Jan. 15 - Meditation Week 3: First Revelations

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I reread the first chapter of The Mind Illuminated this week: “The First Interlude”.  In it, the author presents a mental framework for thinking about our goals in meditation.  He breaks down our focus into two distinct parts:  Active Attention and Passive Awareness.

“Active Attention” is your current focus.  “Passive awareness” is the absorption of the sights, sounds, and sensations around you.  Active attention can choose what to focus on from all the things in passive awareness (eg. how your food tastes), and passive awareness can elevate something to active attention (eg. your phone ringing).

From Yates’ perspective, the eventual goals are:

  1. Choosing what to focus on and maintaining that focus even though your phone rings

  2. Controlling the scope (how many things) you are actively paying attention to

  3. Expanding the scope of your passive attention to broaden your perspective

Even after rereading this chapter, I still had no idea how to apply these ideas. So, I just let them marinate.

A Breakthrough

During my session on Wednesday, I was bitten by a sandfly.  For those who don't know, sandfly bites are 10 times worse than mosquito bites.  They hurt, then they hurt more, then they itch for 2 weeks.  After the bite, it still felt like the bug was biting me so I kept opening my eyes to check. I tried using breathing techniques to block out the pain and itch but then something clicked: if the goal is to expand the scope of passive awareness then blocking out the discomfort is the wrong direction.

I realized that I had been using meditation and breathing techniques as a way to block out pain, discomfort, or distraction.  For instance, when I had my eye surgeries last year, I used breathing techniques to take my mind off the fact that a surgeon was actively cutting my eyeballs open. But this is the opposite of the goals laid out in “The First Interlude”.

What Yates describes in “The First Interlude” is the expansion of your abilities to absorb and analyze, not a reduction. Reducing the scope of passive awareness, like I’ve been doing, creates blind spots and biases.

With that in mind, I stopped trying to block out the discomfort and instead accepted the fact that there wasn't anything to be done.  Scratching the itch may provide 30 seconds relief but wouldn't make a difference.  Once I accepted the sensation as part of my experience the discomfort diminished enough that it was no longer a distraction. With this reversal in my understanding of meditation, I realized what I want out of my practice.

A Realization

I can't focus when there is a TV nearby.  If I can see or hear the TV my focus is entirely consumed by the flashing lights or dialogue.  This lack of control is so thorough that I've been forced to adjust my life around it.  When I go to restaurants, I trade places with other guests so that I can’t see the TV.  Otherwise, I can't pay attention to the conversation and I'm terrible company.

The level of power that TV has over me has always bothered me but I never thought I could do anything about it.  I have arranged my life to accommodate this personal inadequacy.  Now, with the revelation above, I see a path toward regaining that power for myself.  If I can gain the ability to focus despite this ultimate distraction, I will have substantially changed my life. This is the first specific goal I have for my practice.

Jan. 6 - Week 2 in Meditation Land

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Last week I was focused on just getting started and not worrying too much about what is correct or not.  I approached this week with a few more goals:

  1. Diligence: Because I'm traveling, I have no consistency which makes it difficult to form a habit. This week, I made sure to practice every day even when I was hungover, feeling lazy, or on a boat.

  2. Increase meditation time: I started with 20 minute sessions last week and will continue adding 5 minutes each week until I get to 45 minutes

  3. Begin incorporating first stage exercises: 6-step preparation and the 4-stage transition to the breath

First Stage Exercises

6-step preparation

  1. Remind yourself of your motivation

  2. Set reasonable goals

  3. Do not expect achievements. There is no "should be". There is no "bad meditation"

  4. Commit to diligence. Engage wholeheartedly. Don't judge the quality of meditation.

  5. Review potential distractions ahead of time. What is your mind racing over.

  6. Adjust your posture

Per step 1, my long term motivations are:

  • Gain a stronger connection to my emotions so that I can understand how I actually feel

  • Align my ambitions, emotions, and actions

  • Increase my ability to focus

4-stage transition to the breath

  1. Focus on the present

    1. Enjoy pleasant sensations

    2. When distractions occur: "let it come, let it be, let it go"

  2. Focus on bodily sensations

  3. Focus on bodily sensations related to breath

  4. Focus on sensations of the breath at the nose

I struggled to maintain focus at the 4th stage.  Counting stopped working for me, so I eventually came up with a breathing technique to force me to focus on the bodily sensations of the breath.  It's been pretty successful helping me return my attention to the 4th stage.

Successes for this week

  • For the first time, I wasn't frustrated with myself for getting distracted

  • I had the spontaneous urge to say "I love you" to myself

  • I successfully mediated every day.  It's now been 12 days in a row.

Goal for next week

  • Increase sessions to 30 minutes

  • Continue practicing the above exercises

  • Reread the first two chapters of the book and incorporate more of the philosophy into my practice


So how zen are you? I’m so zen my zen is on fire

So how zen are you?
I’m so zen my zen is on fire