The Stop, Gurdjieff and the Alexander Technique - Life of our life

This is my 9th post on David Appelbaum's book The Stop If you missed the first 8 go back to January 1 so you can follow the sequence.

In Chapter 5, The Organism of Text, Appelbaum has a short paragraph about how, with the stop, human perception is dual. At first, I thought he was referring to Gurdjieff's practice of self-remembering as Ouspensky describes it in In Search of the Miraculous:

When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe - a line with one arrowhead:
I ----------------------> the observed phenomenon.

When at the same time, I try to remember myself, my attention is directed both towards the object observed and towards myself. A second arrowhead appears on the line:
I <--------------------> the observed phenomenon.

Ouspensky explains that the observed phenomenon "could as well be within me as outside me."

After reading the paragraph several times I realized that Appelbaum is talking about a deeper, more subtle form of self-remembering. He is talking about an awareness of a "movement of energy" that takes place before our "our inner activities" take form. These activities or functions are our thoughts, desires, judgments, self-will, etc. These are functions that take on forms and we perceive them. But prior to the taking of form, there is a movement of energy and this can be perceived as well. He says, "This is the Life of our life, that which is a source for particular undertakings of functional life. Perception thus takes note of how percipient energy enters life on our ordinary level, how it animates forms of life, and how it remains distinct from these forms."

Although Appelbaum doesn't spell this out, it seems that he is indicating that there is a choice then at the moment of perception of the movement of energy. One could choose to stop the thought, the desire, the judgment and then the mind would remain formless.