Our Thought Process: The First Feedback Loop

This month, we are covering a seemingly simple concept that has powerful, revelatory, and wide ranging applications: Right-Right vs Right-Wrong...Right WHAT-Right HOW/WHY vs. Right WHAT-Wrong (or NO) HOW/WHY.

In the previous post, we introduced the topic for the rest of this month: Thought Processes. Here is the summary:

The overview for the rest of this Series is that God wants our brain to have Profitable Thought Processes. The enemy and our flesh wants our brain to have Unprofitable Thought Processes.

Last August we began a two month Series on The Brain. The conclusion of that Series is that our mind either makes a choice to:

1. use our brain Profitably (an intentional effort to do the opposite of our nature)

OR

2. not use our brain Profitably, which means we think according to our nature (flesh) which is the same as how an animal thinks.

The battlefield is NOT our mind. The battlefield is our brain and our heart (physical).

The combatants are made up of two teams: The Holy Spirit (God) and our mind vs. the enemy (unclean spirits) and our fleshly nature.

In order to understand how we OUGHT to build our faith AND how the enemy and our flesh fights our ability to do this, we need to become masters at understanding our Thought Processes...which are made up of WORDS and SENTENCES.

This week, we will be reviewing Thought Processes...


OUR THOUGHT PROCESS: THE FIRST FEEDBACK LOOP
During the Series on The Brain, there was a post titled, "Brain Overview" that covered the two feedback loops that make up a Profitable Thought Process. In this post, we are going to review The First Feedback Loop.

The First Feedback Loop has three parts:
1. Stimulus
2. Emotion/Attitude
3. Connecting Fact

Here is the explanation from the "Brain Overview":

"When you experience something through any of your five senses, this information enters the brain (cortex) in an electrical form. The information reaches the "relay station" of the brain...also known as the thalamus. The thalamus is the "relay station" because it is the site of the first feedback loop."

"The thalamus sends an alerting signal to the cortex to prepare it for the information to follow. The cortex holds your memory in electrical form, so the thalamus is going to search your memory connected with the electrical impulse you just experienced from your senses in order to create "a full thought". The alerting signal actually creates your attitude...it finds out ahead of time if the memory is positive or negative and then the desired information in your memory is viewed with this attitude."

"The electrical impulse you experienced from your senses and the electrical impulse(s) from your memory (along with the attitude) are then fed back to the thalamus (relay station). The first feedback loop is complete and results in "a full thought": an experience, a memory (or memories), and an emotion."


A person can choose to end this feedback loop or use the "full thought" as a stimulus and begin The First Feedback Loop again. In fact, when you watch people think, this explanation sheds light on two issues people have with The First Feedback Loop:

1. They can't complete the loop.

2. They can't get out of the loop.

During the Series on The Brain, we saw that the cortex is made up of "dendrites", which is the Greek word for "trees"...and the dendrites look like trees. (Check out the picture at the beginning of the post "Brain Overview". Also, we began the Brain Series looking at the occurrences of Trees in the Bible.)

The analogy we used for a complete thought was a squirrel running up the trunk of a tree and out to its branches (stimulus) and then jumping to a branch on another tree (connecting fact) and then running down the trunk of the second tree. The speed at which this feedback loop is able to be completed is a measure of intelligence.

People who are unable to complete the loop either can't make the jump (to the connecting fact) because of a bad memory or they are afraid to attempt the jump because the emotion associated with the stimulus puts the individual into fear. Remember, all the facts in our cortex have an associated emotion...and we feel the emotion before we are able to retrieve the connecting fact.

People who can't get out of the loop either ramp up and exhibit anxiety or they have a contradiction that doesn't allow them to settle on ONE full thought. Notice, the inability to get out of a loop tends to occur with people who have very quick brains. For example, they can do so many loops and get energy from each loop that they end up, after numerous comparative loops, at a full thought that is extreme and alarming...and is not connected in reality with the original stimulus.

When it comes to a contradiction, they actually express TWO or more full thoughts and can't resolve which is correct. We saw this tends to happen when people "lump" concepts...the squirrel jumps to a branch only to find out he is in the same tree. We saw that we need to bring Resolution to our thought process.

Resolution takes what appeared to be one tree and turns it into two or more trees. The most recent example of this is this current Series: Right-Right vs. Right-Wrong. People don't see a difference between two people who state a Right WHAT. However, the difference between a Right WHAT with a Right WHY vs. a Right WHAT with a Wrong (or NO) WHY is the difference between Life and Death.

Finally, one common tool used to determine how quickly people are able to complete The First Feedback Loop AND how well their thoughts are organized is "Word Association". A WORD is stated (which is a stimulus). The respondent is supposed to state the first WORD they think of...the first connecting fact from The First Feedback Loop. The resulting emotion is also discussed.


SUMMARY
The First Feedback Loop results in a full thought.

A full thought contains a stimulus, emotion, and connecting fact.

A Profitable Thought Process would create this full thought quickly and accurately.

An Unprofitable Thought Process would be unable to create an accurate full thought in a timely manner.

Tomorrow, we will look at The Second Feedback Loop...

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