I hope this answer helps a little:i was wondering where our thoughts fit in.is there such a thing as g-d's thoughts?were we in his thoughts before being in his words?did we exist at that point?my thoughts seem to have a life of their own, are they not alive until they are expressed?
There are many levels of thoughts. Most of the things we call our thoughts are very similar to speech in that they are even considered to be made up of letters just finer/thinner letters than our spoken ones. It is only because the letters are so hard to detect that no one hears or reads our thoughts. [Except for people like the Arizal, the Baal Shem Tov, and similar Holy personages.]
Generally our thoughts are described as originating in our heart. They then rise up to our minds at which point we become conscious of them. Then we have the choice of what to do with them. While our thoughts are still in our heart, they are pre-letter thoughts. The thought is clothed in letters as we become conscious of it in our minds. Later, we can choose to clothe our thoughts in the even thicker letters of spoken words.
This is actually an important point in our interfacing with HaShem and others. There is an aspect of clothes. HaShem puts on the clothes of the Torah and the mitzwoth and the physical world, all so that we will be able to relate to Him. We dress up our thoughts in spoken words so that others can relate to them. Words and letters are all about the clothing that allows for a relationship to develop between two things, two ideas, two people. A word, in a sense, is even the clothing that allows two letters to interact. Our thoughts are garbed in letters so that we can manipulate them with greater facility.
As to HaShems thoughts, HaShem says about himself in tanach לא מחשבתי מחשבתיכם - my thoughts are not [like] your thoughts, so we know He definitely has thoughts. Presumably still, some of the levels of HaShem's thoughts have letters, in other words are clothed so that they can be related to other things. The Tanya describes one of the differences between HaShem's thought and ours. HaShem's thoughts totally encompass and contain what He thinks about whereas ours only describe an idea about the thing we are thinking.
Chazal also say, that Israel arose first in HaShem's thoughts when He thought to create the world that's why He calls us בני בכורי - His first born son. So we definitely existed in His thoughts before anything else did, and since He doesn't change (אני ה' לא שניתי) it means we are still foremost in His thoughts.
As to whether we could call our thoughts alive, I was going to go into it a little, but then I remember I posted recently on the matter and I'll just link it here: life and death of a thought in which I discuss the Notzer Hesed's explanation of thoughts as living entities.
I was going to say we give thoughts life when we choose to act on them and do something with them, especially mitzwoth, or other Godly acts. [Just as we described our Godly speech being (given life) eternal in Praise of His lips] Instead, the Notzer Hesed is far more authoritative than myself.
Comments
