Informal meditation ( = ADA)

[VagalTone]

Hi friends and mates ! So, probably many people enjoy to meditate and like the feeling of flow of attention that arises with relaxation and nondistraction But of course, our meditation session always come to an end ( at least for most of us, myself included) I mean, we really really have created a duality between meditation and postmeditation How to solve this problem ? How do you do it ? How do you keep the flow you can easily get in formal meditation amidst your current activities, without being too much protected in an artificial concentrated state? And without keeping the same object of meditation all day long, like focusing on your breathing all day long, or only when you brush your teeth? How to remain in daily life in a undistracted relaxed state without any artificiality or effort ? How to resolve this duality of meditation and postmeditation ?

[JustASimpleGuy]

For me I incorporate mindfulness into as many of my daily activities as I can, when it occurs to me. For instance, walking I attend the way my leg muscles feel through my gait, the sensation of movement of my arms and legs, the sound and shock impact of my feet hitting the ground. I can expand awareness to include the breeze and/or sun on my face if I'm outdoors. I might incorporate breath into the rhythm of walking, but I usually don't. The same principle applies to any activity. Attend the physical and emotional sensations of the activity. I find this reinforces that state of mind outside of formal practice. Eventually more and more of the state of being achieved during sitting practice begins to be present outside of sitting, even outside of consciously being mindful of a given activity. It begins to become second-nature. Meditation is merely a tool to cultivate that state. It's a means, not an end.

[VagalTone]

Yes, but that´s probably not how you practice sitting meditation, right ? And if you are always changing the object of attention is somewhat artificial. Also, i dont´like the idea of choosing what i am going to pay attention to. Again, a slightly artificial and too much effort for me I totally agree with Eventually more and more of the state of being achieved during sitting practice begins to be present outside of sitting, even outside of consciously being mindful of a given activity. It begins to become second-nature. Meditation is merely a tool to cultivate that state. It's a means, not an end. I am most of all interested how we cain sustain,without effort, without artificial manipulation of attention or willpower, a natural state of relaxed attention ? Many people will say to start with effort or deliberate mindfulness, but i am tired of doing that. I am tired of being the «one» who meditates and chooses « how i will i meditate now ? sound or breath? » and places a beam of focus here and there. However, distraction doeesn´t help, it's just ordinary living. Can we jump into effortless mindfulness right now ? How ?

[JustASimpleGuy]

Yes, but that´s probably not how you practice sitting meditation, right ? And if you are always changing the object of attention is somewhat artificial. Depends on the specific meditation. Mindfulness of breath is singularly focused. Doing body scan and attending bodily sensations is scanning the body and attending the various sensations present. Metta (Loving-Kindness) is a totally different meditation as is Compassion, and resting in awareness is a vast expansion of awareness, not focusing on or attending any object except awareness. And awareness does have a rather large capacity to be aware of lots of stuff simultaneously, if properly trained and familiarized with that territory and state of being. By the way, I find with walking mindfulness or any other type of daily activity mindfulness I can attend multiple objects simultaneously without shifting attention and with little effort. This wasn't always the case but over time and with practice awareness expands in capacity. I read the Dream Yoga lessons and the concept is the same. I am most of all interested how we cain sustain,without effort, without artificial manipulation of attention or willpower, a natural state of relaxed attention ? I am tired of being the «one» who meditates and chooses « how i will i meditate now ? sound or breath? » and places a beam of focus here and there. However, distraction doeesn´t help, it's just ordinary living. Can we jump into effortless mindfulness right now ? How ? Monks with 30K hours of meditation do this without even thinking about it (resting in awareness), and they all pretty much start with profuse amounts of singular focus concentration meditation like mindfulness of breath. It's just like being able to clean & jerk several hundred pounds. Got to start with years and years of dull and repetitive basic lifts. I am not aware of any other way. My own experience is it's becoming easier for me to maintain that state during formal sitting. Sometimes for an entire 30 minute sitting. The longer I maintain that state in a sitting, the longer it lingers after the sitting. I also find if I simply contemplate on it for a brief moment during the day when things aren't too hectic I can come close to a similar state for short periods of time without actually focusing or attending. I suspect with more formal practice of the basics this will be easier and easier. Don't know if it will ever be totally second-nature for me, but it can't hurt to keep following that path. Just have to be diligent and it has to be a part of daily life.

