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These denizens of daily life aren’t the only creatures to be observed in thought-watching, however. They constitute only the first and most obvious circle of trapped thinking. Once we become aware of them, we usually initiate various maneuvers that are designed to banish them from our mind. These attempts to extricate ourselves and return to thought-watching invariably result in subtler versions of each trap. We end up traveling from one trap to another and back again, with no exit in sight. A sequence may begin with any of the familiar trapped ideas of daily life. For illustrative purposes, let’s suppose that we sit down to watch our thoughts and catch ourselves persisting in the construction of a list of Snow White’s dwarfs.

Once we realize that we’ve been persisting, we may complain of our failure to thought-watch properly: “I’ve messed it up again!” Of course, telling ourselves that we have messed it up does not undo the fact that we’ve messed it up, nor does it yet get us on the right track. By complaining about an event that is irretrievably finished, we only exchange our persistence for the trap of reversion. Instead of uselessly thinking about the dwarf list, we’re now thinking uselessly about the fact that we’ve been thinking uselessly! And when we realize that our reversionary ideas still don’t bring us back to thought-watching—that we mess it up again by thinking that we’ve messed it up—we may revert to the reversion: “I’ve messed it up!—and now I’ve messed it up again!” Now we’re face-to-face with an awesome infinite regress in which each lamentation of a past failure gives us cause to lament again: “I’ve messed it up again—and again—and again … !” The only way out of the labyrinth is to drop the issue entirely—to permit one of our successive failures to pass without comment.

Alternatively (or additionally) we may try to sustain thought-watching by perpetually reminding ourselves of what we’re doing. We think: “I’m thought-watching—just thought-watching— nothing else.” It’s as though we were trying to keep our incipient ideas about competing projects at bay by calling out the name of what we want to be doing. But telling ourselves that we’re thought-watching is not yet thought-watching. It’s formulation. It’s easy to fool ourselves, however. After a few moments of high-quality thought-watching, we may even say to ourselves, “Now I’m really doing it!”—without realizing that we cease to be really doing it as soon as we have that thought. When we catch ourselves in this subtle variety of formulation, we may once again take the first step toward an infinite regress by thinking, “That’s formulation,” as though naming the beast were the same as vanquishing it. But of course naming the formulation is just formulation over again: “That’s formulation—and so is that—and so is that …”

Regulation isn’t very different from formulation here. Instead of trying to drown out the intrusive dwarf project by invoking the name of thought-watching, we legislate ourselves back to our appointed task: “Get back to thought-watching!” Of course, laying down the law that we must thought-watch is still not the same thing as watching our thoughts; and if we remain busy pushing ourselves around for the entire session— “Just keep watching! Stop persisting! None of that! Just watch!”—we won’t have watched our thoughts at all. Furthermore, when we come to appreciate the futility of regulating our thought-watching, we’re apt to start making regulations against regulating. A typical sequence might go like this:

Sneezy … Dopey … That’s persistence. Stop persisting. Just watch thoughts. But that’s regulation. Stop regulating. Just watch thoughts. But that’s still regulation. Stop regulating …

How do we get out of a vicious circle of this kind? Nothing could be simpler: instead of telling ourselves to stop regulating and just watch thoughts, we need only stop regulating and just watch thoughts.

Another strategy for vanquishing intrusive projects is to tell ourselves that we will