[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hi Mohnish,

Everything you say is correct, except that 100% attention and 0% awareness isn’t really possible. This is because attention operates within the field of conscious awareness, and everything that is taken as an object of consciousness must first appear in awareness. So attention may occupy nearly all of the field of conscious awareness, but some part of that field is always constituted by pure awareness. When doing the kind of work you are describing, it might be more like 98% attention and 2% awareness, where there is still enough awareness to provide a channel for new ideas to enter consciousness from the parallel processing going on in numerous other unconscious sub-minds apart from those involved in attentional processing.

Reflect on the problem solving process as you have actually experienced it. Linear processing develops an idea up to a point. Then suddenly you realize the approach you are pursuing raises another problem. Or you suddenly realize there might be a better way to get where you are going if you back up a few steps. Or you realize someone is calling your name or shaking your shoulder to get your attention. These are all manifestations of awareness.

Mindfulness allows you to intentionally enter a high state of concentrated attention – when it’s appropriate. Without mindfulness, we tend to enter and dwell in attention dominated states when not appropriate, especially when driven to do so by desire and/or aversion.

As you increase total conscious power, you are able to sustain much higher levels of mindfulness even while employing maximal attention to a problem. The result is superior problem solving ability and much more creative solutions. You are optimizing the combination of very precise linear processing capabilities, with their reductionistic, analytic and synthetic capacities, and the more holistic, less rigidly categorical and axiomatically constrained parallel processing capacities of the other parts of your mind-system.

You might enjoy reading the appendix on Analytical Meditation, and perhaps googling some of the research done on problem solving.

Best wishes,
Culadasa

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hi Colleen. One way is to send an email to consultations@culadasa.com describing what you want to do (ie. donate a session or pay, for example, 1/2 the cost of a session for someone) and I will post the offer the way I did yesterday for another person who has donated two sessions.
The generosity that has been forthcoming regarding these online consultations is impressive. The reddit/mindilluminated group has also been donated a session and are now deciding amongst themselves how to use it.
BTW, that subreddit has already done a group session with me. which is another innovation that I found very enjoyable.

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hello to All,
A very kind and generous person has responded to this discussion by donating two consultations.
Please feel free to recommend anyone you think might gain some special benefit from one of these opportunities. I feel like members of this community know each other well enough to make that discernment. You can recommend yourself as well.
For sake of fairness, I will give priority to those who receive multiple nominations.
In joy and love,
Culadasa

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Dear Samuel, It gives me great joy to know that you have benefited from my teachings.
I’m sorry that my offer of consultations for money has offended you, but I find your association of this offer with cults quite confusing, whether in your mind or the mind of anyone else you might suggest this community to. Cults ask for money, but don’t offer anything tangible in return. Quite the opposite. You say “If legit teachers like Culadasa start doing things like this…”
Kenneth Folk, Stephanie Nash, and Tucker Peck all charge for online consultations. I’m sure there are many others as well. Reggie Ray charges a substantial amount for his recorded teachings. Tucker suggested that I should be doing the same.
Enough has already been said about my health and financial issues. Bottom line, I simply don’t have the time and energy to make myself available too broadly. After much encouragement from many people, I agreed to try this as a way to generate much needed income in a way that I could afford energetically. I recognize the exclusive nature of the cost, but there are those who can afford it and who will regard it as a way of giving while enjoying a special opportunity that would otherwise never be available.
I have searched my heart, reflected on a life of Dharma study and practice, thought and discussed deeply on these issues, and feel there is no conflict or inappropriateness in what I am proposing.

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hi Don,

Yes, please feel free to use those terms. I’m very happy to have you do so.

I would greatly appreciate as much information as you are willing to share of your researches into McGilchrist’s work and the parallels you have drawn. I’ve only recently discovered McGilchrist on Youtube and was quite excited to hear what he was saying. I am just starting to read The Mastery and His Emissary. I will be happy to comment on and if you wish, collaborate with you on this aspect of your course.

And, like Aron, I am interested to know more about your course.

Thank you for contacting me through this community. You may reply to me directly at upasaka.culadasa@gmail.com and I will send you my personal email.

Thanks,
Culadasa

PS For other readers of this forum, the email address above is the main email through which all Dharma Treasure correspondence goes, so we would appreciate it if you didn’t use it to contact me directly. Please use this forum for that purpose.

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

A number of people in this and other forums are struggling with the difference between attention and awareness, particularly with knowing whether something is known through awareness alone, or through alternating attention.

