The successive thoughts could be called threads of intent to emphasise the care and exclusivity with which they are pursued, one after another. On one side they take over, seemingly out of nowhere and drive you along without any apology or explanation, but on the other side there is nothing easier that to break off the thread and take up another entirely different one. It is this power of breaking off that seems like a freedom, but it is mediated by a system of priorities. You easily suspend one line to take up another one, and it is just this that makes a mind so useful while at the same time limiting any depth of introspection which might hinder the continual and responsive switching. It is in the meta-mind with its continuously refigured priorities applied to the frontmost awareness that the self seems to dwell.