On the subject of impulse, there is a difference between the impulses of the mind and compulsive behaviour. Eating when you are hungry is an impulse. Eating cookies because you are depressed is compulsive behaviour.

One or two cookies is ok, but most don’t stop at two. One or two cookies is just fine. The literal behaviour is not the problem, it’s the internal conflict that is.

A hug is often impulse. Yes, hugs are impulse. This behaviour is shown in many species quite commonly.

People often try to destroy or extinguish impulses. How well does this work?

Fad diets? That’s one example, or the supposed end of the world that was to have happened recently.

The cause for so much joint pain and stiffness related illness I expect? It is, because your body and organs don’t engage in impulse screening. They just obey the signals they receive from whatever part of your mind they receive them from.

So part of your mind might be saying fight, another part of your mind might be saying mourn, and yet another might be saying eat cookies. These parts don’t necessarily communicate with each other directly. They usually only come together in the limited process we commonly identify as conscious thinking. We synthesize an experience of all these processes that often doesn’t clearly illustrate any of the source impulses.

So we wonder, “Why did I do that?” Yes, even come up with ideas like “the devil made me do it”, or imagine that there was some acceptable cause for the behaviour when no such event actually happened.

Like when you are mourning and you get the inappropriate urge to giggle. Yes, indeed, or the association of erotic impulses with hateful emotion.

I expect the more we try to control our behaviour, more of these source impulses get buried and confused so we can become more neurotic? Yes, but full scale licentious behaviour is not a solution either.

The things we call emotions are learned thumbnail pictures of our impulse sets. Impulses are like genetic traits that activate or deactivate under different stimuli, and any given set forms an experience we call an emotional state. Thus if I say I am angry, my experience of that state may have notable differences from your own.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~