[VagalTone]

Depends on the specific meditation. Mindfulness of breath is singularly focused. Doing body scan and attending bodily sensations is scanning the body and attending the various sensations present. Metta (Loving-Kindness) is a totally different meditation as is Compassion, and resting in awareness is a vast expansion of awareness, not focusing on or attending any object except awareness. And awareness does have a rather large capacity to be aware of lots of stuff simultaneously, if properly trained and familiarized with that territory and state of being. By the way, I find with walking mindfulness or any other type of daily activity mindfulness I can attend multiple objects simultaneously without shifting attention and with little effort. This wasn't always the case but over time and with practice awareness expands in capacity. I read the Dream Yoga lessons and the concept is the same. Monks with 30K hours of meditation do this without even thinking about it (resting in awareness), and they all pretty much start with profuse amounts of singular focus concentration meditation like mindfulness of breath. It's just like being able to clean & jerk several hundred pounds. Got to start with years and years of dull and repetitive basic lifts. I am not aware of any other way. My own experience is it's becoming easier for me to maintain that state during formal sitting. Sometimes for an entire 30 minute sitting. The longer I maintain that state in a sitting, the longer it lingers after the sitting. I also find if I simply contemplate on it for a brief moment during the day when things aren't too hectic I can come close to a similar state for short periods of time without actually focusing or attending. I suspect with more formal practice of the basics this will be easier and easier. Don't know if it will ever be totally second-nature for me, but it can't hurt to keep following that path. Just have to be diligent and it has to be a part of daily life. I agree with you, and your approach is correct, but 30k or even 10k hours of practice is just insane. Anyway, my question remains unanswered: how can we keep a relaxed attention while performing our daily activities, talking to people, sleeping, without manipulating our field of attention, without any artificiality at all ? Is that possible ? Is it possible to be fully engaged with life and totally relaxed and nondistracted ( that is, following every impulse) ?

[Zoth]

