Where do you think our thoughts originate?

[Ja192827]

I have heard it taught that our thoughts do not originate from our minds and that we are not responsible for them.  I meditate regularly and tend to think of my nonstop mental chatter as coming directly from me, that I am responsible for its appearance in my head.  If we are not the creators of this mental chatter, then where do you think it comes from?  Is it that when we are not actively engaged in anything, the random thoughts that pop into our head are just that, random images, memories, and worries that our brains just spontaneously shoot out, and the part where we are the authors comes in is when we latch onto that thought and let it carry us away with worrying, regret, etc.  Eckhart Tolle said something to the effect that there are "thought bubbles" floating around that enter our mind, that that seemed a bit woo-woo for me.    Thank you for your time.

[Middleway]

I would recommend that you read “clarifying the natural state” by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal. It is a brilliant book and a must read (in my opinion). He provides techniques to investigate the mind. He says thoughts and mind are one and the same which is empty awareness.

[stillpointdancer]

I have heard it taught that our thoughts do not originate from our minds and that we are not responsible for them.

If you follow the latest research it's pretty clear that thoughts originate in the brain, but not necessarily in the self-conscious brain. Current thinking (no pun intended) is that our brains (I'll use brain rather than mind, although the two are often interchangeable) evolved in such a way that we became successful at seeing patterns in seeming chaos and in using these patterns to predict future events, such as whether a predator is nearby.

What we are left with is a brain that operates underneath, as it were, our conscious brain, which it uses as and when it is necessary. It has been shown that decisions arise in the brain before the part we are aware of as 'us' is aware of them, and we merely imagine that we have consciously made those decisions. Strange as it seems we are an add-on to the main part of the brain, monitoring what might be about to happen, but only receiving information from the environment after a great deal of processing by the rest of the brain.

The good news is that this rewiring takes place all the time. Whatever we think or do has an effect, so meditating and following the path also rewires it. We change because we undergo, without knowing what is happening, practices which change the brain, and so change us. Our 'responsibility' comes from changing our brains in ways which enable us to think and act in different ways, reflecting the kind of people we want to be.

It is my opinion (not fact) that when people have thought deeply about stuff like this in the past they caught a glimpse of how the brain works, that decisions seem to be made elsewhere, which explains the idea of thoughts originating somewhere else.

[Ja192827]

Middleway, I plan to check the book out, thank you.

Stillpointdancer, thanks a lot for clearing things up for me.