Composition of our thoughts

The mind map comprises a range of thoughts that keep getting played every second of our existence. I am not here to tell you why we encounter ‘thoughts’  - this is far too complex a question where all civilizations have tried to deal with this fundamental issue. We do have phenomenal philosophical stuff that responds to this issue. 

However, lets accept that thoughts are bound to occur and affect us in extremely intimate manner than we can imagine – so much intimate than it is hard to question them and to distance our inner ‘selves’ from these thoughts. In other words, ‘we’ are thoughts and what we think, we believe it to be true. Other word for subjective truth can be said to be a perception (or a dream – philosophically speaking). Each one of us lives a dream, expresses some definition of belief/ truth that we tend to consider absolute. A lot of debate has already handled these issues related to the idea of subjective truth and universal truth, so I choose to let it pass. I am not adding anything new, neither it is my intention.

However, as a start, if we choose to accept our thoughts as something to be believed or as something that generates some ‘action’ that we hope should benefit us, then we need to be aware of what we keep thinking about. Being fully aware of our thoughts can generate the idea of ‘control’ of our lives and this awareness can’t be underestimated. 

So what do we think?

A part of our thoughts are about ‘emotions’ or feelings – Personally, I consider this important. In an age of hyper control  and hyper digitization, it is preached that these emotions need to be in check always all the time – since they make us ‘vulnerable’. Ridiculous! I think, if emotions weren’t there, no kind of art or humanities would ever exist. No spontaneity would exist and no creativity would exist. Being human is being emotional (extent of which may vary from person to person). Emotions help us heal past traumas, make us bind together and works as a glue to everything. My past experience teaches me that emotions need to be given their own space and no excessive curtailment of the same should be done. It is because emotions do not always obey the dictates of the intellect, we are afraid regarding the idea of loosing control or appearing vulnerable. I am not endorsing the idea that everything should be let loose and emotions are the ultimatum in life. But annihilating their existence is equally bad.

The other component of our thoughts deal with formulating plans, methods, reviewing, calculating, quantifying, assessing and acting on past actions – This is important to give ‘clarity’ to the haziness of feelings/ emotions. It helps to know the absolute facts of a situation at times. This tendency can be expanded, can be proven, can be taught, can be applied everywhere. And therefore, (for better or worse) most of our experience of life is governed by this dimension of thought. This dimension is always concerned with ‘finding’ some kind of purpose or passion and nudges us continuously to perfection (maximum productivity). Generally, these thoughts tend to make one very critical of everything and seem to take on an ‘advocacy’ stance! Not only you remain a little annoyed with everything, but you will annoy others too! You will probably “hurry up” in your life if you choose to engulf yourself with such tendencies.

And we now mention the component of contemplative thoughts – where ‘time’ dissolves, our own self dissolves, we introspect, we only observe and we just witness our self. This dimension of thoughts makes us realize that ‘we’ as existential phenomena are larger than summation of all kinds of thoughts. This dimension tells us that although thoughts maybe real and affect us tremendously, we can still change them at any point in our lives – for we are not just thoughts, but something more transcendental in spirit.

I conclude by saying that all above components should be given appropriate mental space to exist in our minds. All components compliment each other. To experience life “fully”, it is important to feel all above components of thoughts that our mind generates. 

Thus, a great person is the one, who knows this and who acts on his/her thoughts but also knows the limitations.