Strange...

for those who don't know, i'm in perth now!!! staying at my cousin's place at the moment, and discovered she has a blog, which is cool... been pretty good so far, after having adjusted to the jetlag, it's been interesting to observe and partake (minimally) in the workings of an ice-cream shop... ;p my cousin's shop... the varieties of things on offer is pretty huge, in fact so much so that some customers are put off and simply decide not to get anything because they are confronted by too wide a range to pick from!!! for those who were hoping, am sad to report that the loyalty card offer is no longer going, so no free ice-cream...

anywayz, of course, that's not all we've been up to... been to beachside, ate at some nice restaurants (and i shouldn't forget to mention the best value japanese take-away/cafe i've been to)... visited some of the fire-damaged areas too... some plains appeared reminiscent of a surface from another planet... it's sickening to think that the destruction of nature to such an extent might be the result of an arsonist somewhere... humans can be so difficult to understand sometimes...

read sal's blog before... having negative thoughts... very complicated... i suppose, things are rarely straightforward or able to be understood fully... i really don't know... something i'm growing to appreciate tho, is that emotional states and thoughts, although they often seem to correlate very well, they are in fact separate but intertwined aspects of a person's mind-state... thoughts are such that they can be expressed in many ways, to put a positive or negative emphasis on it, and virtually everything can be seen in both positive and negative lights... one's thoughts, therefore, may be very liable to strong emotional influence, and in turn this only serves to positively reinforce the emotional state (whether positive or negative), and subsequent thoughts will be more likely to be positive or negative in turn... thus a cascade of thoughts and emotions to one extreme is explained through cognitive theory... i guess one special case of this is when one's own thoughts are being analysed, and further being subject to doubt, this cascade could be especially dramatic...

i guess one way this can be offset is to realise the separateness and intertwined-ness of thought and emotion, such that emotion can be independently willed through brutal rationalisation and depersonalisation... it's something that helps me sometimes control my emotions, because i consciously separate them from the surrounding thoughts... in a sense, it's really no more than taking a step back from within myself, and praying to be shown the way things appear from the point-of-view that will tell us the truth - that is, God's point-of-view...

i don't propose to have answers to anything about emotion and thought... not even that what i've said has much bearing on truth (rather they are the result of observation and speculation)... but i jus thought i should share because i think that the most important thing when it comes to thoughts and truth-seeking is to desire the truth, and to desire God, rather than necessarily to respond to our emotions, because our hearts can be deceptive...

anywayz, on a positive ending, went to koorong today and got a study bible!!! very happy to finally have one, got the life-application niv study bible... jus a short extract from the end of Psalm 139 (verses 23-24):

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting"