Looking at the nature and source of thoughts. Or, who's on first?

In the most recent email confrontation group report, I was questioned about a comment I made about a recent dream. Without going into details, I'll just say that I intellectually and emotionally remember being very selfish in the dream -- that the dream itself was characterized by my utter selfishness. The question, then, was what makes a thought a selfish thought.

The question is moot if we consider the nature and origin of thought. A thought is only selfish because there is another thought saying so. We must consider the possibility that we are not the active agents of thought -- merely the spectators of thought. That is, we -- as identified with the combined I-sense/ego/thought process -- do not (or cannot), after all, decide to think a thought (or think we are thinking). Nor, along the same lines, does a thought come into existence due to any effort on our part.

This set of possibilities, of course, raises questions on its own. Both of what exactly is our relation to the source of thoughts and of what we are if not the agents of what seem to be utterly personal phenomena (that is, thoughts).