You can be awake and thinking of something, that is, have your attention on some sequence of experiences which are unfolding according to your interest and intention, and then you can be aware that you are thinking about that thing, in effect thinking about your thinking. In the latter case your attention is almost wholly withdrawn from the original intentional stream and is now treating that stream itself as object. When does this occur? Generally when there is something unpleasant that is uninvitedly accompanying the original stream of thought. It might be that what seems to be determining the thought stream is mostly opaque and constraining, the element of optionality and space co-arising within the thought is attenuated to almost zero; you feel as though you are being held captive by that thought, which is also predictable and dull. But what is opaque, what forces you into a narrow and repetitive channel, what is dead about the thought, is also precisely yourself. Every thought, in the act of being thought, is volitional, and so if it feels constrained the pressure is felt precisely in that aspect of yourself whose nature it is to be free to choose. What is painful is to have your freedom overruled while still remaining your freedom, as if you are being wrestled by a stronger opponent and have not, or cannot surrender. And when that opponent is yourself, your own dead and unrelenting self, yourself as pure gravity, this is all the worse. And yet in this event another possibility appears, one that is far from obvious, so it might be missed again and again, which is the freedom to shift the focus awareness out of the stream and onto the stream. When this occurs there is a shift in the implicit sense of what you are as agency - a limited but significant expansion of freedom. You are still thinking, still within the same constellation of basic elements, but their balance has shifted. Perhaps it now becomes possible to move in and out of the thought. You gain a glimpse of the fact that what you are up to, what you are always up to in one way or another in every waking moment, is richer and more strange than you had suspected. Whatever the meaning of this rare but ordinary experience it is not easily understood. It ought not to be hastily theorised.