meditationobjects

My meditation objects have really opened up lately. My only training in meditation was the Goenka body-scanning approach, which is rather like filing teeth. I think I focused too much on controlling my brain, whereas now I know how to let it play and relax into the practice. I am curious.

I’ll lay out how a productive session looks for me at this stage. They’re usually between 20-45 minutes long and get the job more than done. Quality over quantity. I have ADHD so like to find mobile and interesting meditation objects, and I vary them as I go.

First of all: I really benefit from elevating dopamine and serotonin through an on-ramp. The best is still vocalisation in a hot bath. The hot water elevates your serotonin and dopamine while the vocalisation also raises tonic dopamine and improves bloodflow to the brain.

I will sit on the floor, cross legged with a folded towel just behind my sitbones to prevent lower back pain. I will sway a little and let my attention gently rest on my breath, either around my nose or at the abdomen.

Your meditation object does not matter. Remember that. The key thing is that you are not fighting against yourself. If you fight, you increase phasic dopamine and your practice has the opposite effect. You are letting attention settle where it wants to settle and observing phenomena while gently magnetising your mind to the sensation.

So the mind settles on the breath but is still engaged in thought and needs a little coaxing back now and then. This is what I view as j1 and you can go a deeper or leave it light; it doesn’t matter. The jhāna are just tools and all you really need is access concentration anyway. Sometimes it will grow and sometimes it won’t and you should observe ‘it is growing’ or ‘it is not’ and leave it at that. No forcing.

I will begin to look at my hands to find a tingling sensation. I view this as dopamine, and it kind of feels - to me - like putting your tongue on a low voltage battery. I will gently let my brain move from the breath to the hands and then see if that sensation grows. I will detach from ‘the hands’ and focus on ‘the tingle’ and passively see if it is anywhere else in the body. This is j2 territory and again it will grow or not. Thoughts still arise but they are easier to release.

Sometimes the sensation manifests elsewhere and sometimes it doesn’t. The hand-sensation usually floats above the hands instead than being within them. Allow your mind to sink into these tingles and see them arising and passing and ever-moving. Don’t worry about the detail of the sensation or whether it is ‘where it should be’ or ‘how it should be’ - just let it be and observe.

I will then either ‘step behind’ the tingles to a hum in the hands - like moving from a battery to a bee. This I label as serotonin; it feels a lot more stable and constant. By now I’m getting bored of the body and the higher sensitivity is allowing me to move to the face and onto my real ‘go-deep’ object which is micro-tensions in the facial muscles. I will move my focus there; I don’t really have a choice because they are so interesting.

These feel like slowly moving waves of pressure; like someone is rolling a sponge ball around the sides of my nose and up and down my inner cheeks, below the eyes. Sometimes the feeling extends out toward the brow or temples, and it is never stationary and never symmetrical. It moves of its own will and does not follow my breath or my heart beat. If I try to predict where it will go I am always wrong, and it is this variance that really keeps me engaged. This is moving into j3 territory and my thoughts really start to fall away. I will sit with these sensations pretty much for the rest of the session unless I feel another door opening up. 

The awareness often grows to encompass the entire body, with the facial motion still at the centre, and sometimes fading out. This can develop into j4 where I am unaware of any discomfort in my body and I can move it onto some really interesting stuff that I’ve only just discovered. The occasional fragment of thought still pops up but there is no emotional charge or following of it.

Getting to this point in the process takes anywhere from 10-30 minutes and I can do it on a park bench at times. This is amazing for me because even a few months ago I would have been fighting myself to hold focus on my breath whereas now I achieve total awareness with very little intentional effort.

The next steps are cool and new and interesting and I’m just figuring them out now, without direction. 

So one of them is to watch the motion of the facial sensations and try to step behind even those, to find the plane on which they operate. This is the boundless space plane, and when I get there it feels like I am 20 metres under the ocean in a darkened cave, with the heavy enveloping pressure of the water applying gentle pressure to my entire being in all 10 spacial dimensions of our reality. I am utterly without body but I can still direct my attention. This is lovely and disconcerting.

Another one is consciousness itself. This feels like gravitational waves, eternally in flux in many dimensions. If you have seen the diagrams of Einstein’s spacetime, now imagine that they are folded into a few more dimensions and that’s getting close. The spacetime will warp and bend depending on the presence of objects impacting it: sounds or thoughts or sensations. This is raw consciousness and it is incredibly interesting to watch since it stretches and bends and thickens and thins and is always impacted by something interacting with it; precisely like spacetime (did you figure it out like this, Bert?)

Then there’s mental formations. These can feel like superstrings travelling within and without my head; like electrons around the nucleus of an atom, but by this time there is no nucleus. They can also feel like a charged wire in my brain which is being pushed or pulled by magnetic force dependent on aversion or attraction. I can do this one in a restaurant at times to observe the physical sensation of my conditioning; alpha male = threat, etc.

And now… well now I am just getting used to these entirely new ways of experiencing my reality. The world looks new and vibrant after each of them, with objects in my field of vision sometimes checkering or flickering, sometimes feeling like they are mildly four-dimensional and translucent. This fades fast though; I’m not mad.

Next step will likely to be to see what sits behind these things; see that there is no identifiable observer doing the observing. Everything is conditioned.

It’s cool stuff.

But you will experience it differently.

So my only tip would be: do not fight the mind.

Let it go where it wants to go, and then gently magnetise it to the spot. Find the most interesting sensation available to you, and sink into it. 

Do not obsessively read books about how to do this. Your brain is unique, as is every single moment of your world. Books can help to open the door but everyone will experience it differently; make sure you follow your own curiosity.

The only continuous thing between you, me, and Bill Gates, is that everything is continuous and nothing stands alone.

Enjoy exploring your reality.

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