Re: What Is a Thought?

["bigimpact2003" <bigimpact2003@...>]

Hi Tony,

I've seen a few posts on the nature of thoughts and what constitutes 
mastery of step 1. The whole idea is not to say "that thought didn;t 
happen becasue I don't count it in #my# definition of the exercise", 
Bardon is very explicit - no thoughts maintained for 5 minutes.

This means that even if something comes and is immediately dismissed, 
it is still a thought. With training, you are able to feel a 
precursor to a thought appearing as a feeling and automate blocks to 
prevent it from occurring. Mastery is obtained when there is no 
conscious awareness of any thought appearing for the full extent of 
the exercise.

It is also useful to note that whereas 5 minutes is used as a 
benchmark, the idea is to be able to obtain this completely free 
state for an indefinite period; so if you struggle to keep 5 mins and 
say "phew, made it, mastered it!" then the "mastered it" wouldn't 
really be the case. Doing occasional one off tests like 10 mins or 
seeing how long it can be maintained will give you a geuine 
understanding of whether thought control has "really" been mastered.

Having said that, if you can really make 5 mins (and have completed 
everything else in step 1)- you should go on to step 2, but be aware 
of the need to be able to maintain and increase empty states 
throuhgout future training.

Regards,

- Mark

--- In BardonPraxis@yahoogroups.com, "allonby_anthony" <anthony@a...> 
wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.