[Michael DunnMember]

I will say that to introduce a practice to dull the mind for sleep, after working so hard to remove dullness, seems like a bit of a roller coaster. That practice also assumes that dullness is required for sleep, which is questionable.

Question: Do you need as much sleep as you used to or does the higher energy level in the mind during the day allow for overall less sleep than before?

You may be able to watch your mind as you fall asleep and then even in some states between waking and deep sleep. This is a great way to pass the night, mindfully aware of the state of your mind. Perhaps it is time to challenge the notion of what sleep means? Can you get “rest” mindfully?

Experiment, as your mind changes due to your practices, other habits also change. Sleep is definitely important, so be sure to always have the right balance of rest and waking.

Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Mary,

I have always thought that these instructions were given, in part, to engage the intelligent mind so that you don’t lose the meditation object. Of course they are also introduced to develop a sustained attention that will deter the cycle of distraction, forgetting and mind-wandering.

So, in that regard, this can certainly be done with any sensation of the breath, which includes observing the beginning/middle/end of the rising and falling of the sensations of the breath at the abdomen.

(Congratulations on using the practice to overcome pain in your posture)

Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Bob,

Sure, this is a very good thing to do. The gradual process of bringing attention to the sensations of the breath, over 4 steps (not stages), is a very effective way to start the meditation.

And vice-versa, reversing it is a great way to come out of meditation, back to the room etc. And it may help the meditator with the distinctions between awareness and attention, especially as at the end of the session the mind may be more still.

Thanks for sharing this practice.

Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hi Bob,

In addition to what Ivan said so well, I will add a personal experience.

I am a typical over-active attention person, and until I read Culadasa’s book, I didn’t even know that I could divide conscious awareness into the 2 of attention and awareness, and then extraspective vs. introspective awareness etc.

I also struggled early on to define and apply the difference between the two and found ways to differentiate and know them, but I realized afterwards that it actually comes naturally, and once you have a settled mind, with no mind-wandering or forgetting, so about Stage 4, you instinctively can perceive awareness in the background as Ivan points out, and your attention in the foreground.

So, if you keep using the tools, you will come to see this yourself. Remember that if you are thinking about this during your meditation you are actually off the object of the breath, so trust in the practice, you will realize these distinctions soon enough.

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Ward,

There are a few reasons why I like to focus my attention on tactile sensations vs auditory sensations.

For one, the scope of tactile senstations is the whole body, both outside and inside, which is much greater than the auditory scope which is just the ear drum really. We will use this larger area in many practices as we progress through the stages.

Secondly, though I can draw out more and more subtle sounds and sensations, I can’t expand or contract the scope of the auditory sensation as I can with tactile sensations. We will use this ability to put our attention on sensations throughout the body in our development through the stages, so it is very useful in our development of certain skills, like overcoming dullness and agitation.

As for your second question, it is fun to play with changing the scope of attention before stages 5,6 but you will still need to develop the skills of attention and awareness at the previous stages using the techniques described for those stages, you cannot skip them. So, working step-by-step you will use a dedicated practice of expanding the scope of attention to remove subtle distractions in stage 6, so you have that to look forward to!

Regards
Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hi Amit,

Following up on your questions…

Increasing the scope of attention to include the whole room is still inherently different than peripheral awareness. They are different functions of the mind at this stage of the training. In your example, attention would be focused on taking in everything in the room at the same time, with equal clarity and alertness, whereas awareness is not actively engaged in taking in the whole room, it is more passive, and not discriminating.

However, “In the higher Stages of meditation, attention and awareness actually merge together to become one fully integrated system—more about that in the chapter on Stage Eight.” (pp 36) though I cannot personally talk to this experience, that is what Culadasa describes. A merging of the 2 would only come after the development of exclusive attention and a unified mind, which is much more than an “expanded attention”.

