In both instances, you are describing what comes first: thought/feeling, or feeling/thought. And it largely depends, as you say, on the 'event' occurring, and how we perceive pleasure or threat. Did I encapsulate that correctly?
In a critical crisis where I don't have 'time' to think, the 'mind' is by-passed in order to act... lower brain function takes over. If I live through it, I can later decide what it all 'meant' to me.
If you have ever been through that, however, you are left with a feeling, maybe more like an impression, of just being an observer of your own life... some people describe it as an out of body experience. Perceived 'time' seems to have a critical impact on higher/lower brain function. And somehow our brain knows how to handle that... overrides our ability to rationally 'choose.'
Instinct.
Even infants have it. They are little blobs of firing neurons and lower brain function... with an infinite potential to 'learn' to cognate. That infinite potential to cognate is what some refer to as 'consciousness.'
As adults, even if you are not at the moment... cognating... you are very well aware of the fact that you are not... cognating (well.. think of your own car accident).
It leaves one with the impression... Eckart Tolle, for example... are there two of me? Three? The one who suffers (body), the one who contemplates the suffering (mind), and the one who observes both... ???? <-- brain mapping hits the same snag, but in a measured, scientific way.
What it is called, how it is viewed... what it might mean... religion, philosophy, rejection of either or both... is what seems to get glopped in there, in the absence of us being able to prove anything. Like Quantum Mechanics... there are some very provable ways of looking at that (harmonic oscillator), and not so provable ways to look at it (string theory). And ones you immediately reject (flux theory). IF you bother to check.
The same happens with brain function/thinking/feeling stuff.
