This tip is for those who are new to meditation.
As you know, we are now practicing awareness-watching-awareness for at least 10-15 minutes per day. Today’s workbook lesson gives good instructions for moving into the awareness-watching-awareness practice. It says:
“You may find it necessary to repeat the idea for today from time to time to replace distracting thoughts. You may also find that this is not sufficient, and that you need to continue adding other thoughts related to the truth about yourself. Yet, perhaps you will succeed in going past that, and through the interval of thoughtlessness to [your Self.]”
The difference between meditation and simply sitting quietly with eyes closed is that in meditation we are doing two things: 1) We are removing our attention from thinking & mind-wandering. 2) We are attempting to place our attention with truth. We may not know what that means, so we go about it with the attitude of being an ‘inner astronaut’, observing and exploring the inner environment looking for the Self.
For beginning meditators, and on some days for seasoned meditators, step 1 takes some gentle effort. We need to softly work at not being lost in thinking. As today’s lesson recommends, we can repeat the workbook lesson to ourselves to remove attention from thought and to go back to being the inner astronaut. However, sometimes if we use the same idea too much to make this transition, the mind will begin to mindlessly repeat that idea while we are lost in thought at the same time…even while the idea is being repeated by the mind. When we notice this is happening, we can move to related thoughts. This will bring our attention out of being lost in thought, because it will take more attention (focus) to allow the related thoughts to come clearly.
Whether you are repeating the workbook lesson for the day or allowing related thoughts, let the words come slowly with space between them. Also allow as much space as possible between sentences, and move into exploring the inner environment during the space between sentences. This space between sentences may gradually become longer and longer until you are involved in the inner exploration and the sentences are no longer needed to ground your attention in meditation (or they are only needed from time-to-time).
If you would like to review the instructions for awareness-watching-awareness meditation, read sentences #10-52 at:
http://albigen.com/uarelove/most_rapid/chapter07.htm
If you want further Clarification, read #1-166 at:
http://albigen.com/uarelove/most_rapid/chapter08.htm