(thinking, imagination, whatever you want to call it)

What makes us us? Do we have any idea of what we actually
are? We have countless definitions ready to use to describe
ourselves: name, age, ethnicity, what we like and dislike,
our skills, our past blunders, etc. But all of this isn't
"us", they're just things *about* us. Some of those are
made-up concepts (names aren't part of ourselves, it's
a word that we associate with) and others describe our
experience of the world, but don't actually point to us.

Thought is sometimes viewed as some sort of "manifestation"
of "us", something which is intimately linked to us. I
venture to say that some people have settled in the idea
that thought is their *entire* self, because it is a
phenomenon so unique. Is that really true? What makes us
believe that thought should be regarded as something so
important, so intricately tied to us?

There's another way to view thought, not as a surreal
window to ourselves, above everything else we experience,
but as one of the many other senses that we own. As a
gross simplification, you could say we each have a sense
of sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing... and thought.

An argument against this could be that thought cannot
simply be a sense, because it is radically different from
all others. Moreover, thought can be controlled, modulated,
whereas you cannot decide to see the color red, or to feel
the fur of a cat. But I think it's not enough to disprove
this idea.

Every sense we experience is, essentially, completely
different from the others. Sight resembles in no way
the sense of smell, or hearing. You cannot "encode"
an image using odors, and you cannot smell an odor from
an image. Sure, if you show someone the image of a rose
and ask them to guess what it smells like you might get
somewhere, but that would be using memories to imagine
what it would smell like based on previous experiences,
not actually being able to experience a fragrance. So,
if the senses all have unique qualities attached to them,
one could come to the conclusion that the unique quality
of thought is to be somewhat modulable.

Only somewhat, however. Anybody who lived longer than
a couple of years can recall times when thought could
not be tamed, when memories or images popped up without
warning. And besides that, we may greatly overestimate the
control we have on our thoughts on a day to day basis. For
example, imagine a cat. What color is its fur? Did you
consciously choose it, or did the cat simply popped into
your mind this way? And if that cat was one you have at
one point owned, did you consciously choose to think about
that cat in particular, or did thought simply choose for
you? Where was the cat, on your bed, in a tree, on the
street? Of course you can then change any feature of this
thought at will, but did you consciously choose ALL of
the features it initially had?

Dreams are another example of not being in control of
thought. Nobody chooses to have nightmares, and yet
they happen.

Knowing this, I don't think it makes much sense to believe
that thoughts are a manifestation of this nebulous entity
we call "us", or that they are its way to make itself
known. If you disagree with some intrusive thoughts you
have, it shows that those weren't drawn by "you". You can
most of the time "guide" thought in the right direction,
but you don't have absolute control over every element
that is laid out in a mental scene.

Now you could say that all elements of thoughts are
actually still your mind expressing itself and you're
actually just suppressing your feelings and that deep
down you actually like to imagine your coworkers naked
and this and that, but this is where the notion of "what
we are" should be looked into more. Are feelings and
preferences part of us? Or are we experiencing feelings and
preferences? What do you put in the basket that you call
"me", and is it really its place?

If thought really can be seen like a sense, this opens up
some more questions: it's easy enough to understand that we
aren't what we see. We experience those perceptions, but I
cannot BE, say, the apple on the side of my desk that I am
currently looking at. Same thing with every other sense.
Then what about thought? We all believe that we can think
about ourselves, and most people have a huge backlog of
embarrassing memories that they can think and feel bad
about. But is there really anything to feel embarrassed
about if you cannot be what your senses perceive, in this
case, the person you *believe* to be?