Scientists say that the average person has about 60,000 thoughts in a typical day. If you remove your sleeping hours... that means you're having about one thought every second. Scientists also say that most of the thoughts that we have are repeat thoughts, from the last minute, last hour, last day, last week. What scientists have yet to figure out is this... what exactly is a thought?
We sort of know the mechanisms of a thought - little synapses deep in our brain fire off electrical signals. But that doesn't answer the question - what is a thought? Is it a wave? A field? Energy? In which physical realm do they operate - Newtonian physics or Quantum physics?
Most of us seem to believe that our thoughts happen in our heads, in our brains. We think a thought and we might then express that thought verbally or in writing. Or maybe not. We treat our thoughts like they are our own. After all, they are happening in our heads, so they must belong to us, right? Well... maybe.
What if your brain is like a radio station, generating its own programming (thoughts). When you are young, you have a lot of people who come along and do guest shows on your station - your parents, your teachers, society, culture, advertisers, television programs, religions. Your thoughts/programming are shaped by what these people/organizations/influences bring to you. You develop a playlist of thoughts, some are empowering, some not so much. You don't even question some of these thoughts - they are so much a part of who you are. You listen to your thoughts and the programming becomes deeper and more settled. Since all of these playlists happen within the context of your mind/brain/station... you think they are yours. But what if there is interference?
What if... other people have brains/minds/stations that operate on a similar frequency to yours? What if thoughts are energy? What if... just like radio waves... they can be picked up by others who are tuned to a similar frequency? We've all had rogue thoughts race through our heads. Crazy thoughts. Weird thoughts. Scary thoughts. "What the heck? Where did that come from?" Most times we don't pay these thoughts any mind, other than to wonder where they came from. But sometimes, we stop and look at them more closely. We begin to wonder why we would have such a bad thought. We start to question ourselves. After all, the thought was in our head, so we must have generated it. It's a bad thought... so it must mean we are a bad person. If we fixate on the thought long enough, we might even act on the thought. But... what if the thought wasn't even ours to begin with? What if it was a bit of interference from someone else's thought patterns?
Maybe the people we would label schizophrenics are simply highly sensitive receiving stations for thoughts. Instead of finding external solutions (drugs) for an internal issue, we should put our research dollars into finding internal solutions.
Just because we have a thought, doesn't mean we have to own it. Whether we generate it or not. A thought is simply a thought. Many of our thoughts are simply habits. We think the same thought often enough and it becomes a habitual pattern. Nobody loves me. I don't matter. Life sucks. We all have playlists of thoughts - some empowering... some not so much. Maybe we could change the playlist.
Some would say that Western Society has explored the Outer World while Eastern Society has explored the Inner World. Perhaps it is time for us in the West to explore within rather than without. Star Trek claimed that outer space was the Final Frontier. The truth is that inner space is the Final Frontier. And it is the one what we shy away from the most.
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