[Lesley BakerMember]

Hi James
Its been a few days since you posted and I am wondering how your six part preparation now feels for you. Just because it’s called ‘preparation ‘ doesn’t mean it’s not a practice in and of itself. Give yourself time to enjoy this preparation practice, you will be learning valuable skills which will assist you as you go on. Eventually your mind will have practiced the steps enough and you will naturally move on to focus on counting the breaths and beyond. I note you are in the UK, so am I am and I am happy for you to contact me. My email is on the teachers in training list.

[Lesley BakerMember]

Hi Bernadette Differentiating between awareness and attention feels obscure when you first start to watch whether your mind is using one method of knowing or another, because we are so used to automatically using them and flipping from one to another. I found it really useful when I first started to practice to correlate attention/awareness with aspects of vision. I might be watching a butterfly moving around a bush and only loosely aware of the colours, shapes, plants, scents, warmth etc around me. ‘I’m’ watching the butterfly and noticing how it moves, what it is doing etc. This focus on the butterfly equates to my attention of the sensations of the breath. The haze of almost indistinquihable sensations in the background of the rest of the plant and the garden are in my awareness, but I know they are there. If my gaze flits even for a second to a rustling leaf, a sound in the background etc, my focus/attention has shifted. ‘I’m’ now noticing the sound. Wherever the notion of ‘I’m’ doing, knowing, feeling, seeing something is, that’s where my attention is. The sound started to pull on my attention, as Ted said – it get’s sticky or magnetic to my attention. This attraction starts to pull my attention away from the butterfly/breath sensations. It continues until either it succeeds (now the centre of my attention), or ‘I’ notice and redirect my atention back and reinforce it with praise for responding and fresh intentions to continue to notice this movements of mind. Attention cannot be split but it can move quicly from one object to another. This object might be singular and small or larger and more complex, but only one object at a time. Everything else is in awareness. This awareness includes external and internal sensations and mental objects such as thoughts, memories, imaginationation, feelings, emotions. In meditation, the internal sensations begin to stand out more. Some have a really magnetic pull 🙂 With consistent practice of noticing how objects in the background have taken your attention, you firstly notice attention has gone, then you notice attention is tempted but it is only alternation between the two, then you notice attention might want to be tempted and then one day you notice that nothing has actually become clear in the background, but you have noticed the mind being gently pulled without leaving its attention on the breath sensations, then the attention can rest quietly and in that quietness, awareness can develop further.

[Lesley BakerMember]

Hi Orhan
I have seen your post and replies and I thought I would say that I have also practiced using the inner sound in my head. I am now a teacher-in-training with Dharma Treasure and Culadasa and have used the breath as my object of attention for a long while. However recently I revisited the inner sound. I was introduced to this from a book called The Law of Attention Nada Yoga and the Way of Innee Vigilance and it was my first meditation practice. This inner sound is initially described as a primordial sound. The practice was to notice it and it’s component sounds, always aiming to focus on the highest finest frequency. I found the practice very useful and it helped stabilise my mind for all my future practices. I also found it settled my mind into meditation well when I revisited it. I, like you, can choose to hear it all not. It has many frequencies and appears to be present in different regions of my brain. Although, being sound, it often isn’t restricted to boundaries. Ultimately we need to stabilise our attention and then in the later stages of practice, be able to move our attention at will, and this sound might be of use to you, but using the breath has deepened my meditation and following the guidance in TMI has helped that progression. Enjoy your practice.

Lesley

[Lesley BakerMember]

Thank you very much for all your guidance. I understand your words and relate to both scenarios. Post your reply I fell down that metaphoric hole again and wondered why I still did. Then an ‘insight ‘ maybe ! Life gave me and I am guessing others very little training in having feelings. They were not voiced, not heard, not permitted, not cared about etc and the lack of acceptance and care for my feelings still continues. I care but don’t really know how to deal with them . Feelings are a bigger hurdle than thoughts. So I am sitting entirely with feelings. If a thought arises, I go to it’s feeling. Body feelings, breath feelings and the feelings of my mind moving but not thoughts. Today read in ANTONIO Damasio’s great book The Feeling of what Happens, body, emotion and the making of consciousness, that he also sees the feeling mind giving rise to all other perceptions and mental formations.
From sitting with feelings and not thoughts I am able to reach the feeling of an awake unifying mind more readily and seem to be able to see mind unfolding more clearly.
Thank you for help already given and future help
Lesley

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