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Yes, I've always believed thoughts are things. My simple example: Whenever I've said, "This job makes me sick," or "She makes me sick," I get sick. I may not get sick immediately, but I've planted that idea/thought into my mind, and if I say it enough, it becomes a belief; therefore, if I believe something/someone makes me sick, that belief becomes my reality, and I get sick.
It happened many times until I finally caught myself and watched what I was saying to myself (aloud or just in my head).
if you want to change your life, then change your thoughts
if you want to see or know or figure out what it is you believe or think, then look around your life
that is what you believe and think
everything in your life, down to the smallest detail, you have thought and brought into your life,
through your thoughts and feelings and beliefs
the good news is, you can change it into something more pleasing
Things are a manifestation of thoughts that were acted upon.
You're confusing thinking with doing.
You can think all you want but doing presents the physical manifestation of your thoughts into the physical realm.
If you want to change something, stop thinking about it and start doing it so it becomes a habit to where you don't have to think about it anymore.
A belief (thought) is just a belief until there is action.
Action on the part of the agent is what turns belief into something other than belief.
I guess you can argue that one is more apt to do something with a thought if that thought is consistent, but a thought in-itself just doesn't have that kind of power.
Case in point: You wouldn't have know what I just thought until I typed it out for you. I culminated my thoughts and arranged them for you to read.
Our way of life as humans values truth and certainty. We tend to look down on what we merely believe (besides religion, but I digress) and value what coincides with reality, as much as humanly possible.
I can think I'm a jerk all day long, but if people say I'm a nice guy or I get good recommendations at work for good behavior or proof to the contrary then I'm mistaken and wrong regardless of what I think.
If I think I'm a jerk and have proof that I am; people say it to my face or I get reprimanded at work, then my actions have manifested into that thought. In this case my actions unconsciously or not I would assume, would come before the thought that I am a jerk.
So it isn't necessarily the thought that precedes (especially since people usually aren't that self aware about their jerk-ness) but rather the unconscious actions that then bring to light, "Oh hey I might actually be a jerk."
You can have some thought training as you describe in the OP. I can say to myself, or have a daily affirmation that I am not a jerk. Well...I can say that all I want, but it takes a leap of actions to manifest that belief. This isn't just a vision of me in my head doing good deeds, but rather me actually doing good deeds, being courteous to people and not having a temper.
Thoughts do have power, and they can make our mind do strange things sometimes. But this is psychological and we tend to put people on meds because some people can't control their thoughts, or they are disconnected too much from reality. "Seeing" ghosts and monsters doesn't make them real, it makes them mental images; that may seem real to the one "seeing" them.
Lastly and probably more relevant to the OP is the power of thought on our body. I can't express this first hand, because I haven't seen this to be true, however I have heard that those who meditate, can control their breathing, heart rate and pain tolerance to a certain degree, however I feel this has more to do with a thought triggering a primal part of the brain, while at the same time controlling breathing to achieve a desired effect. And usually those who have things like higher pain tolerance are practicing this for years, while at the same time either inflict pain on themselves to deaden the senses or train their brain to ignore pain, or both.
In one sense you have to ask: What is the level of certainty of a specific thought and does this match up with reality.
We have our private powers - thinking, feeling; and our public powers - speaking, doing. Checking the ecology of all those powers regularly is necessary.
[quote=Tobiashen;42134687]Yes, I've always believed thoughts are things. /QUOTE]
[quote=Tzaphkiel;42136694]yes, thoughts become things,/QUOTE]
I like your posts; thanks for participating.
I don't believe thoughts are things nor do I believe they become things.
(Say we build a house, it started as a thought, but the thought did not become the house, because the thought is still a thought in head, or where ever thoughts are, so if the thought is still intact, then it did not become the physical house we see in the environment.)
I'm interested in believing and the affects of believing, (as you said the effects on our body,namely emotions.)
I refer to the 'placebo effect'; the inert sugar pills do not become medicine, no matter how much it is believed they change/morph. I maintain we use thoughts in lieu of sugar pills or any other 'things'. We 'believe' thoughts are things because our amygdalae react to them 'as if' they were 'things', (misperception).
