What I know by experience so far is this: chronologically I see this, there is ad dramatical situation, there is panic, fear, pain, suffering ,sweating, one goes nuts etc etc and more..it is absolutely terrible, totally unbearable...life as it was is over is the image "I" see..and is going to end soon..I have live so so I allow myself to mention ,otherwise I would not..
thought fights that fact by all means, prior to that its own end had not been dealt with, if it is possible but at least it had been move into a very far future **superficially" , for me the unconscious knows that pretty well, I have seen it there..it may stay that way.It may not.
Such situation as any other fact must be lived, not thought about apart when there is a need for practical use of thought in it too, which there will be of course.. as a person who often fails ,I know how tough it is, but there is no other way ,whether I like it or not..."I" is not the leader...it is a tool.
Then all this is too much, again "I" renounced to this fight, too big for "me"...and if there is again no escape of any kind, something impossible will again take place..but this cannot be a goal !!
in what i know thought is not defeated for good...well that would be "great"..especially in very tough time like a severe sickness...but not only..if one is over sensitive to the environment and himself, well the pain will be as unbearable, there seem to be no hierarchy in pain like some try to pretend...so for a person like me it is matter of going back to it all the time...and bit by bit there is a sort of learning and a light which is there, sort of helper...but my actual intent is not to develop much what comes after having lived suffering but the living of it, yet yes it brings relief, energy ,understanding, visions etc etc it gives back life somehow if I may say, there is great interest behind all that..
does it seem to say that nothing least as such ? well this could be..
But unlike k I am a beginner yet 61 years old ..but here as I have read all his books and biography, I know, by a simple sentence out of the way or such thing, that he had too to solve problems when they were arising, he seemed to have been able to tackle them at their birth so live them ,then they will speak is my impression...now it can be right or not..
second question in bold letters: my view only, it is because it must be that way otherwise thought is too powerful and will not allow anything else but itself to exist unless it can use it...incidentally, no not at all incidentally, this is what takes place in the outer..

John::  is thought really defeated or it is simply dormant, just waiting to be waked up by the thinker?

Agreed it always seems to come back, but again thought using a real experience, a deep one is now trying to use it to its profit an imagine that now it is for good, I have changed and it will last forever..this again is going to create another pain that will have to be understood...
is it what k mentions when he talks about constant awareness of thoughts...?? I would be tempted to say so..this shows that immediately thought go back to its usual blah blah...what I know is that there is a building up of some form of non accumulative knowledge like in practical matters, then when a discovery is made like in a miracle , one does not have to start the same path again and again and one will start from a position where the previous discovery is useful to some limits , ie: one knows that suffering must be left alone somehow