AH-SO ON THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS

18.10.85

In the question we were asked "Thoughts create forms - if I have remembered the wording correctly - what happens to our thoughts and emotions when they are expressed." It is a very interesting topic. We wonder whether our idea of thoughts is the same as that of the questioner. We will take it to be those ideas, in words, which form in your head. Some of them are intentional, sometimes you go to considerable effort to work things out and form them in your mind. Very often our thoughts are stray occurrences. They may be efforts of recollections, they may be just impressions of the moment, they may be commands to your body to do certain things - as when you are driving one of your motor vehicles.

Thoughts take varying forms, and I do not claim to have just covered every type of thought, they were simply examples.

Now, emotions are somewhat different. Emotions are feelings, something which you experience - it is often, or usually, your reaction to some event, or the recollection of some event - and I am employing the word 'event' in as wide a definition as possible. It may simply be something that is said to you. It may be something which you see on your television or which you read. Emotions can be roused by actual physically occurring events and by fictional events. Again, I do not claim to have covered all types.

Emotions, as you realise, can, again, be divided into two or three broad categories. You may call them positive emotions, you may have negative emotions, and you may have neutral type reactions. But many of the classifications you apply to emotions are just that - applied by you to the feeling. It is possible for you to be in a situation and to react to it in one way, you will view that situation as positive, something pleasant. Another person could be in exactly the same situation reacting in a completely different way and classify it as negative. So we will not go into specific types of emotions, such as anger, love, pleasure, and so forth. We will leave those to you. Emotions in this reaction affect your body, your physical body and also your astral and etheric body. I trust that you understand that when you shed this physical body you will still be occupying a finer body - and various names have been applied to this body over the years, we are trying not to add our own name and increase the confusion. This body, too, will gradually dissolve, it will go through various stages of increasing fineness until eventually, it is completely dissolved and you are merging with the Godness.

So, let us get back to our topic.

Now, what causes emotions? An event, they can also be caused by a thought and thoughts are also involved in this reaction. It is your thoughts which will classify the event or occurrence as positive or negative, or neutral. You can be in situations in which you really do not have any particular reaction.

Now, for our new people, we sometimes have to stop and work out how to express things to you. We have great difficulty with some of our concepts. The reaction of the emotion is largely centered in your spiritual body, your etheric body - let's call it etheric. That is where a lot of your reactions will occur. Your etheric body is, of course, interpenetrating your physical body and so your physical body will also be affected - you may have an increase of heart rate, perhaps the palms of your hands will perspire or other physical manifestations like that. But it is largely in the etheric body where the emotions are occurring. The etheric body is reacting to the external events, external in the physical world. The emotion causes this movement in the etheric body, and if you can, when you have some emotion or physical reaction, if you just stop and look at the reactions in your physical body, you will find that in many cases you have very similar emotions whether it is a negative reaction or a positive one. The stirring up of the etheric body can have very similar effects on the physical body. But it is what is going on in the etheric body which really counts.

Now, some emotions can increase the contact, or your link with the world of spirit and that is the real classification between negative and positive. The positive emotions will strengthen that link, the negative emotions can get in the way of that link, so that the contact with Spirit is more difficult. It is more difficult for us to give you guidance to deal with that situation, because it is a different type of movement in the etheric body. With the positive emotions there is a smoother sort of movement. It gives clearer, brighter colours in the aura. The negative type emotions flare the aura, produce stronger darker colours, and introduce a tension in the etheric body, so that we have greater difficulty in our attempts to help you. This is the realm of emotions.

Now, the expression of thoughts. We have told you that you largely create your own circumstances and that you can affect your circumstances with your thoughts. We have explained to you to use imagination, not will-power, because will-power creates a tension which the imagination doesn't. Now, not all thoughts will be manifest, not in this world, not in any other. The stray thought that comes through your mind will not be manifested. There needs to be some sort of an intention before the thought can be manifest. Now, I am afraid that by using the word intention, we are going to get caught up in the will-power thing. This is one of our difficult concepts. Give me a moment. (brief pause) Does it help if we use the word desire? I am looking for a word. We need a word that implies something wanted or intended, but which isn't going to bring in the attitude of will-power or tension.

