What Is a Thought?

["allonby_anthony" <anthony@...>]

This is actually a practical question regarding Step 1, Mastery of 
Thoughts. I can sit for 5 minutes and have 6-8 thoughts. Typically 
these thoughts will be sentence like "be vigilant!" or "the trick is 
not to follow the thought" i.e. comments or self-questions on my 
progress. Lots of background noise pops up - voices, words, random 
images, the occasional memory. I figure if I quash these and don't 
pursue them, they don't count as a thought, so I don't count them on 
my beads. So if an image of an eye (or anything) spontaneously pops 
into my consciousness, and I dismiss it, I don't count it. In fact I 
count only memories I pursue or sentences I let complete (and some of 
them are pretty fast) as thoughts. Is this acceptable, or should I be 
striving for complete blankness, with nothing emerging spontaneously? 
Is this even possible?

Thanks for any comment on this.

Regards Tony W.