I'm not familiar with a proto thought can you explain this to me using Direct Experience please.
And if you catch it before it happens what are you going to do with it?
In the stillness of direct experience there arises a sensation that could be clothed in words to become a thought. I could call it a direct experience of meaning, but I don’t really know what that means.
If I catch it before it becomes a picture of this body in space and time I might be able to strip off the sense of localness. I will find a gap before my mind turns it into form.
Who or what is going to catch it?
No one. Whoever it is that you are asking to “sit with” it, and “be absolutely sure” Isn’t that the mystery, the paradox we are having here? We use all this personal language-you ask “me” to “do” something , and yet it’s all happening by itself. Another thought can catch it, and somehow, sometimes, something changes. We do all this with thoughts and words, so whoever it is is whoever we imagine we are. It's all mind games, and yet somehow it works. Or more likely it's all window dressing, all just the illusion of agency.
Nobody's doing anything--, an invention to keep our minds amused while we "become" what we really are. Excuse the musing, but it's such a meaningless question.
Is there an expectation that a protothought or any thought should not happen?
No. they are thought, thoughts happen. This particular proto thought might be a key to direct experience without localness. I have no expectation that there is anything that shouldn't happen. But I do have an expectation that some things are useful in answering your questions/following this path.
Are you 100% that there is no separate self?
It depends on which me you are asking. I am 100% sure I have experienced that there is no personal self. I am 100% sure that is a real direct experience. I am also 100% sure I don’t operate that way in everyday life by way of forgetting it.