HALF AN OUNCE OF THOUGHTS

Thoughts are intrinsic part of our everyday living. As long as a person is alive, he’s never devoid of thoughts, whether awake or asleep, even while meditating; though the contents of thoughts do change from waking to sleep, to dreaming. (If you’ve gone in deep thoughts, trying to cough up some occasion when you don’t have any thoughts, mind it- going numb when your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend catches you pants down with her/his best friend doesn’t qualify for being devoid of thoughts. Or does it!!?)

The thoughts in waking state are considered ‘meta-cognitive’, implying you are generally conscious of creating and directing these thoughts; while during sleep there are spontaneous thoughts lacking meta-cognition which punctuate the dream world. (Meta-cognition!!?? How the fucks these thought-scientists/psychologists coin such perplexing terms?)

In meditation, the aim is to rid your mind from all thoughts for a few moments; however if you’ve tried meditating, you would know how difficult is that. (My experiments with meditation always end up creating a whacking hurly-burly riot in my cranium)

There’s a school of thought in neuroscientific community which believes that thoughts are only exclusive to humans whereas some others claim that other life forms like chimps and dogs are capable of forming thoughts. (If chicken, fish and guinea pigs can also think, I shudder to think what kind of shitty thoughts they might be having about us humans)

But what is a thought?

This is a vital question, for all our conduct and activity is based on thoughts only. Thoughts are the foundation of all our emotions, sentiments, reactions and recognition of everything around and within. It’s the movement of thoughts that is supposed to be behind accumulation of knowledge based on various experiences; all the anxiety, fears and pleasures; the dogmas and the beliefs; all of which is believed to be ensuing into ‘consciousness’. (Now this is the perfect example of biting more than you can chew. I better get off this consciousness thingy before I start choking…ahem..)

Ever wonder what’s the weight of a thought!

Mosso, an Italian scientist, had proposed in late nineteenth century that brain actually becomes heavier with heavier thoughts. The same has been experimentally validated by neuroscientists David Field and Laura Inman in recent years. The logic behind it, as per them, is that with heavier stressful thoughts, there’s more brain activity necessitating more oxygen and glucose; so it releases excitatory neurotransmitters which makes your body to respond by increasing your heart rate, blood pressure and respiration, eventually resulting in more of oxygen and glucose rich blood being pumped into the brain. (What the hell did I eat in the morning today to go so wonky on such a bafflingly heavy topic… I’m already dizzy…)

Moving on…so our thoughts do have weight, may not be much when measured on a scale – just a fraction of an ounce; but the ‘heaviness’ depends on the kind of thoughts, for the happy thoughts tend to be very light and depressing ones sure are heavy. Heaviness of unpleasant thoughts also depends on how long you hold on to them, bearing them on your head, literally. The weight tends to go increasing exponentially with time. (That explains why you need to dump those depressing thoughts fast and find another chick at the earliest after getting ‘dumped’… Read the full article hyperlinked here for a better perspective)

Besides the weight part of it, our thoughts are also responsible for carving out our whole personality. Thoughts define our ideas — ideas control our actions & reactions — our actions & reactions form our persona. You become what you think…simple!

Our thoughts have a huge impact on our health too. Neuroscientists and doctors like Dr Bruce Lipton claim, with irrefutable logic and experimental validation, that our thoughts control each and every cell in our body; promoting the not-so-novel idea of ‘biology of belief’. In the nutshell, ‘biology of belief’ believes that by controlling our thoughts and beliefs, we can control our complete biology, our cells and ultimately our whole world. (Does it mean that if I believe, I mean truly believe, while having a glass of water, that I’m having beer, it’ll actually have beer-like taste and effect…WOW! I guess I need to wind up this write-up fast and fetch a nice glass of water)

Taking another metaphor- You don’t keep the garbage stored in your house, do you!? You throw it away to keep your house clean. And you keep all nice and exotic looking things to decorate it. Similarly the idea is to shed away the sad/depressing thoughts as soon as possible, to clean up your cerebrum and adorn it with happy thoughts. (Hope thoughts of partying, booze and nookies qualify as happy ones…)

Mention of booze is making me .. mmm .. thirsty. I guess you guys have got the drift of what I want to say. Before I get into a mood of getting into the details of science behind thoughts and the metaphysics part of it, just get going and clean up all the shit you’ve been carrying in your heads.

Signing off for now!

(Finally the glass of water…Cheers!…sip…gulp…mmmm)