It’s so easy to regurgitate the things we’ve heard or read and so difficult to have an actual original thought – if original thoughts are even possible.
Perhaps some higher order is just constantly whispering into our proverbial ears.
Where Do Thoughts Come From?
Are my thoughts mine, or am I just expressing or reflecting some collective amalgamation through a personal set of filters and mental debris?
Just asking the question seems pretentious, yet important.
And why do some thoughts feel closer than others – even when they don’t feel chosen?
Generator or Receiver?
We assume authorship of our thoughts because we experience proximity. Thoughts arise inside awareness, so we claim them as ours.
But proximity isn’t the same as origin.
What if the mind isn’t a generator? What if it’s a receiver? And what if emotion is the dial?
Tom Campbell’s work on consciousness suggests something like this: that we’re tuning into a field of information, and our emotional state determines which frequencies we have access to. Fear doesn’t cause dark thoughts. Fear opens the channel where those thoughts already exist.
The question isn’t “Why did I think this?” The question is “What state was I in that made this thought available?”
Why Is Alcohol Called “Spirits”?
There’s something curious buried in our language. We call alcohol “spirits.” Most people assume it’s just an old term for distillation. But across cultures and traditions, there’s a persistent idea that certain substances lower the threshold between what’s “you” and what’s “not you.”
I’m not claiming that drinking lets entities possess you. But I am noticing something:
Alcohol lowers the threshold between impulse and identification.
It doesn’t add thoughts. It removes the pause where discernment lives. The space where you might ask, “Is this mine? Do I want to act on this?”
Whether we’re talking about literal spirits, psychological patterns, or something more metaphorical – the functional result is observable. Reduced awareness correlates with greater susceptibility to intrusive thought patterns. The guard comes down. And something rushes in.
The Spirit of Anger
Jordan Peterson talks about archetypes as “spirits” in the psychological sense. The spirit of anger. The spirit of resentment. The spirit of vengeance.
He’s not being mystical. He’s pointing at something real: these patterns have a life of their own. They’re bigger than any individual. They’ve existed across all cultures and all time periods. And when they “possess” someone, that person acts in ways that serve the pattern, not themselves.
You’ve seen someone consumed by rage do something that destroyed their own life. In that moment, whose interests were being served? Certainly not theirs.
So here’s the uncomfortable question: When a thought arrives with tone, urgency, and intent – before you’ve consciously chosen anything – whose thought is it?
Three Ways to Hold This
You can interpret all of this three ways:
Literally – Non-physical influences actually exist and can interface with consciousness.
Psychologically – Dissociated emotional structures act autonomously within the psyche, like subpersonalities with their own agendas.
Symbolically – Archetypal patterns operate through us when we’re not conscious enough to resist them.
What’s interesting isn’t which interpretation is “right.” What’s interesting is that every tradition warns against unexamined identification with thought.
Buddhism. Christianity. Stoicism. Depth psychology. Indigenous wisdom traditions. They all say some version of the same thing: Not everything that arises in your mind is yours. Not everything that feels urgent deserves your obedience.
The Real Work
If thoughts can arrive from outside conscious choice – whether from a field, a pattern, an archetype, or something we don’t have language for – then freedom isn’t about controlling them.
Freedom is about deciding which ones get your name attached.
A thought arrives. It has a certain flavor, a certain push. It wants something from you. Maybe it wants you to be angry. Maybe it wants you to be afraid. Maybe it wants you to believe something about yourself or someone else.
The question isn’t “How do I stop this thought?”
The question is “Do I endorse this? Is this mine now?”
Arrival doesn’t equal authority.
Where Does This Leave Us?
I don’t know where thoughts come from. Not really. I have intuitions. I have experiences. I’ve noticed that my mental landscape changes dramatically based on what I consume – food, media, substances, company.
I’ve noticed that some thoughts feel like “me” and some feel like visitors. I’ve noticed that the visitors get louder when I’m tired, afraid, or avoiding something.
Whether thoughts come from neurons, fields, trauma, archetypes, or something we don’t yet have language for – the real work begins the moment we stop assuming that arrival equals authority.
Just because it showed up in your head doesn’t mean you have to let it speak for you.
This connects to how we read scripture, too.
If thoughts can be received rather than generated, what does that mean for divine inspiration? Explore this further in the Bible Mystic series.