What 'thinking' actually is...

[crow]

Thinking is taking what is real and replacing it with a token.
This token may be manipulated in any way at all.
It is, in fact, a simulation of reality.
This serves to project what might happen, if...

A useful tool, then, to gaze a short time into the future, to see what is likely to occur.
Or a short time into the past, to determine what went wrong.

It is far more practical, often, to design a house on paper, before physically building it with no idea of what the result will be. Unless, of course, you are so certain of your ability to improvise and problem-solve, that plans become wasteful of time.

The big trick to thinking, and the thing that has been almost universally forgotten, is to reconvert the tokens that comprise thinking, back into reality, after the thinking has taken place.
Remember: thinking is the conversion of reality into easily-manipulated tokens of reality.
To complete the process, it is necessary to re-convert those tokens back into reality.
Or you end up existing in a hypothetical world of tokens which have completely replaced reality.

[fallot]

Very true.

[crow]

Very true.

What's the matter with you? You're supposed to call me stupid!

[Cargést]

Unless, of course, you are so certain of your ability to improvise and problem-solve, that plans become wasteful of time.

My mind considers it a problem that I appear to be capable of this.  No planning means it doesn't get used as much.  Is this really a problem?  Assuredly, there's no such thing as "problem" unless you think there is!  Even my mind knows that my mind is amusingly dumb, though good at what it does.

[crow]

You see your mind as being one with your ego?
I see it a little differently.

Ego, although a product of mind, is not the mind, itself.
Ego is identity-dependence, which is necessary as a child, in order to establish oneself in life.
This is me. This is what I am. Notice me. Appreciate me.

Whereas mind is an intelligent tool to problem-solve. There when you need it. It solves problems.
I use my mind to do all sorts of things, but when those things are done, click: off it goes, back to sleep.

Maybe I misunderstood your comment?

[Cargést]

No, I think you've done a good job of distinguishing between mind-as-self (ego) and mind-as-tool (normal).  It's not that I would consider the mind and the ego to be the same, but that the mind has learnt to refer to itself as "I" quite a bit.  It's slowly remembering that it isn't me!

[crow]

I wonder how you came to that understanding.
A rare thing, indeed.