Thoughts and feelings are not two sides of the same coin

[Commodent]

I'm just feeling quite thoughtful this late evening and felt like putting this up there.

I think it's inaccurate to say that negative thoughts cause negative feelings, or vice versa. The relationship between thoughts and feelings can in my view be better described as a complex interaction between the thinking and the feeling brain. I.e. they are separate, but interacting parts. For example, thinking bad things about yourself can make the feeling brain feel bad. (Note that the same thought can elicit different feelings depending on the time and place). Similarly, feeling bad can trigger a lot of neurotic thinking, if you have erroneous beliefs about what those feelings imply.

Bottom line, the goal is not to eliminate certain emotions, but to attain a healthy synergy between the thinking and the feeling parts of the brain. That is, to resolve inner conflict. The thinking and the feeling parts of your brain can beat each other up, or they can cooperate. Your choice.

[RobertZ]

That’s interesting. For example,  I felt a flash of embarrassment by something that happened. Then I ruminated over it in a disastrous manner for a long time. Or, I continuously had a  deprecating self-narrative. 

I am not sure about the brain patterning—blood flow, neurological/electrical.  Some people are probably doing brain scans and that kind of thing. 

My take is that a lot of people are probably not aware that thoughts can even be related to physiological states.  So the meme of that link probably deserves to continue to be propagated .

[Inliytened1]

@Commodent thoughts and feelings are all dualities.  They are relative.

The Absolute is Love and pure being.

Everything else is imagination / duality.

So it is relative.

I think that's what you are saying.

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Inliytened1

[Commodent]

@RobertZ Yes, what you're describing is probably the interaction of some parts that are at odds with each other. Maybe it goes something like this: embarrassment -> "oh no, what is wrong about me?" -> obviously doesn't make one feel good -> further rumination

The most evident parts are the right-brain and the left-brain, which are basically two separate brains tied together. (In some people the corpus callosum is quite underdeveloped, so the right-brain and left-brain barely communicates at all). But, you also have different neural networks within each brain hemisphere that function relatively independent of each other. This is also how we seem to perceive it in real life; "I wanted to do that, but at the same time another part of me ..." Now, very often (especially among traumatized people) different parts are at odds with each other, leading to inner conflict. I learned these things from "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors" by Janina Fisher, a book that is packed with cutting edge research. It's primarily aimed at health professionals treating trauma disorders, but I think it could be helpful to anyone suffering from any degree of inner conflict.

@Inliytened1 Maybe, from a metaphysical perspective.

[Shadowraix]

@Inliytened1 This information is not useful to someone still involved in the imagination. 

Master the usage of the self illusion before you transcend it. @Commodent is providing information that can help people navigate their dysfunctional thinking.