This may slip a bit into lucid dreaming so apologizes in advance VagalTone! I don't meditate very often, but when I do it tends to always be in the morning: I like to follow this process of "calming my monkey mind". But to me this feels completely useless if I don't use it for the rest of my day. But how can I maintain this attention all the time? Everyone needs to day dream, to drift away, and focused meditation while a formal practice, it's impossible to maintain for long periods of time...and for that matter, so is ADA. I like to use an analogy of the effect of a flashbang explosion: you get that visual flash and then things like blurry but realistic, your ears make that Ziiiiii sound, and you're just there trying to make grasp of what's in front of you, around you, and it's meaning, like you're trying to relearn how to respond to sensory stimulus. I try to maintain this state for the most amount of time possible, like I'm pushing an object down a sink, an object that eventually will make more and more pressure until I let go and it just comes to the surface to float. While this may seem like an attentional process, or even if it is, it doesn't feel like it at all. I guess it's what I'd associate with a "mind calm as a lake", in the sense that I'm not focusing on anything, but trying to grasp the reality around me. Another great example comes from one of the books I've read as teenager, let me find the transcript: Spoiler for transcript: The plants possessed a different type of consciousness than animals: slow, deliberate, and decentralized, but in their own way just as cognizant of their surroundings as Eragon himself was. The faint pulse of the plants’ awareness bathed the galaxy of stars that wheeled behind his eyes—each bright spark representing a life—in a soft, omnipresent glow. Even the most barren soil teemed with organisms; the land itself was alive and sentient. Intelligent life, he concluded, existed everywhere. As Eragon immersed himself in the thoughts and feelings of the beings around him, he was able to attain a state of inner peace so profound that, during that time, he ceased to exist as an individual. He allowed himself to become a nonentity, a void, a receptacle for the voices of the world. Nothing escaped his attention, for his attention was focused on nothing. He was the forest and its inhabitants. Is that what a god feels like? wondered Eragon when he returned to himself. The only additional step ahead (which I guess makes all the difference to the exercise above) is finding myself. In the midst of the conversations, cars, people, trees, wind, sounds, I'm just mindless unless I know my place in it. And so instead of focusing on my breath, or in a sound, I simply convey all that experience through this tube that ends up in me. This makes me smile several times (I guess because it feels like such an awkward experience), especially when people are talking to me or I'm experience a huge amount of sensorial input: I'm not looking whether the light is red or not, or if that person is running, I'm simply looking at the result of the interaction of all experience with myself. Hard to put it in words, but I guess it's like meta-awareness, where I'm the third link (the observator who watches the interactions between the person and the reality around her). Since I'm in the outside, it's much easier for me to notice things I do automatically/without thinking. In the end, I'm not looking whether my hand has 5 fingers or not, or whether I'm aware of my surroundings, I'm just checking what my surroundings are making me do: if I'm doing something that drifts out of the ordinary (which would require me to stop acting robot-like), then I see what it is (most of the times are simply false alarms represented by some external cue that requires my (person's) undivided attention, aka - more attention resources than the ones you'd need to function in an ant's colony, like this: https://screen.yahoo.com/waking-life...123400345.html PS: I've think I've read something similar somewhere in which the person imagined herself as a ghost of her body that would drift a bit behind and above the body and would be observing everything around it and his/her reactions. PPS: I drift away ahaha sorry for the wandering around I hope I stayed in topic

[MasterMind]

General awareness comes down to one thing because there is only one thing you can be aware of, and that is the now. There is no real past or future because both of them were experienced in the now. And the mind is distracting us from the now. So the most simple route one can take to be more present generally, is to worry less and analyse less, just be, in the moment. A strange thing that I don't have any source to, it's just something I randomly did and noticed the effects of, is to open up your eyes as much as you can, hold your breath and stare at things, somehow it just feels different and more in the now. I do this randomly during the day and in the night I sometimes get random sporadic lucidity. It's just a silly idea I thought about for some strange reason, but try it.

[VagalTone]

I don't meditate very often, but when I do it tends to always be in the morning: I like to follow this process of "calming my monkey mind". But to me this feels completely useless if I don't use it for the rest of my day. well, not completely useless, as it helps to relax and repair the nervous sytem, if only for that.... but also to gain insight into our minds ( like the fact that our minds are innately stable and nondistracted ) which can last forever But how can I maintain this attention all the time? Everyone needs to day dream, to drift away, and focused meditation while a formal practice, it's impossible to maintain for long periods of time...and for that matter, so is ADA. how much is needed of daydreaming ? probably we are all suffering from beningn ADHD or the so called Wallace syndrome, while we think it's perfectly fine and, even worse, healthy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogH3KAge6zw -------------------------------------------- As to what you use during the day, i confess i didn´t fully get it, but again it seemed to me a contrived process, and so i am not that really interested to know -------------------------------------------------- the short video is great, i have seen the movie and this is one of the top orgasmic moments ----------------------------------------- the paragraph you quote is pure awesomeness, where is it from ?

[VagalTone]

General awareness comes down to one thing because there is only one thing you can be aware of, and that is the now. There is no real past or future because both of them were experienced in the now. And the mind is distracting us from the now. So the most simple route one can take to be more present generally, is to worry less and analyse less, just be, in the moment. A strange thing that I don't have any source to, it's just something I randomly did and noticed the effects of, is to open up your eyes as much as you can, hold your breath and stare at things, somehow it just feels different and more in the now. I do this randomly during the day and in the night I sometimes get random sporadic lucidity. It's just a silly idea I thought about for some strange reason, but try it. Being in the present moment, in the now, is really a confusing term, altough i think it is an accurate description of what relaxed nondistracted attention feels like. You suggest a curious technique, but again contrived You don´t have to change anything to be relaxedly aware, so how you gonna get there by effort?

