Renegade Yogi

I think I’m ready

I think I’m ready to move from concentration to mindfulness. It’s not that I’m going to give up concentration entirely. But I won’t do it primarily.

I think my mind is ready to open up to its own contents without getting lost. That’s sort of the problem I had before: I was just overwhelmed with categorizing and noting each little thing that passed through my psyche. I was just filling my mind with more and more noting. Plus I was looking for stuff to note, so I would purposefully bring something into my awareness to be a good boy and note one more thing. I got good at noting, but I was also rewarding myself for distraction. So I went back to concentration.

I’ve come a long way with my concentration practice. Although it still depends a lot on my energy level, mood, and what I had been doing during the day, my practice consistently brings me to a state of full awareness on the present. No distractions, just a settling in with the boring and extremely sensual passing moment. I would still like to be able to hold it for longer, but that will come with time.

Now I’m going to delve into the practice of noting. I’ve talked about it before. But basically, I note where my awareness is. If I’m focusing on an itch on my arm, I note that it’s an itch. If I’m imagining a flower, I say imagining. Quietly, and not too much stress about whether I’m right or wrong.

The idea is to bring just that much more awareness to the flow of your awareness. In two ways. For one, it gives you a task to focus on. Your mind is really only able to concentrate on active things. That’s why you focus on the breath. It’s something active, that you’re doing. It’s constantly changing and requires moving and coordinating lots of parts. Even down at the quale level, senses pop in an out. Very active. So you have something that you can say “Hey, I’m not doing my job!” And then you can get back to work.

The second way is that you have to pay enough attention to whatever it is your monkey mind is attracted by to pin a word on it. You’re exercising some “observer” muscle in your brain. By the end of a meditation session, you should have sticky notes pasted on every inch of your mind. And that’s revealing. You get better at knowing what you’re thinking about, about following the crazy monkey as it jumps between the trees of your mind, and recognizing that your monkey is one crazy monkey.

But sometimes your mind has settled and there is nothing distracting you. That’s where I need to practice. Because, as I said before, I would pull stuff in from off-camera, like Bugs Bunny reaching off-screen and extracting a hammer from the four-dimensional hyperspace of which the 2D cartoon is a mere practicality since 4D TV’s haven’t been invented yet. Because I wanted to get it right and practice well and note everything. But nothing is. And I should just note “nothing” when there’s nothing to note. Practice, practice.

And I guess that’s just one more thing to note, in the end. Whatever you do, note it.