It depends.
What do you mean by:
- guide or control?
- thoughts?
- in one's mind?
I think the different definitions may be at the heart of the different responses of Brute and Jacob.
Take the mind, for instance. Typically when people talk about their mind they refer to their conscious mind, the thing that provides the feeling of thinking. But that's only one part. There is a whole other part of the mind, the subconscious, that is doing a massive amount of work, like regulating blood pressure, directing hormonal secretions, conducting the symphony of our immune system and much more, all below the level of consciousness. It is also puking up thoughts into consciousness.
Without moving or shifting your attention, can you guide or control your pituitary gland to squirt out a shot of thyroid-stimulating hormone to direct your thyroid to increase your metabolism? Maybe a monk in some monastery somewhere who, through decades of meditation practice, has learned to control certain portions of his autonomic nervous system like this, but the average person cannot.
Same goes for thoughts. The subconscious is puking them up without much control from the conscious mind.
As far as I can tell, control comes in two forms. The mess your sub-consciousness pukes is a direct result of what it was fed. So, be aware of what you are feeding it. Second, when it pukes something putrid, you can, to some extent, decide whether to latch on to the putrid thought or not. But in order to do that you've got to notice what it is puking.
In its simplest form, meditation is just that. The conscious mind watching the puke happening.
Lovely thought, eh?
