[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi DCurtis,

I would like to clarify the terms that you are using. What are you calling mind wandering? Do you totally lose the breath or is there still some awareness of the breath? At this stage your attention is going to move from the breath to other things, particularly thoughts. The key is when you notice this.

There is a difference between your attention flickering to a thought for 1/4 of the in-breath, and totally forgetting the meditation object and going from thought to thought for 5 seconds.

How is your peripheral awareness while your attention is on the breath? Are you aware of sounds, body sensations, and thoughts in the background?

In addition to Mary’s suggestions, I would suggest that you add some of the stage 3 practices to your meditation.
1) – Following the breath (page 98) to more fully engage with the breath and to keep your mind interested.
2) – Connecting (page 100) do this once Following becomes too easy to hold your attention
3) – Labeling (page 101) – to strengthen introspective awareness
4) – Checking In (page 103) – to further strengthen introspective awareness

Introspective awareness is the ultimate skill that will alert you to the fact that your attention has moved from the breath to a thought.

Please remember that we all have different innate abilities to focus our minds. For some people, stable attention comes quite easily, and for others is can take months or years. I sense some dissatisfaction and expectation in your practice. Try to notice if there is any disappointment during the “aha” moment.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Junot,

There quite a bit of material in your post, but I will try to discuss most of your questions.

It makes sense that the sensations at the nose won’t be as clear if you have more of your mental power in awareness.

The “chaos” in your mind could be the arising of Piti. Please see the relevant sections of TMI for more information about Piti. The Piti can also cause muscle contractions which may feel like tension.

My natural tendency is for my eyes to move towards the body part when doing body scanning. It doesn’t seem to cause any tension for me. However it is easy to tense up when doing body scanning, particularly when you have expectations about what you should be feeling.

I suspect you may be generating tension when trying to feel sensations that fluctuate with the breath. For me, these generally feel like the tingling sensations that you describe, but they tend to fluctuate (get stronger and weaker) with the breath. Please remember that even though you have the intention to notice these sensations, it is not required to do the practice correctly. It make take a considerable amount of time before your mind reaches this level of clarity, but is doesn’t matter.

One of the key things to make body scanning more enjoyable is acceptance of whatever sensations you feel, even if that is the total lack of sensation in some parts of your body. The lack of sensations is a sensation.

I recommend trying the body scanning with a more relaxed gentle attitude. If it gets tiring you can always switch back to the breath for awhile.

Hope this is helpful,
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Marcus,

It sounds like you may be having some experiences of no-self. When attention moves away from the meditation object, do you feel an unpleasant sensation? If not, then you may not need the mental “pat on the back”.

If you do feel an unpleasant sensation, you can try generating a positive feeling (emotion) in your body without using any words. This can be done through an intention or by putting a small smile upon your face.

Another thing that might be useful for you to experiment with is to use the thought stream as a meditation object. For most people, thoughts manifest as either an internal image, or internal words or phrases. Emotions are usually a combination of image or talk and sensations in the body.

When you meditate on thoughts it helps to use mental noting to avoid getting lost in content. When an image arises note “seeing” silently to yourself. If talk arises (clear or vague), note “hearing”. If neither arises note “rest”, because your mind is in a restful state.

Hope this helps,
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Sue,

It sounds like you may have a blockage. I would recommend the following spinal breathing practice that is designed to smooth out the energy flow between the base of the spine and the third eye (between the eyebrows). I recommend starting with 5 minutes right before you meditate and work your way up slowly from there. It may take weeks or months to see much difference.

http://www.aypsite.com/41.html

Hope this helps,

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Kim,

I don’t really have much else to add. You may just have to keep experimenting and accepting until you find something that works. Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells a story of practicing in a monastery in Asia, and his arms started spontaneously flapping like a bird which went on for several days. After talking to his teacher he realized that he had a subtle aversion to this. When he let go of aversion the flapping stopped, and he had a very deep peaceful release.

Yoga in moderation can definitely help, but I find that beyond a certain threshold yoga can be energizing and the energy flows can get stronger.

