-
roncraig posted an update 8 years, 9 months ago
Culadasa writes, “Checking In: Instead of waiting for introspective awareness to arise spontaneously, as you have been doing, now intentionally turn your attention inward to see what is happening in the mind. Yes, checking in disrupts your focus on the breath, but when you pause to reflect on everything happening in your mind, attention needs to shift. At this Stage, this is not only completely OK, it’s actually the key to cultivating introspective awareness. When you are Checking In you may use labeling if you want to.” When I leave the breath and “look at the mind” I see nothing. Shinzen Young states that what we can observe is a body sensation, image, or internal talk. I might add emotion although all an emotion is is a thought and a body sensation. Maybe when I “turn my attention inward” the thoughts and images just subtle. My question is, is there something else I should be looking for when I turn my attention inward?
The book also says that using attention to check in creates a “snapshot” of what the mind was doing a moment ago. You might find it helpful to inquire about that snapshot, such as: How vivid was my perception of the breath sensations in that moment? Was there a thought present, and if so, how much of my attention was on it? Was I aware of background sounds? Aware of sensations in the body? Etc.
Thanks for your suggestion. I will work with that. However, if there were no thoughts and no body sensations, if I were very focused on the breath, should I be doing something to increase my peripheral awareness?
I’m not qualified to answer that. But working on increasing peripheral awareness sounds like a good experiment to me. You could try “being aware” of thoughts and sensations before you start focusing on the breath. What happens to them when you focus on the breath? Are they already gone when you first check in?
Thanks, I’ll explore that process.