What is a thought?

[fryingLotus]

A thought is something that seems to come into my head, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes I appear to bring the thought on myself. 

 

Thoughts seem to encourage the course of actions or feelings. When a thought comes it can change your mood and the thoughts that then follow. 

 

Through meditation it feels as though thoughts come from somewhere else and that I am a receiver of some kind that is simply observing them. In this case it is strange that they influence me so much, especially if I feel somewhat aware that these thoughts are not something that I am generating. So a thought arises from somewhere and is received by me, I then am either aware of this thought being received, or I become trapped (or am already trapped) in the process of thoughts and am not aware, believing that this is something I have thought up myself and that the thought is in fact part of me. This whole process is not thought about - there is no awareness of it and everything feels automatic.  

 

What's also strange is that if thoughts do come from somewhere else, why then do personalities develop? Is my personality stored somewhere outside of my body? Is my personality based purely on my brain and my environment or is everything already thought out somewhere else, which is then gradually fed through to me throughout the course of my life? Or, does my personality develop based on the events that happen in my life, and these events then create moods, feelings and thoughts which are then fed back up to my personality (wherever that is) so that new thoughts can then be fed back later?

 

It's a bit confusing and I'm not really sure, I don't think I can be sure. However, if we take the premise of thoughts coming from an external source, then surely this would apply to all living things. This being the case, if we are all fed thoughts, feelings and sensations from somewhere else then I think we are not really learning from the environment directly, rather, this environment is a medium for the thoughts/sensations which arise from elsewhere to be experienced.

 

Does this then mean that life is a big experiment, just to see how different things interact with each other?