Who you callin' an intellectual?
I've had two sessions since reading your reply, and I'm happy to report that these two small adjustments feel very natural and have allowed me a deeper level of relaxation:
1. Rather than exclusively letting the thoughts continue or letting them fade away, I'm letting them do whichever they want to. Does that make any sense? I realized that I've been adjusting back and forth between subtly pushing the thoughts out to sea or subtly
trying to return to them after the point of becoming aware of them. In truth, sometimes the very fact of being aware of the thoughts naturally extinguishes them, and sometimes they are strong enough that they naturally want to return.
2. After becoming aware of thoughts in the past, I've always returned to the syllable in the same way that I do when starting a session. I've now stopped doing this; if the syllable is there, good. If not, also good. If and when it returns, then there it is.
Thank you so much for your help on this, David. There's some hair splitting in my questions, but the sessions themselves are easy and fun (and now becoming easier and more fun).
~Levi