[ThreeCat]

Holding your breath does have an effect on the speed of thoughts (most often bringing them to a halt). You can experience this in sitting meditation by allowing the breath to slow down to almost a trickle. As for the duality of meditation and post-meditation: we (most of us, anyway) unfortunately live in a dualistic world, so I don't think this is anything to worry over. I think that like most are saying, simply doing something--and fully doing it, with complete awareness--is a good way to be mindful during the day. I don't mean becoming so completely absorbed in the activity that you have blinders up, but simply do the thing that you are doing fully, without conceptualizing. It's not quite the same experience as ADA, but it is less exhausting and helpful enough. Alan Wallace suggests simply giving your full attention to whomever is speaking to you. Have "samadhi" on that person while they are talking. You can be aware of them as a dream, if you are practicing that, but still listen to what they are saying fully, without all of the mental talk. EDIT: @VagalTone, and your "contrived" comment: there is no meditation for us that is not contrived. Until one reaches full enlightenment, everything is contrived. Even our attempts at awareness are just attempts. Our efforts at reaching an effortless awareness all require SOME effort. You have to do something. You sat down to meditate!

[VagalTone]

EDIT: @VagalTone, and your "contrived" comment: there is no meditation for us that is not contrived. Until one reaches full enlightenment, everything is contrived. Even our attempts at awareness are just attempts. Our efforts at reaching an effortless awareness all require SOME effort. You have to do something. You sat down to meditate! Well, i can be lying down or walking, or standing up too yes, a good physical posture and environment are important to relax and start the meditation...but that´s the problem...who is going to find that while working or attending classes ? We really need to stop contriving artificial meditation, and just meditate wherever we are, as we are, with what we have. I feel like if i can break this duality of meditation/postmeditation, then i can make my body and life a natural retreat hut, and not think« oh, now i need to relax», «one minute please, i need to calm myself first !!- no, you must go now» I need to learn to get the juice of every moment, and let it become my best reminder of spontaneous nondistractedeness

[ThreeCat]

I think part of it is that we say to ourselves, "I cannot wait to be done with this so I can meditate" or "this annoyance is really messing up my mindfulness" or simply, "I don't like this person--it is hard to be compassionate around them." There is a concept called "transforming both felicity and adversity into the path." In essence, you allow things to be as they are--stop creating stories for them in your head--and use them all as objects of mindfulness, objects of compassion, objects of generosity--whatever it is you are trying to cultivate. Not so hard, but I think takes some dedication. And I think these type of instructions have been used by many monks who were imprisoned. While in prison, they were able to see all arising phenomena as the path, and therefore prison became a retreat. I think we can manage something like this in daily life. I will try it if you will!

[FryingMan]

So what's your objection to continuing to follow the breath all day long? Seems like a great approach to me. We always breathe all day long, so there's always something there to focus on and re-center yourself into the moment. It seems absolutely key to so many different good things (concentration, mindfulness, etc.). I for one am very excited about growing in breath awareness and in fact have dedicated 2015 to awareness of the breath!

[VagalTone]

You are talking about imprisioned monks, and their practice and mindset there was (is?) really something beyond extraordinary I have downloaded the book « freedom in bondage» but now the site is down, but if you can get it, oh good, it´s just so inspiring Yes, they talk a lot about taking pain as the path, taking emotions as the path, in short, they emphasize a lot the mingling of formal and informal meditation some have put more effort than othes, some have relied more on relaxation than otherss, and this finetuning is crucial But at least we have always the opportunity for taking a short moment to allow our innate peaceful mind to shine forth - even if it soon gets all wrapped up with self narrative garbage- and that´s really no small opportunity