It sounds like a good insight that you realize that the reluctance to back off on your practice is driven by ego.

The advanced yoga practices can be very energizing, and one of the keys to this technique is learning to self pace. Once the energy gets to be too much, one backs off until things are more stable and manageable. After that things can be gradually increased.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Kim,

There are times when the energy overloads can occur and it makes it difficult to function in daily life (like sleep). When the energy gets to be too much, you can try the following.

1. Cut back on practice
2. Get physical exercise. Long walks can be helpful
3. Get grounded by doing something like gardening or physical labor.
4. Try something like Thai Chi
5. Eat a heavier diet.

The Advance Yoga practices web site to which I referred you previously has a lot of good articles on dealing with energy overloads.

It sounds like you are gaining some insight into the way your mind works, which can be very beneficial.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Kim,

Does the piti arise when you do the preliminary practices such as present moment awareness, or when just being aware of body sensations, or does it only occur when you do practices where attention is more limited?

One practice that has calmed the piti for me is to follow the breath but keep a more spacious awareness. More like using the breath as an anchor for attention but emphasizing peripheral awareness.

You might also notice if you have any tension in your body when you meditate. I have seen a relationship between tension (particularly in the head and face) and the spontaneous movements. You could try letting go of tension on the exhales for a period of time.

Another idea is just to persist in your practice, because the piti tends to calm itself over time.

Hope this it helpful, and it would be beneficial for others if you let us know if any of these techniques work for you.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Kim,

I have had a similar experiences with the premature arising of piti, in stage 3 or 4. Culadasa explained this as a partial unification of mind. Different minds and bodies respond differently to the practice. Even though some of the sensations can be unpleasant, try to let go of the aversion as best you are able.

One practice that has helped me is when these sensations start to arise let go of attention to the meditation object, and have the intention to notice any body sensations that occur prior to the movements. The effect may be similar to what you are noticing with the body scanning practice.

I have also benefited from a spinal breathing pranayama exercise prior to meditation to smooth out the energy flow.

http://www.aypsite.com/41.html

I also recommend reviewing stages 7 and 8 in The Mind Illuminated for more information.

Hope this is helpful.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Ron,

Please see my answers below.

Question 1:
Yes, if something is unconscious, it is just the sub-minds doing what the sub-minds do and you are not aware of it.

Yes, if something is conscious it is either peripheral awareness or attention.

Usually, if something stands out from peripheral awareness, then attention has moved to it. This might be a brief alternation. A helpful exercise is to notice if you had some awareness of the object before it stood out. Things in peripheral awareness are often fuzzy (like peripheral vision). After you move your attention back to the meditation object, you my still have some awareness of the the previous object.

You will not be aware of everything in peripheral awareness. There is also a limited bandwidth of what you can be aware of using peripheral awareness.

You do not need to bring objects into peripheral awareness. If you try, it will more than likely cause an alternation of attention. I recommend having the intention to be peripherally aware, and see what you notice. Try to make it an exploratory practice.

Peripheral awareness is slippery. As soon as you check in to see if you have it, it causes an alternation of attention. It is easier to notice after the fact. For example, put your attention on the sensation caused by the breath for a few moments. Then stop and ask yourself if you were aware of anything else during that time.

Question 3:

Walking meditation is an excellent practice for developing peripheral awareness, and you can also practice it while going about your day.

Question 4:

This “knowing” that you describe is part of introspective peripheral awareness, and yes it is important to develop. It also alerts you if your attention moves away from the meditation object.

Mindfulness is the optimal interaction between attention and peripheral awareness.

Good luck with your exploration,

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Greg,

Lovingkindness practice is generally considered a samatha or concentration practice. It develops the ability to stabilize attention while also opening the heart, and breaking down the barriers between self and others.

If you maintain awareness, in Culadasa’s system of samatha-vipassanna, you will be developing insight while you are training your mind to stabilize attention.

For example, as you are developing the feelings of lovingkindness, you will notice other things in your awareness. It will be particularly helpful to be aware of any resistance that you might have towards the practice or generating loving feelings towards difficult people.

