The phrase "surface of mind" is correct and can be used in written English.
It refers to the outermost layer or level of one's thoughts and consciousness. Example: She kept her true feelings hidden beneath the surface of her mind, not wanting to reveal her vulnerability to anyone.
"The surface of our mind is the active, thinking mind.
She opened her eyes in the blackness, as questions broke the surface of her mind.
Every kiss or touch is undermined by images that a potentially terminal disease tattoos onto the surface of your mind.
Cillian was buried in water, in liquid images of her; he had to push through so many strata of her memories to reach the surface of her mind.
"That was the day," he said, his voice breaking a little in wonder as the memory bobbed abruptly to the surface of his mind.
Increasingly, what she found swimming to the surface of her mind were memories that she had forced herself to set aside years before.
Mr. Skrbina's words bobbed to the surface of my mind and made a lot more sense than they did a few days earlier.
Barker has never been a thrilling stylist, and can often sound ordinary: "thoughts floated to the surface of her mind and burst like bubbles"; "the ache of his absence was like nothing she'd ever experienced before".
When news emerged last month that Stieg Larsson's fourth, unfinished book is set largely in Canada, the announcement forced some nagging worries& 8212only incipient when I was reading the trilogy& 8212to float prominently to the surface of my mind.
While he is often gently humorous in his verse, the sense of desolation that was never far below the surface of his mind is revealed in many of his poems, notably "The Castaway".
Wall, for his part, is smitten unapologetically by the doctor-father's greatness of character and detects, "beneath the brilliant, educated surface" of his mind, "the same tension, between explicit impersonality and unspoken compassion [that] animates the mature style of his son".