It needs also to be a continuous thought to be manifested. Something said in the flash of anger just once or for a short time, is less likely to be manifested than something that is held quietly in the mind, continually. Now, I imagine someone saying: 'But anger has force and can be manifested.' If that occurs it is a manifestation of something which is really at the 'back of the mind' and is merely expressed briefly in that flash of anger, that is, if that anger, saying or thought manifests. This is a complicated issue because, also you may be merely expressing on the surface physical level, something which has been designed or agreed upon in your general life plan. I do not think I can tell you how to discern the difference. This is the reason why, in oriental philosophies, great stress is placed on watching your thoughts. It is the continuous thoughts that you must watch, and also the thoughts which mesh or tie-in with your life-plan, and you can change that life-plan by changing your thoughts. I say you can, I do not necessarily say that you will. It depends on how many levels of your mind the agreement to change takes place. It is often in young children who have not yet fully absorbed their surroundings in your world, who often feel that they have had a thought and it has come about. It would help children a great deal if it was explained to them that a thought just coming once does not have the fullness of intent and therefore, does not manifest. It needs to be a continuous thought held in the mind, even at the back of the mind, as a sort of undercurrent to your daily life. They are the kinds of thoughts that get expressed and again, sometimes, these thoughts may simply be a knowledge coming to the surface of your mind of what your life's plan is. And this is often what the psychic flashes mean, when people suddenly know what is going to happen - it is just that some aspect of the life-plan has surfaced.

You can, of course, if you have been in a situation where you have had a thought which distresses you, which you classify as a negative thought, you can undo that. Just replace it with a positive thought. Just keep that thought there. Keep it there long enough and it will counter-balance.

Now, we have talked to you often of this analogy of the tree - you have the little twiglets, and groups of several twiglets form a twig, and several twigs form a branch, and groups of branches merge into the trunk. Your thoughts can be manifest in some other part of the universe or with some other person. One of your fellow twiglets. The contact between you and your fellow twiglets is unlikely to be strong enough - I am not sure that is quite the right word I want - to be effective, for your thoughts to affect someone else's life. I am talking about someone with whom there is no physical contact. Naturally your thoughts can affect the lives of those who are around you in the suitable conditions, but not going into what some people call another reality, another life in your same reality, but it has no actual physical contact with you.

Sometimes though, the opposite can occur - and what is a thought in your mind is actually an occurrence in somebody else's life. People who write, often, without realizing it, have a stronger link with the Spirit World. And it has often happened that they have picked up somebody else's life and have written it. So, this sort of thing is a bleed through into their consciousness from another person, someone they don't know at all. If, for some reason, you have chosen to reincarnate, it is possible that a thought or a desire from a previous incarnation can, shall we say, 'bleed' through into the present one. But you see, that is a link with yourself. You do not have your stray thoughts sort of floating about the universe and manifesting somewhere else. For your thoughts to manifest, there has to be something behind them. The link through, which I suggested just now with writers usually has some sort of emotion with it, and there is a link through between thoughts and emotions, because thought is the manifestation in the physical body and, as I said, the manifestation is in the etheric body. So the emotional manifestation, is in the etheric body. So there are two aspects. But it is in your Self, and your surroundings that are affected.

The whole area is very complex and intertwined, and I am not at all sure that I have expressed these things in an understandable way for you. I have been trying to talk in general terms rather than in particular terms, and there will always be the occasional one that breaks the rules - 'rules' isn't a very good word I am afraid. It implies that somebody has been sitting down saying this, and this, and this. Nothing is completely and absolutely set. Instead of rules shall we say 'normal occurrences?'

So now, as is our wont, I will open up to you for some questions. There is sure to be some points on which you need clarification.

Andreas: Do all our thoughts, positive and negative, come back to us? Is there a link between our thoughts and our lives? Are thoughts going into cosmos and coming back out of the cosmos again?

Ah-So: The only way your life is affected by your thoughts is if you have a continuous thought, or idea, desire, plan, constantly at the back of your mind. And it has to be something agreed on by all three levels of your mind. If the three are in agreement then the thought can manifest.

Think of the radio wave - if a signal is sent out, can you pick it up when the signal is finished? That is how it is with your thoughts. So you will need to have a thought constantly before it can manifest, manifest permanently.

Andreas: Since time is not an affect of the Cosmos or the eternal circuit what else could we us to understand, what measurement could we use to understand how long a pattern of thought takes until it is ready to materialize?

Ah-So: I am not sure that I really feel it is necessary to measure. It will vary, you may be picturing something which will necessarily take a longer time than something else to materialize. Do not worry too much about the details. Accept what you can, because what you can accept is what you need at the moment. Other things come to you later again.

