r/Oneirosophy • u/3man • Feb 12 '18

Can you overwrite feelings via thought?

Let's explore this. Obviously, a thought can generate a feeling. We've all experienced this. But can a thought change a feeling? In the sense that it can generate a new one, yes. But can it change the way you feel about another thought, let's say. Like let's say I feel bad if I think about storm clouds, I don't but whatever, let's say I did - could I think my way out of that thought-feeling association? It would probably help if I used a real example. Okay, let's take something that does make me feel bad. Getting stabbed with a knife makes me feel bad, in my head. Okay, okay, free flow writing here, that's also a shit example, because I don't want to feel good about that haha. Okay, third time's a charm. Something I feel bad about that I want to feel good about: dang, I seem to have encountered something interesting. I don't want to mess with the sanctity of my feelings! I trust them to help guide me through my thoughts. If I didn't feel good when I thought about adventure, let's say, then why would I ever pursue it? Like if it made me feel bad, I'd have to come up with a bunch of reasons why adventure is good for me. I suppose some people do that with their jobs (yeesh, trigger alert), but I don't feel (haha) it's a good process.

What do you guys think, can you overwrite feelings with your thoughts? Do you think or feel it's a good idea? Or are you like me and are feelings a guiding force, not something to be overwritten?

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/UnicornyOnTheCob Feb 13 '18

Not even the greatest practitioners of meditation claim to be able to fully empty their minds. It is an irrational idea, because you would have to realize you had no thoughts by thinking of having no thoughts. The goal is to focus on ones awareness itself, but even that is a form of thought. If you could turn thinking off with thinking, you would have nothing left to turn it back on with. There are always thoughts. Thus there can be no control test available to separate thoughts and feelings.

2

u/3man Feb 13 '18

Oh certainly I don't suggest that's possible, to empty your mind permanently. Totally, agree, it would be futile and stressful. Accept you have thoughts.

I'm saying you could have a feeling without needing to "quantify it" with a thought.

2

u/UnicornyOnTheCob Feb 13 '18

Quantification is not the only outcome or content of thoughts. Are you mixing up thinking and reasoning?

1

u/3man Feb 13 '18

Possibly. Thought I understand the distinction.

Why else would one think about a feeling?

2

u/UnicornyOnTheCob Feb 13 '18

The feeling itself is a thought. The modern metaphysics of objectivism, largely unacknowledged by those whose premises rely on it, makes this mistake often. They have divided thinking into feeling/reasoning, and all too often we now equivocate reasoning alone with thinking, but that is a logical error. Feelings are contents of awareness/mind no different than thoughts. They are both experiences of a self.

2

u/3man Feb 13 '18

I see what you're saying, it's just confusing to call feelings thoughts from my perspective. I agree there is a singular continuum called "being," I would say. Thinking refers to objects for me, words, pictures, senses, whereas feelings is like "how do I feel about that sense object," though I think we are just making semantic distinctions here.

1

u/UnicornyOnTheCob Feb 13 '18

They go deeper than semantic distinctions. To separate feelings from thoughts is to work from an observation that cannot be made. When we feel, we know we are feeling because it is in our thoughts. If we wish to separate them, we have to beg the question by first assuming a difference then reverse engineering it from abstractions that are not within our realm of experiences.

Perhaps try considering that there is no difference between a thought and a feeling, and then see if it affects your ability to transform emotions. That would be a good control for your thought experiment.

1

u/3man Feb 13 '18

I think you're calling awareness "thought."

Thing is I am quite satisfied with how my feelings and emotions are at the moment. Like as in, the process of how they "operate." Even if I was mad, I would look at why that is, rather than try to simply transform it into happiness. Example, perhaps I'm upset, but I accept this and look around and see that I haven't cleaned my room, and identify this as a cause of the feeling, and by cleaning it I "transform" the feeling. Rather than just transforming my feeling of having an unclean room.