Our thoughts are controlled

[MtnDwellar]

Are you thinking that all possible thoughts are available all of the time and we tune in certain ones, or that individual thoughts are preselected for us and then sent our way? Are thoughts similar to radio waves and minds like receivers?

If God sends our thoughts and Satan also sends our thoughts, then who else? Angels, demons, saints? Where do Satan and possibly others who send thoughts get the thoughts that they send?

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Are you thinking that all possible thoughts are available all of the time and we tune in certain ones, or that individual thoughts are preselected for us and then sent our way? Are thoughts similar to radio waves and minds like receivers?

If you really want to define a thought, I’d say a simple definition would be any mental reaction to reality (and that includes, but not limited to, spiritual reality). Take this discussion right now for instance. Whilst I type, I think about what to say in response to the things you’ve said or what other people here have said.

If God sends our thoughts and Satan also sends our thoughts, then who else? Angels, demons, saints? Where do Satan and possibly others who send thoughts get the thoughts that they send?

Thoughts can be triggered by a lot of things.

 

[Victory9]

The idea that ‘our thoughts are not our own’ is completely incorrect if you have any inkling at all about God and the Christian faith. We are the only beings in Creation that are made in God’s own image and likeness ~ see Genesis 1:26-31. God gave us a garden to live in, and freedom to live in peace and holiness and love. When Adam and Eve fell, by their own free will, we did not give up free will. Lucifer fell by his own free will and became Satan, but he still retained free will, and, knowing what he lost, sought to tempt Man, so that Man would lose God as he did. But God had mercy on us, knowing Satan’s designs, and because we were made in His image and likeness.
Luke 1: 74-75; John 8: 31-36; Romans 8: 15-19; 2 Cor 3:17-18; Catechism of the Catholic Church: part 3, Art 3, I, 1732: “As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good, which is God, there is a possibility of CHOOSING BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.”
See John 14:5-10. Jesus Himself says that we have the decision to make ~ to believe, or not, to see or not ~ we have a choice, we are free to make our own decision to choose.
To deny that we are free is to negate one of the Cardinal virtues, Hope: Tob 13:8; Joel 3:16; Mark 2:8-9.

 

[matha]

People are conditioned to think in a particular way to keep up the vested interests.

Matha

 

[Robert_Sock]

Like many psychologists, I believe that the cognitive unconscious affects all our thoughts and desires. Such knowledge suggest that we are not the end and be all! Again, we choose which thoughts to focus are attention on (free will), but we do not believe that thoughts belong exclusively to the self. This position provokes humility and calls into question the “self.”