Marsha: In the course of things we have to decide which path to take, and sometimes there is a feeling of desire, I would like to do this, and other times, on the same path, you have this feeling that instead of the path or road that you would like to take, we need to take something else - you need to go in a different direction. Is it always true that that second path is better or is that just a general notion or background, and then perhaps, instead of taking a more desirable road, you must always take the more difficult. How do you discern between the desirable and necessary or better? This occurs very often during our lives.

Ah-So: Yes. Now, nothing is set with a hard and fast rule. Sometimes what you have described as the second one - was that the path of duty? - So there is the desire and the duty. Let's use those terms. Sometimes the path of duty is the correct one, sometimes the path of desire is the correct one for you. Remember, what applies to you does not necessarily apply to the next person, and vice versa. And the question is, how to decide?

Marsha: Yes. How to reason or how to decide what is better at any particular point in time. Sometimes you can ... you might have fears about a certain course and it is difficult to know if it is just our fears because of the unknown, or valid fears, about taking a certain course of action, perhaps testing or taking the other course.

Ah-So: This is a very difficult question you have given me. It is necessary to take into account physical conditions. While you are in a physical body you are there for certain experiences, so you need to take into account physical considerations. You need to take into account your mental and emotional needs, responses, and, of course, you need to take into account your spiritual path, your spiritual aspects, let's say, not path. You can really only know by contacting the Inner.

It is this type of situation in which you are justified in asking Spirit's advice and help in making the decision. You have probably heard us stress that you need to make your own decisions, but there are occasions when you are justified and when it is necessary to seek Spirit's advice. Naturally, when you have time in making a decision, you can wait until you feel absolutely right about the decision. Other times of course, you do not have that time. There are constraints in your material world and sometimes those limits have to be adhered to, and the decision one way or the other must be made. But that inner contact is always the surest one. Then you may do something when you need to make a quick decision, and this is something which the medium as often suggested - and something we agree with - toss a coin. now, you do NOT necessarily do what the coin says, but tossing the coin makes the decision for you, and in the very act you can tell - you can get a reaction inside you. And it is that reaction which will give you the decision, whether you are happy with the decision, or if you think, at that point, 'No, that's wrong.' And THAT is the decision you follow, not necessarily that of the coin, but the reaction in you. We feel that this inner reaction is really your best guide in these situations. There are other methods you may use besides the coin: the pendulum is popular. But always look at your own reaction to the answer, and follow that reaction. Does that answer satisfy you, or would you like some further clarification?

Marsha: I think that's very good actually.

Ah-So: Sometimes we answer a question and we make things worse, so we have to check. We do not mind in the least if you say no.

Marsha: I sometimes think we are raised in different environments and sometimes I am not quite sure whether it's our background that influences us, or whether we really do get impulses from our souls. And I think that's where the conflict has been. I felt I understood that it was important to me to do what's best, despite what the odds are, I mean - what other people say. That makes it even more complicated.

Ah-So: Yes. There is something which we have sometimes said and you may come across. We have often said, you should try to look at ALL aspects of the situation. Sometimes it may be that the other person's needs are greatest, and sometimes it will be your own needs that are the greatest. And we admit it takes a lot of wisdom to make that decision. But there are times when you are justified in putting yourself first, but seek the guidance too in that kind of situation. Try to look at all aspects from every person's point of view who is involved in the situation.

Sylvia: In knowing or recognizing there is a universal intelligence that governs all things, does that mean that our lower levels or deeper levels of consciousness, at sub-conscious level, link through to universal consciousness and the gradually come to an individual up into the consciousness that is concerned with our individual lives?

Ah-So: Can you picture the earth? It has depths and it has heights, but there is that inner core supporting it. People are like those heights. There is that underlying spirit, and at a level, and it is difficult to say whether it is a deeper level or higher level, but somewhere, permeating it all, there is that connecting intelligence. But you are metaphorically, like the mountains sticking up and there are ... we have described three layers of the mind. There is the super-consciousness which is the closest to the underlying Spirit, and there is the sub-conscious and the conscious. Now, you may picture these three in a line, but it is more of an interlinking or a triangular picture. The sub-conscious has some link with the superconscious and some with the conscious, and of course, the conscious has links with the other two also. Now, I feel I have got carried away. Have I departed from your question?

Sylvia: No.

Ah-So: Is there any other point you want brought out?

Sylvia: Not really, no.

Ah-So: I think, with your permission, I will leave it there tonight.

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