Dharma Treasure Community

Hi Blake,

I am super interested in taking this course. I meet all requirements except – Minimum of 7 days experience in residential silent intensive meditation retreat experience (this does not need to be consecutive days).

Unfortunately, I do not have this experience and I plan to do it sometime in future. But, for this course i was wondering…[Read more]

I have a few technical queries to understand introspective awareness. Could you please be kind enough to provide guidance.

Lets just take example of Introspective awareness of content of mind: I understand this is the awareness of thoughts, emotions, ideas etc appearing in Peripheral awareness.

To be crystal clear on this topic of cultivating…[Read more]

Hello Blake and Bobby,

Thank you so much for taking your time and providing me guidance. It took me a while to digest this information. This is excellent. When attention hones in on the snapshot of the introspective awareness it creates a conceptual state of the mind. There is no singular thing called state of mind that attention can hone into.…[Read more]

Hi Blake,
Thank you so much for the reply. I really appreciate your guidance.

I now understand that checking in is meant to be brief and the purpose is to just briefly take a snap shot of what’s happening in the mind to strengthen introspective awareness and check for gross distractions.
I also understand we cannot attend to attention (…[Read more]

Hi Blake ,

Trust me I have read and re read your explanation many times. But I am still not very clear on “introspective attention”.

Hoping I am clear in expressing my thought this time:

In the first interlude it is mentioned – “If you do turn your attention introspectively, it takes a ‘snapshot’ from peripheral awareness of your mental sta…[Read more]

Hello Blake,

Thank for all your help so far. So, I have been meditating daily and have reached Stage 4. One question that’s still comes to my mind is regarding checking in –

If you do turn your attention introspectively, it takes a ‘snapshot’ from peripheral awareness of your mental state right before you looked.”

Why does attention only ta…[Read more]

Thanks Blake.

Is it safe to assume that the narrating mind produces the moments of attention with the activity and state of mind when we check in. Right? ? That’s why we can only notice a snapshot of what was happening in in the mind a few moments before I shifted attention.

Thanks Blake for the clear explaination.

One last thing regarding checking in is that more often than not when I look internally in the mind with attention I don’t find anything. It’s blank. I don’t find any information on activity or stare of mind. Why would this happen? How do I correct it or am not I checking in properly?

-Prashant

Thanks Blake for the explanation.

From what I experienced so far I feel that when awareness alerts me that attention has moved from breath to distraction I know it only when that realization becomes an object of attention. Another real life example is that if I am crossing the road and my awareness picks up a car it immediately alerts my…[Read more]

Hi Blake ,

Your explanation totally makes sense and clarified most of my issues.

In reference to my final note, I Just want to understand mechanics behind awareness acting as an “ watchful alert system” from a moment of consciousness model. Would you be able to explain this from using an example when awareness alerts you to gross dis…[Read more]

Thank you so much Blake for the kind explanation.

If you could confirm or shed light on the following assessment I would appreciate it:

Taking your example of birds – If I pay attention to birds it will increase my awareness of birds.

If I pay attention to a certain bird then the sub mind will alert me to that bird via introspective…[Read more]

Hi Fredric,

Yes I want to understand how the process of checking in works from a mind system model. And also want to understand the meaning of the sentence” attention trains and strengthens introspective awareness”.

Question 1. – does the statement mean attention trains the submind? Is this what you mean by “attention trains awareness ”? Do…[Read more]