[VagalTone]

So what's your objection to continuing to follow the breath all day long? Seems like a great approach to me. We always breathe all day long, so there's always something there to focus on and re-center yourself into the moment. Haha, i know you would come along and say something like this after reading your NY resolutions Yes, it is a great approach, a path to sanity - but all day ? why not focusing on somthing else ? you see that's just another mind made meditation...that's what keeps me unsatisfied These days i try to use breath meditation only at the beggining of my formal meditations, then as soon as i get some glimpse of relaxation, i let go of it, and just try to be undistracted and aware without support. Then again, when the waves are too strong for my ability to surf them, more breath meditation. But ultimately, it is a contrived meditation

[FryingMan]

Well, i can be lying down or walking, or standing up too yes, a good physical posture and environment are important to relax and start the meditation...but that´s the problem...who is going to find that while working or attending classes ? We really need to stop contriving artificial meditation, and just meditate wherever we are, as we are, with what we have. I feel like if i can break this duality of meditation/postmeditation, then i can make my body and life a natural retreat hut, and not think« oh, now i need to relax», «one minute please, i need to calm myself first !!- no, you must go now» I need to learn to get the juice of every moment, and let it become my best reminder of spontaneous nondistractedeness Well, just break it then. There's seated focused meditation, which is just that: concentrated focus. Afterwards, there's no reason to stop the focus or the mindfulness, or think you're doing anything differently. The focused time just jumpstarts the rest of the day, it seems you've created this artificial duality that need not exist at all.

[ThreeCat]

So what's your objection to continuing to follow the breath all day long? Seems like a great approach to me. We always breathe all day long, so there's always something there to focus on and re-center yourself into the moment. My issue with the breath is two-fold. For one, breath awareness is not dream awareness. One can lead to the other, but I would much rather be thinking, "I'm dreaming" as opposed to "I'm breathing." Secondly, the breath in dreams is generated by the dream itself, so I do not trust it as necessarily an object of awareness during dream. After Sageous and I had the "dream breath" argument, I dreamt I was suffocating (Sageous wins). This is a secondary concern, and nothing I can really pin down--something just feels a little fishy. Concerning effort in meditation:

[MasterMind]

Being in the present moment, in the now, is really a confusing term, altough i think it is an accurate description of what relaxed nondistracted attention feels like. You suggest a curious technique, but again contrived You don´t have to change anything to be relaxedly aware, so how you gonna get there by effort? To be present is like describing being lucid, you have to experience it in order to understand it. Which is why "effort" is needed, however the way to get there is to not try at all, but.... because we are so used to DO stuff in order to get stuff NOT DOING is difficult to do. Which is why it is both accurate and false to say that the right action for meditation is to DO NOTHING, the act of doing nothing. DON'T ANALYSE YOUR PROGRESS, DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING, DON'T TRY, DON'T THINK etc. This is very difficult to think about, so a good analogy is to say "Hey just take a chill pill and take a deep breath." That's is what's so contradicing and funny with meditation and also just of getting in the flow with anything else in life. We have to practise doing nothing and being more. Here is another exercise that also has to do with the breath but instead of holding the breath you do the opposite. Take 7 deep breaths, inhale for as long as possible through your nose, hold it for 1 second, and then exhale for as long as possible through your mouth. But on the seventh breath you let go and close your eyes on the next exhale and just observe the breath, it will feel like you no longer need to breath and you will feel calm. There are techniques for everything, but if you want to be the flow of the universe (because you are the universe, experiencing itself) just allow yourself to be and observe and enjoy the flow. When you feel and know that you don't need to try, because you already are whatever you want to be, you have unlocked the power of the universe. You no longer need to try to get love because you ARE LOVE, you no longer need to try to get rich, because you ARE ABUNDANCE, you no longer need to try to be happy because you ARE HAPPINESS. This idea I got from David Deidas books, but when you start to put this into practise you will see your whole life changing. Same for meditation, when you no longer try, you ARE present. There is some semantic meaning problems with the above sentences but I hope you get the gists of what I am trying to say.

