The other night I was doing insight practice and noticed that thoughts would arise and pass spontaneously as they often do, and I was observing this. But this time they seemed to occupy certain physical locations in the space around my head. Some would seem to be in front and to the right of my head, and some to the left. Some higher and some lower. It seemed that certain types of thoughts tended to appear in different areas.

Also, as they passed, they would seem to physically move backwards next to my head and then behind me as they disappeared, while another popped in in front of it.

This has not happened since and it has been a few days.

What was that? No idea where I am on the path, by the way.

That was your mind playing tricks on you and you going along with it and being fascinated by it. In other words, you subconsciously created this phenomenon in your mind for whatever reason. (Maybe no reason at all. Other than to confound you.)

Nothing unusual. Par for the course when starting out. Just get back to your meditation and don't give these phenomena any mental coercion.

people tend to describe things that way more in three stages: mind and body, A&P, and Equanimity

that you noticed them come and go, not be you, and noticed some asking, questioning, and thus subtly dissatisfied something are the marks of basic insight into their true nature

when these basic perceptual insights encompass more core processes and aspects of the fluxing field of experience, good things occur

nice job

daniel