[PrashantMember]

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 if it can be waived. Please let me know so I can register and not miss a spot in the class.

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 introspective awareness, I would like your help in understanding which of the following processes is true (A or B):

A)Is it correct to say that if a sub mind projects moments of introspective awareness with mental objects our mind will become “automatically” aware of these mental objects like thoughts, emotion etc..? So, to cultivate and strengthen introspective awareness the idea should be to increase these moments of introspective awareness projected in consciousness so we become more and more aware of these mental objects?

OR

B)Is it correct to say if the sub mind projects moments of introspective awareness with mental objects our mind does “NOT become automatically” aware of these mental objects like thoughts, emotion etc.. and we need to additionally train our mind to become aware of these mental objects projected in awareness? If yes, can you shed light on how this works?

Hoping you can help me clear this process of becoming introspectively aware.

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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. Attention looks at all the objects in the snapshot of awareness and comes up with a state. Hope this is the correct understanding.

I have a few follow up question on the following:

What does exist prior to the moment of introspection? Lots of individual concurrent mental processes! There is no single “thing” at this point for attention to derive the state of mind from.

Question >> I am assuming the individual concurrent mental processes refers to awareness. Is it same as awareness of the states of mind. What objects does this awareness include? Can it be considered as a sensory field as it includes many items?
Can attention home in to these objects as a meditation object if we choose or intend to do so? If it’s possible then i think it would also be a powerful way to strengthen introspective awareness of the states of the mind. What are your thoughts?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by  Prashant.

[PrashantMember]

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 (activity of mind). And awareness can continuously monitor activity of the mind ( attention).

What I don’t understand yet is why attention cannot monitor states of mind. The only explainatiin given by Culadasa is “Also, because attention works by isolating objects, it cannot observe overall states of the mind.”

Can you explain the statement above and help me clarify ?

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 state right before you looked.”

Also, as per Stage 4 there is a concern what attention “sees” when turned inward introspective attention can only produce a conceptual snapshot of what was just happening a kind of delay or echo. So we cannot use attention to monitor the mind continuously.

As per my experience, When I turn my attention introspectively to meditate on thoughts I am able to monitor the different thoughts via attention. I don’t just see a snapshot from peripheral awareness in the previous moment. Similarly when we turn our attention extrospectively, say for instance to sounds, we can monitor the sounds continuously as well. In both cases the conscious intention MUST be strong and we have overcome gross distraction.

So, when it comes to state of mind why does attention when turned introspectively only take a “ snap shot” from peripheral awareness of mental state right before we look? In my opinion, the narrating mind keeps projecting the state of the mind as part of binding moments of introspective awareness. So, theoretically can’t attention monitor the state of mind like we can do for thoughts?

Note, I understand we cannot monitor the activities of the mind because attention cannot attend to itself. This is logical and crystal clear.

Can you please help me and advise if I am missing an important piece of the puzzle here regarding introspective attention and turning inwards?

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 take a snapshot instead of monitoring everything that is being projected in introspective awareness – like it would do with objects in extrospective awareness?

Also which submind produces this moment of attention ( snap shot)when we check in? Is it the narrating mind?

I am just curious about this mind phenomenon.

All your help is appreciated!

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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.

[PrashantMember]

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

[PrashantMember]

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 attention to the fact that a car is coming my way.

But from what you said “ If you also have introspective awareness, you will have a moment of introspective awareness that knows that your attention moved from the breath to the distraction. Once you know that your attention has shifted, you can direct it back to the meditation object. “ This seems to be pure awareness. Awareness is not alerting attention.

Am I doing something wrong here?

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 distraction? How does it unfold from a moment of consciousness process?

Thank so much for all your help!!!!

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 awareness.

In the same way –

If I pay attention to activities of the mind, I will become more aware of the activities of the mind.

But, If I also pay attention to the fact that a gross distraction is present, then when the submind sees the gross distraction it will alert my attention to it in the future.

Finally, on a side note, from what I understand is that when awareness alerts you of something, it is actually projecting a moment of awareness with an intention for that object to become object of attention. E.g Spontaneous Introspective awareness alerts you to mind wandering. Hope it makes sense.

Appreciate all your guidance and help!

-Prashant

[PrashantMember]

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 ”? Does “awareness” refer to sub minds here?

Question 2 – Checking in and Labelling “strengthens” Introspective awareness. Does strengthening mean that the subminds will project more moments of Instrospective awareness in consciousness? Also,how does checking in strengthen awareness from mind system model.

Thoughts?

-Prashant

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by  Prashant.

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