In answer to your next question, I believe that the sense of continuity of awareness while attending the sensations of the breath, is more of an illusion, in that the moments of consciousness appear very quickly, giving the illusion of continuity. This would be just like film and video, which are nothing more than a series of still “moments” that appear to the eye very quickly (48 times for film and 60 times for NTSC video), creating the persistence of vision.

Good luck, hope this helps.
Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Amit

I am glad to hear that the material in the Mind Illuminated is creating breakthroughs for you, I will try to shed some light on your questions here:

1) Is the difference between attention and peripheral awareness just a matter of the scope (narrow vs wide) or is there a more qualitative fundamental difference?

Yes, there is a more qualitative difference between peripheral awareness and attention. Attention and awareness are different forms of our conscious experience, it is not that awareness is simply a matter of expanding the scope of attention. The more you are able to differentiate between these two the more you will be able to form the foundation for mindfulness, which is the optimal interaction between the two.

The differences are discussed a lot in the First Interlude and the chart on pp 34 shows some high level differences. In practice, these are the differences that I find and use. Awareness appears to my mind as being in the background, or on the periphery, very subtle. Attention appears to my mind as being in the forefront, center of my mental activity, if I am consciously discriminating then it is attention. Awareness informs attention, not the other way around. With practice you will become aware of things in your conscious awareness, while still holding attention on the meditation object. You will even see something move from awareness to attention, such as a pain that increases over time that you eventually take as your object.

In stage 6 you will begin to practice expanding the scope of attention from a small area to the whole body, as an exercise to remove subtle agitation and gain exclusive attention, though this is still not the same peripheral awareness.

2) I feel that every time I introspectively monitor my mind, I lose the attention of the breath momentarily.
Yes, you are correct, in these early stages, when you check-in on your mind, you are technically changing the object of mediation for a short period of time. But that is a OK to do at these early stages, after Stage 4 you can do this without changing the meditation object. At this point, you are developing introspective awareness along with attention, which is an important balance to serve as a foundation for your later stages.

3) Whenever I do the “checking in” technique, the result is a concept in the form of a word that comes up in my consciousness. e.g “breathing” or “thinking” etc’. Is that the proper result or should I aim for something less conceptual and more “raw”?
Checking-in will be conceptual at first, and that is also fine. The more you practice, the more raw it will become. Just don’t take that concept and run with it, as that leads to mind wandering. Think of it more as a label, but don’t create the story. Checking-in serves to develop introspective awareness and keeping this goal in mind is good.

In short, just keep practicing, you are on the right path and it will become more and more clear the more you do it, and the more questions you ask!

I hope this helps to clarify.

Michael Dunn

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Charles,

I didn’t realize that you didn’t have Culadasa’s book, so my references to sections of it couldn’t be followed. So here is a more long-winded reply to your initial questions re: stage 6 practices.

First, to be clear, let’s not confuse 2 practices. There is the practice of “body scanning” which is introduced to increase the power of mindfulness, in Stage 5. Then there is the practice of “experiencing the whole body with the breath” which is introduced to develop exclusive attention, in Stage 6. Your previous question was referencing this latter technique, and as you say here, you used the former for master stage 5. So let’s talk about the stage 6 practice which will help your mind to ignore subtle distractions.

In summary, first move your attention to the sensations of the breath at the abdomen. While keeping these sensations in peripheral awareness, intentionally shift your attention to a different body part, say your left hand. In this practice you will clearly define the scope of attention, and at this point it is the left hand, and then only the breath sensations in the left hand. Ignore all other sensations – though they will remain in peripheral awareness.

Next move to any other part of your body, clearly define the scope of attention and intend to focus your attention only on the breath sensations within that scope. Move to larger areas, then alternate with smaller areas, until you have dexterity of moving your scope of attention while exclusively focusing on breath sensations within that defined scope.

Finally expand the scope of attention to include the whole body, when this happens “you are so fully engaged that there is no attention to spare for distractions” and subtle distractions are temporarily subdued.