First, let me point out that peripheral awareness is not some new ability you have to acquire. It’s an innate faculty that everyone has and uses all the time in their daily lives. It’s just that it’s a weak and very under utilized faculty, simply because we overuse attention, which is a completely different faculty. You already have awareness and are using it. Think about how, in daily life, you are so often aware of events going on in the “background,” and then one of those events suddenly catches your attention. For example, you know people are talking but you aren’t paying attention, then someone says your name! To be clear, you never pay attention to anything until after it has already appeared in peripheral awareness. Even the sound of a gunshot appears first in peripheral awareness before attention moves to it. It’s just that only the very sharp mind of an adept meditator is likely to notice that brief period of awareness preceding attention.

Also, the peripheral awareness we do have is usually extrospective, it is awareness of events happening outside of our minds. The long term goal of the meditation practice is to not only to make our faculty of awareness very powerful, but in particular to learn to have powerful introspective awareness.

So now lets turn to meditation. So long as your attention is primarily focused on the breath, everything else you are conscious of is in peripheral awareness. This is true even though some of those things in peripheral awareness are also the objects of alternating attention, in which case we call them subtle distractions. The most important point is for the beginning meditator not to try to shut out everything else while you are focusing on the breath. Just let them be there. And there’s no need to become too analytical about it, trying to decide whether you are conscious of something because of alternating attention or pure awareness. This can be frustrating and a waste of time and effort. The distinction between these will become obvious by itself as you continue to practice. Those background objects in awareness that are also objects of alternating attention are just subtle distractions, and as long as they don’t become gross distractions, we aren’t concerned about them at all until Stage Six. Just let them come, let them be, and let them go. You will become able to distinguish between objects of pure awareness and subtle distractions long before Stage Six, but you don’t really need to do anything about it.

However, having said that, here is a way of satisfying your curiosity about the difference between attention and awareness. The next time something catches your attention, reflect on the moments immediately preceding that event. When you do, you’ll discover you were aware of it before attention was caught. Similarly, next time you return after you realize you had forgotten the breath, notice that, even though your attention is very closely focused on the breath, you are still aware of other things in the background. And when you are doing this, also notice the qualitative differences between attention and awareness. Things in awareness are much less conceptual, distinct, and your knowing of them is much less detailed compared to when those same things are objects of attention. When doing these exercises, it’s better to use sounds and other sensations at first, because the power thoughts have to draw alternating attention can obscure the differences. Later on though, you will be able to easily discern a thought that is purely in awareness from one that is a subtle distraction.

I hope this helps, and best wishes for your practice.

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Matthew has provided a very accurate explanation of the problems with the moments of consciousness model. It’s always important to remember that any model is just a model, and that every model breaks down when you push it beyond its design limits. This particular model reflects the almost universal subjective experience of meditators for thousands of years, which is that, at some point the skilled meditator begins to perceive conscious experience as consisting of discrete “chunks” of information arising and passing away in sequence. And, as Matthew points out, the articulation of this particular model in it’s original form was hampered by the fact that, at the time, mind was conflated with consciousness, and awareness was conflated with attention.

Nevertheless, it continues to be an extremely useful aid, allowing meditators to understand their meditation experience in ways that help them to become more skillful in their practice. And that’s why we use it here.

As Matthew also mentions, there are other ways we could have resolved the problem of accounting for attention and awareness as the completely different mental functions they are. But then the explanation of the model might well have become so cumbersome that it lost much of its practical value. One of the virtues of models is that they are inherently simplifications of complex realities.

The reality is that consciousness is the process of information exchange, and that information isn’t exchanged in particulate form. Information in the brain is encoded in multiple, continuous, complex waves of electrochemical activity being generated in a variety of different brain regions, and intersecting with each other in yet other brain regions. To extract the information content of a waveform, that wave must be analyzed in “chunks” of a certain minimum size. This latter is the most likely explanation for the subjective experience of “moments of consciousness.” Furthermore, the information streams (in the form of electrochemical waves) that we experience as awareness originate in distinctly different brain regions than the information streams corresponding to attention. Thus, the neurological correlates of consciousness involve the interaction of these distinct, multiple information streams which are then parsed in a way that allows their information content to be extracted, exchanged, and recombined.

But that description would not be particularly useful to a meditator, nor would it bear any resemblance to her subjective experience. Our subjective experience is one of moments of attention imposed on a background of awareness. Hence the moments of consciousness model, and the introduction of moments of awareness. And as Bakary points out, when we visualize these “moments” as very brief and rapid (which, as parsed waveforms, they actually are) the problems of apparent continuity disappear.