[FryingMan]

My issue with the breath is two-fold. For one, breath awareness is not dream awareness. One can lead to the other, but I would much rather be thinking, "I'm dreaming" as opposed to "I'm breathing." Secondly, the breath in dreams is generated by the dream itself, so I do not trust it as necessarily an object of awareness during dream. After Sageous and I had the "dream breath" argument, I dreamt I was suffocating (Sageous wins). This is a secondary concern, and nothing I can really pin down--something just feels a little fishy. Concerning effort in meditation: Not a problem, just add an "I'm dreaming" at the start (or for however long) of your (re-)acquisition of breath awareness and getting centered in the moment. edit: Hukif mentioned in my discussions with him on ADA/RC-gravity to always keep in mind the *point* of the awareness: recognition of the dream state. You can keep this notion overlaid on top of the breath, it's not all just one or the other. I've done the Sensei-thing and walked around with "I'm dreaming" playing non-stop all frickin' day long for a couple of weeks it seemed and it didn't really do anything for me.

[VagalTone]

Same for meditation, when you no longer try, you ARE present That's an exquisite truth, we are always present in a deep sense. Of course, we can be distracted by external stimuli and internal impulses, but just imagine if those could actually make us more present, and so everything would be an invitation to be more and more present !!

[VagalTone]

Well, just break it then. There's seated focused meditation, which is just that: concentrated focus. Afterwards, there's no reason to stop the focus or the mindfulness, or think you're doing anything differently. The focused time just jumpstarts the rest of the day, it seems you've created this artificial duality that need not exist at all. For sure i am creating this duality..who else ? myself to blame, shoot me Yes, the meditation session just warms the day and mellows my mind, but i would rather surf along the crazyness and stress of daily life without the need to manipulate my attention, without the fear of loosing my breath..while remaining in some degree of equanimity

[FryingMan]

^^ … and I'd rather get lucid without waking up in the middle of the night, but the (potentially) unpleasant work leads to the pleasant result. And maybe just learning to enjoy the work would make your objections vanish… (just like I'm learning to LOVE WBTB….yes, yes, I LOVE WBTB [Oh the pain! It hurts, it burns!], grrr, no, I LOVE it!).

[ThreeCat]

I'm sorry, FryingMan, I didn't explain very well. My "mantra" is really just a reminder; I don't repeat it over and over in my head. When the verbalization comes, it catches me in what I was doing, and I remember to experience all phenomena as dreamlike and illusory. Even the breath, even the body and thoughts. It's more experiential, I think: something like extending a dream walk throughout the whole day.

[VagalTone]

^^ … and I'd rather get lucid without waking up in the middle of the night, but the (potentially) unpleasant work leads to the pleasant result. And maybe just learning to enjoy the work would make your objections vanish… (just like I'm learning to LOVE WBTB….yes, yes, I LOVE WBTB [Oh the pain! It hurts, it burns!], grrr, no, I LOVE it!). Yes, very true. I am indeed becoming more and more disgusted by effort...is this good or bad? Idk, who knows if we can find something better because we are unsatisfied with our former approach. WBTB is not for me anymore too lazy for that

[JustASimpleGuy]

These days i try to use breath meditation only at the beggining of my formal meditations, then as soon as i get some glimpse of relaxation, i let go of it, and just try to be undistracted and aware without support. Then again, when the waves are too strong for my ability to surf them, more breath meditation. Pretty much describes my approach. And then there's this: Instruction for Entering Jhana I think if you do what's suggested once you reach access concentration, as time goes by you'll find you'll get there quicker and stay there with much less effort or contrivance. The waves will gradually subside and there'll be no more surfing, just floating in the space of awareness. In theory and with enough practice it will be your normal state regardless what you're doing, though I think that's a lifetime endeavor of near total dedication.