Step1: Thought Control

["Jeudy, Olivier [AUDT]" <olivier.jeudy@...>]

Hi All:

Recently, I've been having doubts about my understanding of the Thought
Control exercize. For information, I've been practicing Step 1 for 2.5
months and have attained a reasonable amount of proficiency in all
exercizes. I've read all of Rawn's comments pertaining to Step 1 and believe
I understand the requirements. Here is my problem:

Bardon mentions that, given practice, the initially overwhelming flow of
thoughts naturally slows down to a point where only a few thoughts emerge
into one's consciousness. In my case, the repeated practice of Thought
Control has slown things down to a point were not a SINGLE thought seem to
emerge. The state is similar to my EOM state, but "less focused".

Although no thoughts seem to emerge into my surface awareness, I feel that
there are a lot of thoughts "at the back of my mind". I just perceive these
thoughts as a very chaotic meddle. Whenever I explore these thoughts and
bring them to my surface awareness, I notice they are everyday trivial
things such as "I need to wash the dishes, call my friend" etc etc... I
don't believe I am supposed to *actively* bring thoughts to my surface
awareness since it would defeat the aim of the Thought Control exercize.
However, since these "deep-awareness" thoughts do not seem to make any
attempt at entering my surface awareness, this leaves me with nothing to
exercize upon!!

Rawn, says the following of Thought Control: "Number one was that it ended
up being a pretty quiet place once I had disengaged and stopped
participating in its activity. Number two was that the thoughts that did
arise in that relative quiet were significant thoughts."

Although I experience what Rawn means by his first sentence, I do not
perceive any thoughts in my surface awareness, as suggested by the second
sentence. What am I doing wrong? What should I improve?

Sorry for this long email and thanks in advance for any help. And Rawn thank
you for your wonderful commentaries on IIH. Now that I am hooked, I wouldn't
even consider following the path of IIH without your insights!

Regards,
Olivier