When I am paying attention to the present moment, I often notice a thought occur spontaneously like a tiny mote of dust flickering through a light shaft. This random thought is very brief in duration. It has a clear beginning, middle and end and is very much a harmless phenomenon just like that mote of dust. Even when the thought's content is bizarre or violent, it's texture is peaceful. If only all thoughts could be this weightless.

There are other, more unnerving thoughts. These thoughts have a beginning but no middle or end or they have a very brief middle. They require a self to prolong their lives. And during moments of attention, this self is in stasis. These thoughts too would be weightless except they occur one after another. It is very much like a string of random sounds: A car alarm goes off, a crow squawks, a car peels out, an angry shout, a dog barks and so on for several minutes...except only I can hear them. This generates lonely feelings and reduces my faith in the universe. The self has to take over or else this mind/body will go crazy.

And so the self takes over and now I finish those thoughts that were just dying a premature death. And in finishing those thoughts, I loose my attention to the present moment. And so I stop finishing those thoughts and for awhile I just notice the present moment again and when a thought does generate, it is brief in duration with a clear beginning, middle and end. Sooner rather than later, however, the thoughts without a middle or end re-appear and the self is again jarred awake out of it's stasis. It tries to sit to the side but those unnerving incomplete thoughts force it to take over for if it does not then the mind may explode or force the body to jump off a cliff.

Hopefully, the attempts at metaphor didn't turn anyone off. Here is my question. What should I be investigating here? And when is the best time to do it? Say I am walking the dog. Should I stop and find a plausible reason for my unease and try again at being attentive? What are some plausible reasons? If I'm in the midst of work or driving, I should note it and try extra hard to pay attention to what is pertinent? How common is this phenomenon? Will it go away soon? Is there a way to make it work for AF rather than against it?

I wanted to add a couple of things.

Above, I used the metaphor of the self being in stasis to describe a temporarily inactive "self". I think a better description would be a flickering self. It goes off for several moments at a time then flickers back on just to check if the organism is operating well without it or not then flickers off again for at least a few moments.

I also want to describe an experience I just had. The self was off and the sensate universe was being perceived. I was walking my dog. Suddenly the body became almost overwhelmingly nauseous and nearly began gagging. The self switched back on and then turned itself off just as quickly as the situation wanted to observe itself naturally. Which it did until the nausea threatened to convulse the body into dry heave or vomit. The self then flickered back on and stayed on until the nausea went away. This onset of nausea was completely psychological since nothing unusual was in the environment and probably had to do with AF as that's the only thing on my mind today. That it was psychological probably indicates that the self was never totally absent. And even when the sensate universe seems to be aware of itself undiluted by self, the self is probably there somewhere in the background. Any thoughts on this?