First Glimpse
Meditation Log February 9, 2020:
I am trying to retain focus on the sensation of breathing. At times my attention centers on the movement of my chest, sometimes on the amplified sound of breathing through my earphones. But every few moments I find myself distracted by thought.
Each thought easily grasps my attention and runs away with it before I realise the shift in focus.
After a while I notice having less of those ‘first person’ thoughts; when I’m talking to myself in my head. Which is in itself a thought, but more subtle than a conversation with myself in my mind.
The meditation guide draws my attention back to my breath. I try to do so, perhaps a bit too forcefully, and end up focusing on the blackness at the back of my eyelids. I peer into the blankness.
After a while, during a calming pause in thoughts, I sense the desire to roll back my closed eyes to look upwards. This comes with a hint of trepidation and the feeling of something weighty bearing down on me.
Imagine walking in twilight, looking down at a path, and suddenly realising the presence of the night sky above you in all its brilliance. The weight of its presence hits you before you have even begun to raise your eyes, and then, of course, you have to look.
I look up. There is nothing there except a feeling of vast space. And then thoughts start to appear. But not as they were before. Now they are brilliant motes, appearing randomly, and with a tendency to disappear when observed. My attention continues to be dispersed across this expanse for a few moments, giving me a glorious and (hopefully) unforgettable glimpse of what I think is the true nature of my mind.
Is this consciousness? Or me imagining my consciousness? Should I treat this experience as truth or a hallucination?
The experience felt profound and so I have decided to treat it as profound. My thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories can all be imagined to arise in the vast space of my consciousness. Triggered by external stimuli, or appearing at random even when those stimuli have been reduced to a minimum.
When I talk to myself, is the internal dialogue simply another transient thought? There is no place for a central entity; a self, in what I experienced in this meditation.
Of course, there are stored memories and learnt behaviours. There is attention, which can be focused on a single transient component of consciousness. But there is always more to the mind.
Perhaps most fundamental to the mind, is not what is occupying attention at a particular moment, but that space in which attention can be applied and thoughts can appear.
I have, over the next few days, found it a bit easier to direct attention away from undesirable thoughts and feelings. And linger a moment longer on things that matter to me. But what the memory of this experience brings most is a thirst to revisit that plane of consciousness, and experience existence in what seemed to be its unadulterated form.
I am trying to retain focus on the sensation of breathing. At times my attention centers on the movement of my chest, sometimes on the amplified sound of breathing through my earphones. But every few moments I find myself distracted by thought.
Each thought easily grasps my attention and runs away with it before I realise the shift in focus.
After a while I notice having less of those ‘first person’ thoughts; when I’m talking to myself in my head. Which is in itself a thought, but more subtle than a conversation with myself in my mind.
The meditation guide draws my attention back to my breath. I try to do so, perhaps a bit too forcefully, and end up focusing on the blackness at the back of my eyelids. I peer into the blankness.
After a while, during a calming pause in thoughts, I sense the desire to roll back my closed eyes to look upwards. This comes with a hint of trepidation and the feeling of something weighty bearing down on me.
Imagine walking in twilight, looking down at a path, and suddenly realising the presence of the night sky above you in all its brilliance. The weight of its presence hits you before you have even begun to raise your eyes, and then, of course, you have to look.
I look up. There is nothing there except a feeling of vast space. And then thoughts start to appear. But not as they were before. Now they are brilliant motes, appearing randomly, and with a tendency to disappear when observed. My attention continues to be dispersed across this expanse for a few moments, giving me a glorious and (hopefully) unforgettable glimpse of what I think is the true nature of my mind.
Is this consciousness? Or me imagining my consciousness? Should I treat this experience as truth or a hallucination?
The experience felt profound and so I have decided to treat it as profound. My thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories can all be imagined to arise in the vast space of my consciousness. Triggered by external stimuli, or appearing at random even when those stimuli have been reduced to a minimum.
When I talk to myself, is the internal dialogue simply another transient thought? There is no place for a central entity; a self, in what I experienced in this meditation.
Of course, there are stored memories and learnt behaviours. There is attention, which can be focused on a single transient component of consciousness. But there is always more to the mind.
Perhaps most fundamental to the mind, is not what is occupying attention at a particular moment, but that space in which attention can be applied and thoughts can appear.
I have, over the next few days, found it a bit easier to direct attention away from undesirable thoughts and feelings. And linger a moment longer on things that matter to me. But what the memory of this experience brings most is a thirst to revisit that plane of consciousness, and experience existence in what seemed to be its unadulterated form.
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