Developing equanimity and lovingkindness towards whatever you experience can definitely benefit your practice. For example, if you are frustrated by your progress in meditation you can learn to soften into that experience and accept where you are. Physical pain is also a good opportunity to practice lovingkindness towards your experience.

Hope this helps,

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Stefan,

I have been out of town, so I just now saw your reply. I understand about getting withdrawn at times.

It is truly one of the challenges of the staged approach to progress through the stages without judgment, and it is probably more difficult for certain personality types. I have had many such struggles myself.

As I progress along the path, I am seeing more and more that a critical component is learning to skillfully work with difficult thoughts and emotions. So much of our suffering is related to this.

Best of luck, and I hope you will check in from time to time.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Dear B Lejon,

When someone speaks of present moment awareness, I think they are usually talking about some combination of attention and peripheral awareness. Usually the attention moves from one thing to another in the present moment, and peripheral awareness notices sensory objects that might be examined by attention.

If you are aware of other sensory phenomena while keeping attention on the breath, I would say that you have peripheral awareness.

Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Stefan,

Welcome to the forum. Your post starts with the following “… my sessions still feel as poor as they did on day 1”. Right away this shows that you have a lot of judgment and dissatisfaction with your practice. It is very difficult to develop tranquility when you have this much resistance. I recommend trying to let go of judgment as best you are able, but also be alert that you can have judgment about the judgment.

The tension you are feeling could be related to the kriyas/kundalini. That is one way that they can manifest. I have spent quite a bit of time in my practice working with kriyas.

It could be helpful to keep your attention on your object, but also be aware of thoughts and emotions.

I noticed that you posted a link to on of Shinzen’t talks. He has a meditation technique called Focus In where you observe thoughts, and emotions. Thoughts either manifest as Self Talk or Images that come up in your minds eye. You note and label them as either “hear” or “see”. Emotions manifest as sensations in your body, and you note and label them as “feel”.
Thoughts and body sensations related to emotions become your meditation object. This can help you get in touch with your thoughts and emotions and get in touch with your resistance.

I think your newer practice approach is on the right track. It helps to get in touch these body sensations. It would also be beneficial to see the thoughts and emotions that arise related to the tension. Your attention can be on the body sensations, that you interpret as tension, and your peripheral awareness can notice thoughts and emotions. You can even use the noting if this helps.

You also state the following “Not being able to see any signs of progress after six months of meditation has been devastating for me.” I want to remind you that there is no particular rate of progress, and six months is not really that long in the grand scheme of things. Everyone’s path unfolds at a different rate. This statement demonstrates a lack of acceptance.

It might also be beneficial to study the Buddha’s Four Noble truths. Phillip Moffitt’s book “Dancing with Life” is a good text on the subject. He explains in detail how clinging and aversion create dissatisfaction and suffering.

Practices like Yoga and Qigong, can help balance the energy and smooth out the kriyas. Walking meditation might be worth trying.

I wish you the best of luck in your practice, and I hope you will continue to work with the difficulties and not give up. We are here to help.

Blake – Authorized Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Sergey,

I have recently been reading a book called “The Happiness Trap” by Russ Harris. It is a mindfulness technique for working with difficult thoughts and emotions. I have only read about 40% of the book, but is seems very powerful. I used it to deal with a difficult emotion, and it worked well. You may not necessarily find the source of your negative mood, but you can learn to accept and work with it.

Hopefully, you will see that unpleasant thoughts and emotions are one thing, and our mind’s reaction to them is another. It is our mind’s reaction that caused the suffering. As Culadasa says pain is inevitable, but suffering (dukkha) is optional.

Best of Luck,
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Eric,

It is recommended that you do the six-point preparation when you first sit down to meditate. It will probably take more time at first, but the time will probably shorten as you grow more familiar with the practice. I recommend taking as much time as you need to feel satisfied. It is also an important practice.

Blake – Authorized Dharma Treasure Teacher

[Author]

Posts