Questions from Stage One. Peripheral awareness vs Attention.

[Bob MMember]

perhaps part of reconciling the various ideas put forward by posters in this thread is to recognise that a working definition of “conscious” and “subconscious” is a bit tricky. We may each having rather different understandings how how we use these terms. (Though I suspect we can all more easily agree what is “unconscious” 😉 )

One of the central challenges of shared learning and teaching of all this meditation stuff is that finding accurate words for all this mysterious stuff going on in our minds and bodies is awfully difficult, to say the least.

For me, I feel that am still in some sense “conscious” of stuff that is going on in Peripheral Awareness, though it is undoubtedly a quite different and weaker version of “consciousness” than what I have for mind objects that are solidly in the focus of Attention.

For my part, I tend to feel that definitionally, being “aware” of something is roughly the same of being in some sense “conscious” of it, but naturally others may use these words a bit differently.

Whatever words we may prefer, I suppose we can all agree that part of what meditation is doing, especially in these earlier Stages, is potentially changing the qualitative experience of stuff that is in the realm of Peripheral Awareness, giving us more familiarity and ability to navigate the distinctions between Peripheral Awareness and true Attention more confidently, in order to build the skill-set needed to achieve deeper and more profound benefits going forward.

[Ivan GanzaMember]

Hi amitm02,

This is most excellent to investigate and clearly work out for yourself. By sitting and working at it, using the Tools as Michael said, it will certainly become clear to you over time!

I think you might be mixing up the act of committing something to memory with just being aware. The fact that you were aware of being in a particular room ten minutes ago does not mean you formed memory impressions of everything that was in your peripheral awareness at that time. Sure, you can kind-of think back, and your mind will try to fill out what you remember being aware of. It’s not the same as if you would have looked around and focused on each thing in the room and noted it’s qualities (in which case you would have used your faculty of attention). If you had done that your memory of the objects in the room would be different (likely more accurate and detailed)

Just being aware does not mean you will basically be storing everything that was in peripheral awareness into a database for later retrieval.

I hope that helps clear a little bit?

Cheers,
-Ivan/

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.

[wardMember]

It seems to me that the teaching’s emphasis on strengthening peripheral awareness would be more of a challenge to some meditators than to others.

As someone with a neurotic, anxious nature, peripheral awareness is a given for me. The slightest change in my external or internal environment almost never goes unnoticed and usually stimulates a feeling of alarm, more or less. While this quality has served me well when it comes to physical and psychic survival, I have also viewed it as a curse when it comes to the induction of altered states such as trance, ecstasy, flow, and ordinary sleep. So it was a relief to finally hear Culadasa’s affirmation that peripheral awareness is not only OK, but essential.

I would guess that peripheral awareness is more of a challenge to those who can naturally drop into states of absorption or trance, though of course I cannot speak for them. And, of course, I could be deluded about the usefulness of my own awareness; it does tend to scan for threats and annoyances.

[B ArnoldMember]

Have you ever read a book while listening to music? Your attentional focus is the words on the page, but you can still hear the music in peripheral awareness. You are conscious of it in the background, but it is not the focus of attention.

[amitm02Member]

I really enjoy this conversation.

Ivan, i agree that there is a difference between been aware and remembering. And i also agree with Bob the the terminology is tricky.

This topic is the one i have the hardest “issue” in the book. I feel that “peripheral awareness” can be better described as a trainable subconscious process more than something to be conscious of.

Consider the following example:
You are facing a crowd of many strangers. Suddenly out of the crowd a familiar face pop out. Maybe it is a family member. Your attention was automatically shifted to his face. This shift of attention is due to our peripheral awareness. But you were aware of the peripheral awareness only because of the shift of attention. So your “peripheral awareness” was active, yet sas there been no shift of attention you would not be “aware” of any “peripheral awarness”

Or by Arnold example, i do feel like my consciousness of the music is only when my attention alternate to it. The moment you ask yourself if you are aware of a music, your attention is already there.

Same with by breath. at my current stage, i usually notice immediately when my attention shifted from my breath. But although this realisation is thanks to my peripheral introspective awareness, i am never “conscious of it”. This is just the name i use for the fact i’ve notice my attention is not on my breath anymore.

I assumed that it is all because i’m just not there yet with my practice. But i according to my understanding of the book i’m mainly fighting “subtle distractions” now, which is a bit beyond being “peripheral aware”… so i don’t know… i just keep practicing and see where it takes me.

[Ivan GanzaMember]

Hi amitm02,

Let’s try to ‘down drill’ to the core, hopefully I can explain this in a coherent way.

Think of peripheral awareness kind-of like a flood light that is always on. You don’t need to do anything at all to turn on this flood light. It is always on but there is the possibly that it could be obscured in one of two ways: either by having too much focus/highly active attention, or becoming very dull, both of which have the result of preventing the information that is available from peripheral awareness being available to consciousness. This is why it is so important to cultivate a healthy balance of awareness and attention.

To be aware of peripheral awareness is like you can become aware of the receptive space that peripheral awareness provides for objects to occupy. Again, you don’t need to do anything for this to happen, only provide or reserve enough conscious processing power, such that some is available for peripheral awareness. An easier way to say that is to just maintain a good balance, not too tightly attentive, not dull. Just fresh and naturally balanced — keep your peripheral awareness nourished. With a good balance this all just occurs naturally! (A subtle point here is that if you ‘check in’ on your peripheral awareness, then you are actually using attention. So when I say you don’t need to do anything, that is not including the act of checking in, which of course, is doing something).

In your examples, you seemed to indicate that peripheral awareness was deciding what should become an object of attention. Peripheral awareness only presents information to consciousness — the information can then be acted upon by other processes. One of those processes would decide what object is interesting enough to become an object of attention, then attention would grab it, elaborate upon it, and make it the object of attention. Peripheral awareness does not do that. It only offers the object to consciousness. (The precise process how something becomes an object of attention, and if that is a separate process, or a sub-process of attention, is another matter that I am not totally sure about at the moment…)

The situation you described about falling off the breath sounds dead on in terms of what you described. You could only become aware that you came off the breath after the fact, even if just one mind-moment afterwards. The fact that you become aware of it how you described seems to me that you have a very good balance of attention and awareness in that instance — and that you are practicing very well. You maintained enough balance such that peripheral awareness could work with other processes in order to determine that your intention to stay on the breath was not being followed — then you become aware of that information and acted accordingly.

The key here is to maintain a good balance. Reserve enough conscious power so that peripheral awareness stays active, fresh, clean….; it will automatically do that if if just has enough conscious power.

I really hope this helps!!

-Ivan/

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Amitm02,

I wouldn’t say that peripheral awareness is “subconscious”, because there is a consciousness although things are not clear until your attention actually moves to it. Think about peripheral vision. When your vision is focused on something, are you conscious of anything else in your visual field?

In the example that you gave, if I asked you if you were aware of the crowd before a familiar face popped out, you would probably say yes. You were aware of the crowd even though attention is not on any particular person.

If you try to check in to see if you are peripherally aware, then it does cause a shift of attention. However, if you are following the breath, and I asked you if you were aware of anything else two seconds ago. you might notice that indeed you were aware of some other things.

Culadasa attempted to clarify this topic a couple of weeks ago, and I have made it a sticky topic at the top of the forum, so it will be easily accessible to everyone. I suggest taking a look at his post if you have not done so already.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher in Training

[amitm02Member]

Thanks guys!
It was helpful.

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