There are placements of yourself as the doer or the sufferer or merely as the presence in a scene, these are placements of a something in a world of somethings. It is from such modeling as this that thought takes off. The kind of thought that is always going on, the commentary on the models, not from the point of view of the modeler or the modeling, which remains latent, but of the subject-object in the picture. This is also called distraction, it is intrinsically distracted, that is, off-centre, a deferral, a provisional or indifferent filling of the empty place of truth. If distraction is noticed as such the event is reframed, there is a refreshing of the mental screen. How can being lost in a train of thought be noticed if not from outside that train, from awareness in a larger and more real context? So you can step back and say 'I was distracted just then', and bring the mind back to the present, the action being as if pivoting on the base reality, and like when you touch the sea-bottom with your outstretched foot you can't rest there, you can only use it for orientation and leverage, as something to briefly kick against. The belief in such a base reality is a constant. You measure the distance of mental states from it, you measure their necessary degree of unreality. Mental states are happily unreal since much of what they are called on to do is simulation, imagination, review of counterfactuals, etc. To take any step you need a sense of the field of possibilities that the present resolves. The distinction between real and imagined states of affairs is a fluid one and ultimately unsustainable. the operative difference being not reality but faith. So there is an irreducible position of the real in this play, like the position of the dealer in a card game, but it is entirely on the side of mind.