The Mind system model described in the Fifth Interlude is a better description of this process. The parsing of the interacting waveforms is what occurs in the inner circle labeled Consciousness. And as described in the Seventh Interlude, this same process is occurring at many different levels in the hierarchical structure of the brain/mind.

By the way, I’m not a reductionistic materialist who describes the mind as an emergent property of matter, although it may sound that way. I’m a non-dualist who experiences mind and matter as the same “stuff,” just viewed in two different ways.

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hi Mikael,
First of all, the out-breath sensations are subtler than the in-breath, whether at the nose or the belly. It’s much less important whether or not or how clearly you can perceive these sensations than that attention is fully occupied with trying to detect those sensations. As long as the attention is anchored to the breath sensations, rather than spontaneously moving in pursuit of other objects, the purpose has been served.

As for your main issue, most people start off with reasonably good extrospective peripheral awareness. Although not developed to its full potential except by people who, for example, engage in martial arts or in jobs where strong peripheral awareness is required, we all have it. On the other hand, very few people have much introspective awareness to speak of. It must be intentionally cultivated.

In the process of cultivating peripheral awareness, both extrospective and introspective, in the beginning attention will always try to satisfy the intention to be peripherally aware by going towards objects in peripheral awareness. But this is OK. As peripheral awareness grows stronger and attention becomes more stable, attention will do this less and less often. So this is normal, and everyone has the experience you’re having. Just continue to hold the intention to be peripherally aware of thoughts in the background while simultaneously keeping attention focused on the breath. Stable attention is absolutely essential for developing strong introspective awareness, and as attention becomes more stable and remains more consistently anchored to the breath, awareness grows stronger.

While this process develops, you have an opportunity to learn more about how consciousness works. If you observe the process carefully, you find that everything appears in peripheral awareness first. Any object of attention has always appeared in peripheral awareness first. Some things draw attention so strongly that it seems they appeared in attention first, but this is an illusion. There was a brief moment when they were in awareness, and it was during that moment that attention was attracted to them. Other things are in awareness much longer before they succeed in capturing attention. I advise you to carefully reread the First Interlude on attention and awareness.

It’s also important to understand the difference between distractions and everything else in peripheral awareness. Objects in awareness are not distractions until attention begins to alternate with them. Before then, they are just objects in awareness, of which there are usually many more than attention could ever focus on.

At this point in your practice, your introspective awareness may not yet be strong enough for you to clearly perceive thoughts and emotions until they’ve already become subtle distractions. Or when you do become aware of them, attention will tend to immediately “confirm” them. And in either case, yes, it’s attention more than awareness that is making you conscious of their presence. However, it does sound like you’re getting pretty good at keeping them from taking center stage and becoming gross distractions. So if you just continue intending to catch and correct for distractions sooner, your introspective awareness will keep getting stronger until you become aware of all kinds thoughts, emotions, etc. coming and going without ever becoming distractions. And you’ll catch those that do much more quickly.

Best wishes,
Culadasa

[Upasaka CuladasaMember]

Hi John,

I think you are over-interpreting the instruction a bit. Think about the sitting practice. In Stages One through Six, even though your intention is to focus attention solely on the breath sensations, attention will still be alternating with distractions, both gross and subtle distractions in Stages One through Four, and subtle distractions in Stages Five and early Stage Six, at least until you’ve achieved exclusive attention.

Exactly the same thing happens during walking meditation, only more so because your eyes are open, you’re moving, and the number and variety of stimuli is so much greater than when sitting quietly. The intentional focus of attention is always the sensation of walking, but attention will continue spontaneously alternating with visual, auditory, and other stimuli. The idea is to just let this happen, don’t make any deliberate attempt to stop or restrain it. As you progress through the Stages, attention during walking meditation will naturally do this less and less, while all these same stimuli will continue to be known through peripheral awareness. The various exercises described for walking meditation in Stages One through Six all contribute to this gradual shift toward more peripheral awareness and away from spontaneous movements of attention.

It’s helpful to keep the goal in mind. In the beginning, attention is very unstable and exhibits frequent spontaneous movements, while peripheral awareness is quite weak. As your practice develops, the goal is for attention to become more and more stable, while at the same time peripheral awareness becomes more and more powerful. And all you need to do for this to happen is to keep bringing the attention back to the meditation object (breath when sitting, feet when walking), while holding the attention to be conscious of everything else via peripheral awareness.

I hope this helps,
Culadasa

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