Your both on the 'right track', except for the small detail, your still getting the affects of 'believing', you both made a great contribution to this thread.
Here's my latest contribution to this thread:
"I used to unwittingly use thought to experience emotional hurt".
What do you think would be the effect/affect on someone who "believes" that thought?
(Note they would now be INTENTIONALLY using thought instead of UNWITTINGLY. Choosing to believe is different from being conditioned to automatically believing BEFORE one knows what the thought is, that is whether true or false. Involuntary 'believing' is NOT concerned about the 'validity' of the thought; just that it's a thought is enough to 'trigger' the automatic reaction, (emotions). and physical symptoms as Tobiashen already pointed out.
Amygdalae are hard wired to react to perceptions; mirages/illusions/ thoughts are perceivable so amygdalae react to all perceptions without differentiating.
"I used to unwittingly use thought to experience emotional hurt"...I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
For all intents and purposes, basically you mean "I experience emotional hurt...but I do not know it" Correct? And now "I believe that I am now experiencing emotional hurt" Correct? An affirmation or realization does have some bearing on how we perceive things. But it doesn't mean that I will always act or react to that thought. It just means I am aware.
I don't think you can simultaneously be aware of something you're not aware of? And I think that's what you're trying to say.
If you are just talking about the placebo effect then yes, it has been proven that sometimes some people get "better" after taking a sugar pill. However, the people are believing a LIE. They are believing in two propositions that:
A. They are taking a pill which is a symbol in society of "good health."
B. They might be taking a cure for their exact disease.
Their belief is that these things are both true. But these are low-level beliefs NOT explicit ones.
However, and this is a big caveat, only some people experience this...for whatever reason. Most people do not and cannot, as some of these unwitting thoughts, as you call them are ultimately unexplained. I think you're trying to reverse proof psychology by saying we unknowingly have innate low-level beliefs that guide our behavior and that's just not the case. Most of our lives are guided by some sort of progression from low belief to awareness to action.
To assume that we would all have the ability to "trick" ourselves with low-level beliefs is inane, but higher-level beliefs where we are consciously aware I think would and could have a greater impact on our lives.
So if I were to make a chart regarding affects on our behavior it would be something like this:
1. The external world
2. Other People
3. My conscious actions
4. My conscious thoughts
5. High level beliefs
6. Low level beliefs
7. Unconscious beliefs
8. Id
To put it simply a thought is a thought. My brain can distinguish between the real world and thought while awake. However we must think prepositionally and logically when confronted with conflicting beliefs. If I see a ghost, that is a thought. However I also know through experience that ghosts probably don't exist. That is also a thought. So we compare and choose which would be more true.
I could force myself to believe a lot of different things but it doesn't make them True. There are people who believe they are dead, but this is a medical condition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion
" the proof of the pudding "; (meaning; you can only judge the quality of something after you tried/used or experienced it).
Affirmations used with tapping and/or EMDR:
"I used to unwittingly use thoughts to experience emotional hurt".
"Now I intentionally use thoughts to experience different emotions."
" the proof of the pudding "; (meaning; you can only judge the quality of something after you tried/used or experienced it).
Affirmations used with tapping and/or EMDR:
"I used to unwittingly use thoughts to experience emotional hurt".
"Now I intentionally use thoughts to experience different emotions."
The irony here is that you keep repeating the line "unwittingly use thoughts" or "unwittingly believe" in most all of your threads and yet it doesn't make any sense. Belief as defined by psychologists to philosophers, just doesn't work like that.
We may have innate reactions, trauma when young, but I wouldn't call those beliefs. And if I did they would be low-level beliefs. In a very basic sense, those situations are tempered by our reason.
Hence having a traumatic experience as a child is just that, an experience. To overcome that we exercise thought to get over or deal with those experiences. Some compartmentalize and deny those thoughts. It doesn't make thoughts "things"...its just life.
I could probably be more clear, but ultimately I don't think this conversation is going anywhere.
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