How do thoughts, emotions and thinking work?
By: Subraj Matharu
Tags: Thoughts, Thinking, Emotions, Mind, Mindfulness

This post helps you learn what thoughts and emotions are, as well as how they form. What’s more, understand how thinking works and the impact it has on everyday life. You will also become clear on the way energy operates and moves. In effect, your awareness expands, which relieves stress and allows the mind to slow down.

The mind has many components that move and operate like a machine.

What are thoughts?

Thoughts are fleeting energy forms that the brain collects and stores. Each one is a physical object, like anything else. What’s unique about them is their size, weight and mass, which are tiny.

To show how thoughts operate, take the instance of how information and science work.

Data is a unit of fact in all subjects and areas of study. In most cases, this would be a word, number, object, measurement or description. Thoughts are like these small units of data. Over a period of time, they gather to form groups that create stories, beliefs and information.

Despite thoughts being solid objects, they can also adapt and change. To a large extent, because your senses are always gathering new data. For example, hearing the opinions of others can alter how you think and feel. The brain holds these details like pieces of knowledge, which shape the content of your mind.

Thoughts are forms of matter and subject to the laws of nature and physics. What’s more, all the material in your consciousness has a volume and takes up space. In summary, this means that thoughts relate and work in the same way as all physical matter.

Thoughts are like pieces of data on a computer. Each one is a physical form.

Is everything energy?

From a scientific point of view, all objects and forces that you sense are forms in space (E=MC2). In view of this, it means that everything, including the mind and body, is a form of energy.

The total amount of an object’s energy will always stay the same, regardless of what happens to it. To clarify this, picture a wooden table that can longer serve its purpose. You can either take it for recycling or use it for a different purpose, such as making paper or fuel.

In this case, the energy that makes up the wood transfers to a different form or moves elsewhere. The total energy mass is still the same, even though the form, place, shape and density of the object change.

Bearing these points in mind, it is not possible to create or destroy energy. It works by shifting and moving from one format to another. Thoughts and emotions also take place within the same laws. The reason is that they are forms of energy that work, change and move to express themselves. On the whole, this is why the content of your mind is dynamic and never static.

The total energy that results from burning wood shares the same mass as the solid piece of wood itself. The reason is that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

What are emotions, and why do you feel them?

Any form of energy can build up and become denser. In real life, this is how all objects gain mass and weight. After some time, they are easy to feel, and you can sense their presence. The body’s nervous system, which includes the brain, can build up vast amounts of this energy. Once the body becomes weighed down by heavy thoughts, you feel them as strong emotions.

Here are some of the most common emotions you may sometimes feel: Happiness, Joy, Love, Peace, Sadness, Guilt, Hate, Fear, Disgust and Anger. The theme of thoughts often relates to the emotion from where they arise. For instance, when you experience an anxious thought, there is also feel a sensation of fear.

To explain this further, picture a lake with large deposits of dirt, sand or rocks at its bed. Through many years these have built up and grown into large mounds. Over time they become so large that small parts of them break away and rise to the water’s surface. The effect of this causes the water to be dirty and clouded.

In this image, the lake’s water is the space of awareness. The lakebed is your memory bank, and the mounds at the bottom of the lake are emotions. Each one of these has built up to be large enough to feel. Moreover, the small amounts of dirt, sand, rocks or stone rising to the surface are thoughts. When this process becomes too excessive, it blurs the clarity of the water. In this case, your mind becomes cluttered and cloudy.

A mind that’s dense with emotions finds it hard to think and create. On account of this, it goes against the bodies intention to make healthy, clear decisions.

Excess thought leads to strong emotions. These can blur the clarity of your awareness.

How and why does thinking take place?

The word ‘thinking’ translates as using thought in action. In essence, this means that it is a mental activity based on data, a fact or emotion. To a large extent, thinking occurs in the brain, as a way of responding to something.

The purpose of all this is to help make decisions so that you can evolve, learn and survive. It’s important to note that these functions work best when they are in line with a state of wellbeing. Hence why all cells and systems strive for the good of your whole self.

With this intention, the body and brain must work together to store intelligence.

The function of storage takes place in the brain and nervous system. Together they perform this action through a vast network of neurons. These are a collection of cells that send and store information. To a great degree, you experience this in the way of feeling thought and emotion. Thinking is the main way that you process, learn and assimilate all this knowledge.

Observe how you think in the way of ideas, judgments, opinions and beliefs. Can you see how each one of these is a form of action and thought? The main reason is that they are all ways of trying to process an object or mental fact.

Thinking always takes place by relating to some form by either using or discarding it. The contents of the mind also affect what you choose to do. To that end, all these processes are forms of activity and movement.

Thoughts, emotions and action are all connected in a vast web of the mind.

What happens as you become aware of your thoughts and emotions?

The cycle of emotions and thoughts is ongoing as both represent each other. To summarise this process, your senses gather information and store them as thoughts. These also create emotions which fuel more thinking. Each action links to the other, which then creates robust patterns in the brain.

When these neural links become set in the body, it can be hard to break free from them.

In spite of this, it is possible to rise above this cycle so that it no longer affects you. Become aware of how thinking takes place, and grow wise to how it works. Gaining an understanding is the first step to becoming free from the mind’s grasp.

On the level of form, you are a physical being. Thoughts and emotions are parts of you and take place in awareness. Furthermore, they are not separate from life. As the mind grows wise to this truth, you can allow thoughts to be as they are. It’s not necessary to think of them as objects that you must remove.

Thought, emotion and thinking rise to the mind’s surface as you accept their nature. From here, you allow them by not resisting their presence. The mind slows down as a result and finds clarity by itself.

From this point, you can use thinking for its real purpose, which is creative energy. Your nature as a unique being then shines through without effort.