The noema, or content of conscious experience as being aware of the thought “thinking about thinking” can be captivating and entrapping to a mind who doesn’t hold the proper conceptualization of the experience. The mode of being that is active in such an enterprise, that enables such a thought, is the noesis of “conceptualizing the present moment’s own noema”. In other words, not only is our conscious intentionality directed at the current moment’s thought, it is simultaneously directed at the noesis, the process from which the thought is arising from. In this situation, the process is that of directed thinking, the “object” or “item” from which directed thinking is gazing upon, is itself, thus the content of experience is the thought “thinking about thinking” which manifests itself in present moment experience.

The circular notion of such a thought arising can cause the consciousness for which it has arisen to remain stagnant as the urge to escape the circular thought nonetheless reinforces its emergence. With a desire to escape thinking about thinking, we can find ourselves continually, unfortunately, thinking about thinking. This often happens in youth before we are consciously able to direct our attention away from such content, or find a rational explanation for its existence.

The trick to escaping circular reasoning is to continue the experience in a novel direction that is, itself, linear. The awareness of the thought “thinking about thinking” in the case where we are entrapped in the awareness of its existence in the present moment, takes place under a mode of being mindful. If we are not aware that we are thinking about thinking, in the present moment, then we would not be thinking about thinking. Thus the noesis, or mode of being, which manifest such continent, necessarily must include the noematic content of being mindful. This produces a noema characterized by the conceptualization of a thought process arising in consciousness. We can view this merely as “a thought is arising that says “thinking about thinking””, by seeing the content in this way, we can chalk up the causal determinacy to an underlying mode of being which is aware of itself, and continue analyzing, at this point, phenomenologically, the experience as a reflective looking back towards content which already has faded. By so moving into the future by analyzing the content as a past experience, we escape the circular reasoning, and look to describe the noematic contents which applied to the experience. The problem why entering into this noema of circularity can be troubling, is that there is an underling “unknown”, that of understanding what is happening, or the inability to properly conceptualize the experience in a way that makes sense. By distinguishing the experience using a rational conceptualization, in this way, in putting order and making known that which is unknown, the problem of negative experience which pervades an entrapment of circular thinking, is relinquished, as proper compartmentalizing and structuring to the content of experience becomes known. Ignorance, as to the current moments manifestation, is troublesome for us, and knowledge which explains it sufficiently, at least in a way that we can believe to be explanatory, will diminish the cognitive impairment.

While the phenomenological examination of any present moment experience can necessarily move the experience to new content, the ability to consciously direct our attention to novel content that is arising in consciousness enables us to escape much more easily the circular reasoning, or redundantly appearing thoughts as they produce a negative state of mind that is altogether not pleasant to be stuck in. This is, obviously, easier said than done, and if such circular or reoccurring thoughts disturb us as we become increasingly mindful of them, we always have the opportunity to phenomenologically analyze the content as a reflexive object that has already arisen, and see new content in relation to that as currently arising. This ability of conscious awareness to describe content that is currently occurring, and has previously occurred, enables the escape from such reoccurring thought patterns that trouble our minds.