideas presented in this essay. Try to feel rather than just hear your thoughts and you will amazed by what you discover. 

 

 

© 2009 Allan Beveridge 

 

Last updated March 9, 2021