Have you ever wondered where a thought comes from?
Have you ever wondered why a thought comes into your mind?
Have you ever been curious as to know how a thought gets developed?
Is it possible to control our thoughts?
Let’s get down to some basics here and talk about thought itself. What is it? Now, I am not a medical professor or a practicing psychologist so I am going to explain this as I see it and try to put it in as simple words as possible:
A thought is something immaterial, deeply rooted into our sense of being that is driven by our core values, background, interactions, rituals, situation, and past actions that stimulates our mind, a conscious-level by-product of the brain, to create some sort of decision, opinion, deeper belief, emotional trigger, or response.
The most interesting thing about thoughts is that it leads to more thoughts. Thoughts can drive us crazy – the restless mind. Thoughts can also drive our happiness – the satisfied and restful mind.
You can’t put a dam against your mind to stop the flow of thought. Hence, as one thought pops up so does another. As soon as we are born into this world, our thought-process begins.
Now the cool thing about thought is that our mind does have the ability to control what kind of thoughts we produce. Our education, books we read, our family interactions are some simple example of influences of thought. Thoughts can also vary in our various states of consciousness. When we are awake our thoughts can be different then when we dream or enter states of very deep sleep, or meditate.
It’s difficult to say if some thoughts are just there because we are born a certain way or raised a certain way. What I find interesting is that the boundaries we live in define our thoughts – both past and present
If we go to a particular kind of school, we develop foundation thoughts that are driven by the ideas of our educational institution. If our society creates a certain belief system driven by fear, we generally have thoughts of uncertainty, doubt, and misinterpretations. Those societies that live in joy are generally thinking of good things, helping others, or just giving back.
The mind and brain are interrelated. My thoughts here are that the mind produces certain thought but the brain aids in the processing of the thought. What this means is that if we are creating good thoughts our brain will help take this further by directing our body to talk and act in good ways.
It seems more and more that thoughts are embedded in both activity and non-activity. We can develop thoughts anytime, anywhere while physically acting, sitting still, sleeping, or eating. The foundation of thought is just Being.
However, I find one thing common with us humans that we are continuously trying to do: we try to fight with our thoughts “thinking” we can defeat it by telling it to go away. We get restless because of certain thoughts. We get stressed out because of certain thoughts of fear.
We are in many ways not even cognizant of our bad thoughts that make us cause harm to our self and others. We like to fight the gremlin within us.
Yet, what are we really doing here? Don’t you see that you are fighting with the very thought that is a reflection of you? I mean let’s look at this logically – if a thought comes to mind because of something we are doing, something we believe, something we take as poison from someone else and this thought creates all this turmoil within us, that we have to fight against, aren’t we really just fighting with our self?
What many try to do is try to slay the very thought that comes inside our head – but thoughts are not meant to die. Thoughts are trans-formative. They morph into something else and new thoughts spring from these.
The art of living is being able to recognize negative thoughts and transform these thoughts into positive thought.
Now, what many struggle to understand is that the mind has several contributors to thought. At the basic level we think of things in the past. So based on experience if something bad happens in the past, we think the future will not bode well for us. In other cases, we think too much into the future and play “what-if” games with our lives driving ourselves and others around us crazy.
The most challenging level of thought is really thinking of what we call the “present” – thinking in the now. This element of thought is the toughest but gives us the greatest sense of peace because it is timeless.
When we are not measuring any thought against any frame of time, past or in the future, we are hovering our thought in between a plane of space that is infinite. The thought is not defined by the past so there is no root foundation and the thought is not tied to something you are trying to achieve in the future, so there is no final destination.
It is this element of thinking where we become thoughtless – and if we can quieten the mind even for a split second of thoughtlessness – the feeling of joy can be natural, organic and blissful.
So, how do we control our thoughts? The short answer is that you don’t. Control implies some sort of territorial action you are trying to take to tackle the thought, bring it down, and crush it. This kind of behavior doesn’t work. In fact, controlling others leads to more push back and thoughts will fire back at you, in the same way, if you fight against it.
The key to quieten the mind is to negotiate with your thought and come to a happy medium of self-satisfaction.
Here are some things I have done to control my thoughts that may work for you:
- Recognize the thought and how you feel
- Just stop what you are doing and close your eyes
- Try not to attach yourself to your thought
- Use your visual perception to watch your thought. Just look at your thought like you are sitting in movie theater. Softly smile at the drama. Remember, when you watch the screen keep in mind that you are not the screen so there is no need to be attached to the drama.
- Use your auditory perception to hear what the thought may be saying. Recognize the various sounds around you such as birds outside, a running fan, the air-conditioner, etc.. Use the compilation of sounds to recognize nature’s way of defining silence.
- Use your sensual perception to gauge your emotional feeling from the thought. The key is not to question why you feel sad, stressed, mad, happy, etc. Just feel the emotion and recognize it. Getting over an emotion starts by acknowledging it.
- Just breathe. Feel your abdomen contract in and out. Recognize how you are breathing. Is it high in the clavicular region, middle thoracic, or below in your abdomen? Bring your breath in control through your abdomen. Take long deep, natural breaths. Relax.
Remember, thoughts are a reflection of the world you live in. At the end of of the day all thoughts reflect back at you. They create triggers of emotional responses that can do either harm or good to your sense of Being.
The art to creating more peace within is to recognize the negative thoughts that can do harm to yourself and others, and catch these in time before greater damage is done.