Spotlight Conscious Awareness: Where Do Thoughts Come From?
Where Do Thoughts Come From?
This is such a fascinating question to ponder. There are the physiological explanations (I am not going to talk about them). But they don’t really satisfy my curiosity.
No matter what we do in life, we think. If not purposefully, then automatically. Thoughts are constantly running through our minds. Incessantly. Without our awareness. Without any efforts on our part.
If you have ever tried meditation you know what I am talking about. You can also observe this without meditation. Just put everything down for two minutes, and sit quietly and try NOT to think … What was going on in your mind?
Most likely a long string of thoughts, often detached one from the other, odd sentences, images from who know when or where, things you have to do, things you want to do, people you have met. Endless.
This goes on all the time on a subconscious level. Science says that we have on average 65.000 thoughts per day. There are 82.500 seconds in a day. That’s just over 1 second per thought. Now we don’t need to know all these thoughts as many of them are concerned with motoric functioning of the body, and I suggest that we let the body deal with itself.
The scary thing about the thoughts that we have concerning life, the life we wish for, ourselves, the world around, is that these are pretty much the same thoughts we thought yesterday, last week, last month, even last year. For so many of us these thoughts are predominantly negative, such as:
I am fat
I can’t do this
I am stupid
I don’t deserve this
Nobody loves me, I don’t know what love is
I could go on and on, just like our brain does all too often. Another negative aspect in our mind is the constant discussion we hold with ourselves: shall I-shall I not; good for me-not good for me …
Where does all this come from? They may stem from
conversations we had in the past
jingles we heard on radio or tv or as an advert
a word of anger said by you or to you
something nasty you said or was said to you
memory of a failure (could also be a success)
All of it from the past. None of it relevant really for today.
If you are not sure what I am talking about, get yourself a notebook, a journal, put some time aside, something like half an hour or more, and start to write everything that comes up. Don’t put words into your mind. Let the mind put words into your hand. Write it all down, as it comes
up. Keep writing even when your hand starts to hurt. The pain is sometimes a way the mind has to keep control.
Write even the silliest things, the things you think has no importance. It all has importance. The time to stop is when you feel empty, completely empty, almost drained. With no more resistance inside of you.
When we do this we are taking the first step toward conscious awareness. We have awakened our consciousness.
Birte TheGuide
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