Short story: Who owns thoughts?

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A Professor of Philosophy was talking to a Rabbi about thoughts. Here is what he said: "Thoughts, alone, do not make the man, who he is." "We are something greater than our just being our thoughts alone." "We need try to live from a deeper place than our just living by our thoughts." Then he said, "You being a religious man, I will add in a few of my ideas about religion, and thoughts too." "At the heart of each one of us is a soul, and this soul represents who we really are. It has a certain personality type, certain plans for our life, and it is closer to God, than which our thoughts alone can ever take us." "Thoughts are a potential energy carrier, when you add energy to them, but on their own, they are mere dust gatherers, and so a good thought is endowed with energy to follow it, and a bad thought just, or should just, push you away from itself, unmotivated to follow it." "And yet, it is God who creates all thoughts, and sends them out for anyone to think, and to own as their own thought. He adds various amounts of either negative, or positive energy, to each thought, as a teaser/tester for anyone, to think that thought too." "Every possible thought is already thought by God, and every thought comes from him, and so all we do is to rethink a thought of God's, and give it our own energy to live in us, and to bear fruit for God." "We are mere observers of thoughts then, and we are not our thoughts, and they can only come to life within us, when we give them traction, and energise them into action, in our own life." It was then the Rabbi's turn to answer the philosopher. He said, "While it is true that sometimes God will place certain thoughts into someone's heart, as he did with Pharoah, once, when he hardened his heart, and his thoughts, in the bible story about Moses, and the exodus of the slaves, from Egypt, God generally lets us think our own thoughts, of which we are responsible for thinking." "We should neither, speak, or think, carelessly then, but guard both our tongue, and our thoughts." "Now some thoughts will appear in our mind, from time to time, coming from who knows where. If they are bad thoughts, we should push them aside, and not follow them, or even dwell in them, at all." "The Bible tells us that God knows our thoughts, and so we should try to ensure, that nothing remaining in us throws up a bad thought in us, anymore. The sin that taints all men, will throw up such a thought from time to time in any man, and they should not be tempted by it, but push it right aside, and not energise it into life, within themselves." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity." Psalms, chapter 94, verse 11. And so, both men were now silent. They were thinking about what each other had said. They said no more, but left each other to ponder more about the subject matter, until the time of their next discussion, as they used to meet once a week, to talk over such subjects, in the Professor's office, at his University. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com Where does a thought come from?