After a while you can then return your attention back to the breath sensations at the nose, and witness if you have increased your exclusive attention to this object. Hold this for as long as you can, then if exclusive attention fades, return to the first steps of this practice and do it again, and again… If you get very good at this, you don’t have to go through the whole body step by step, but can simply return to the place where you had exclusive attention to the whole body. Then back to the area of the nose again and you’ll see you can hold exclusive attention there longer and longer.

This summarizes the stage 6 practice, and hopefully will help you in becoming an Adept Meditator and the goals of this stage.

Regards,
Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Charles,

Thanks for asking these questions, Stage 6 is an important stage for many reasons; achieving exclusive attention on the meditation object, developing of metacognitive introspective awareness, and from these achievements you will develop the factors for entering the jhanas – directed and sustained attention, unification of the mind, with joy and pleasure – then you can be in a state of Access Concentration.

I will humbly try to answer your 4 questions below:

1) Yes, ignoring the subtle distractions at this stage is how you train the conscious mind to not pay attention to them. Subtle distractions are present, and the unconscious sub-minds are projecting these subtle distractions into consciousness, however, through the power of intention that unify the sub-minds, you can train the conscious mind to not pay attention to these subtle distractions, and yes, they will disappear as you progress through this stage. Not forever, you will still have to apply effort so that they don’t return, removing them entirely occurs at a later stage.

You do not need to positively reinforce the mind with smiling or the like, as you did in previous stages. From what you describe, stay with the practice of experiencing the whole body with the breath, and ignore the subtle distractions. You should see progressively fewer and fewer subtle distractions, and a change in your conscious experience to respond to them. Be sure to keep developing metacognitive introspective awareness in conjunction with this.

2) The practice of experiencing the whole body with the breath is to engage the mind to find sensations caused by the breath throughout the body, doing so in a very methodical manner by changing the scope of your attention while maintaining exclusive attention. This will help you to ignore the subtle distractions you mention above. You may feel the breath through your pores, but your pores are not the object of the meditation.

I’d rather not repeat the whole process of this practice here. This and other details can be found in much clearer language in Chapter Six of the book.

3) The mind creates concepts or labels based on raw sense-percepts and the habit of the mind is to react to these, not the original sense-percepts. For example, I react to the concept of pain in my knee while sitting (discomfort, fear of damaging it etc.), not the raw sense-percept of pain (a unique sensation). The term non-conceptual here refers to the ability, through pacifying the mind at this stage, to have an insight into your mind actually doing this with the meditation object. As a result, your meditation object of the sensation of the breath will not have a label such as “cold/warm” nor on the “arm/ nose”; it will be a raw sensation devoid of such labels, and hence non-conceptual.

4) Yes, mastery of Stage 6 develops in one the skills to be able to access the jhanas. Culadasa describes some techniques for entering the whole body jhana in Chapter Six, if you are ready to do so. It is great to explore and play with.

I hope this helps,

Regards
Michael

[Michael DunnMember]

Hello Patrick,

Another bit of input on your query re: checking in. Your language suggests that you want to use checking-in as a method to catch gross-distractions. That is in some ways a secondary result of checking-in. Remember that what you are training the mind to do with the checking-in practice is to develop awareness which will then be able to identify gross distractions. Ultimately, checking-in is a tool for this stage, but later on you will use awareness, not checking-in.

When you are checking-in at this stage, take a whole snapshot of the mind, ask yourself “how am I doing?”, where is my focused attention? where is my peripheral awareness? Try not to worry about how trivial or not the distraction is, that would involve some form of analysis, stick to an objective, non-judgemental snapshot of what is happening in your mind, let awareness do the rest.

This trains awareness to notice what is happening in the mind and to catch gross and subtle distractions early on. We are training the mind for the optimum balance of attention and awareness, which leads to mindfulness.

So, a bit of a technicality here. Checking-in is the tool to develop the long term goal of developing awareness of everything going on in the mind in the present moment; then catching gross distractions is the job of this newly enhanced awareness, not checking-in.

Hope this helps,
Michael

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