Meditation Skill 04

Your meditation is the same as Meditation Skill 03, except you now enjoy the pleasant feeling of contentment with the Mindful Presence of your body, to uplift your mind with Joyful Presence.

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• Set a countdown timer on your phone (set to DND) and place it behind you.
• Meditation Length: Meditate for 30 min to develop calm & insight.
• Attention & Awareness: Allow your attention to rest in the foreground on the uplifting feeling of Joyful Presence (as en-joy-ment of mind and happiness of heart) while keeping a background awareness of contentment with your body's Mindful Presence.
• Progression: You are confident in your ability to Joyful Presence when smiling with your eyes into the experience of contentment with Mindful Presence. As Joyful-Presence grows, the length of time you habitually forget during meditation will shorten and only last for a short time before mindfulness returns.

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Simple Instructions:

Develop the foundation of Meditation Skills 01-03 in Steps 1 & 2:

1. Prepare: Sit for meditation, one thumb resting on the other, reflect gratefully >
2. Mindful Presence: Establish Marker 04: Mindful Presence in your body >
3. Enjoy It: Enjoy your body's Mindful Presence and develop contentment with it >
4. Smile Into it: Smile with your eyes into the pleasantness of contentment and allow it to enter your mind as joyfulness of mind and happiness of heart (sukha). Bring this joyful-happiness to the Mindful Presence of your body and allow it to immerse your body, giving rise to Joyful Presence >
5. Insight: From the foundation of Joyful Presence, you can now begin to weaken any tendency of your mind, to habitually forget the presence of your body.

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Detailed Explanation:

Step 1: Prepare your body & mind for meditation.

• Sit for meditation, gently close your eyes, and place one hand in the other, resting in your lap, one thumb resting on the other as a grounding point for attention.
• Always begin your meditation by sweetening your mind by reflecting on simple things in your life for which you can be grateful, including this opportunity to meditate.

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Step 2:  Develop up to Marker 03: Mindful Presence.

• Use slow, softening breaths to relax and establish a Mindful Presence.

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Meditation Skill 04 Additions.

Step 3: Develop contentment with the experience of mindful presence.

• Enjoy the pleasantness, comfort, and ease of your body's presence as you sit mindfully in meditation. 
• Develop contentment with this experience by softening your mind's tendency to look forward to a future result or to look back at what happened. Your aim is to develop intimacy with the feeling of contentment with your body's Mindful Presence.

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Step 4: Smile into the experience with your eyes.

• To connect your mind to the feeling of contentment, relax your eyes and gently smile into them with caring and kindness to arouse an uplifting, happy feeling. The trick is to relax the muscles at the base of your eyes and slightly lean your awareness into them, allowing the smile to come from your heart outwards with kindness and gentleness.
• Once you feel the uplifting, happy feeling of the smile, bring it to the experience of contentment in your heart with your body's presence and allow it to grow. As it grows, it will enter your mind as a joyfulness of mind and a content happiness of heart (sukha). 

Tip: What you are doing here is creating a positive feedback loop in your mind on the pleasantness of happiness and contentment. Experiencing the pleasant feeling of happiness and contentment allows your mind will draw this pleasantness into itself. Enjoying it, your mind will produce more feelings of pleasantness, and the feeling of pleasure, happiness and contentment will grow. As it grows, it will fill the Mindful Presence of your body. Your mind will feel happy and uplifted, establishing a feeling of Joyful Presence.

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Step 5:  Develop insight using Joyful Presence and the GOSS Formula.

• Allow your attention to rest in the foreground on the feeling of joyful-happiness while keeping a background awareness of the presence of your body.
• Now that you have developed a Joyful Presence, you can use it as a foundation for insight into the anatta (autonomous) nature of your mind's habitual patterns and teach your mind to let them go. By using this simple GOSS Formula any time you observe that you have been distracted, you will weaken habits your mind may have to forget during meditation or wander to thoughts, memories or fantasies during meditation.

GOSS Formula: How to Let Go.

1. Ground.
2. Observe.
3. Soften.
4. Smile.
5. Repeat if needed.

1. Ground = Be mindful of the touch of your thumbs.
2. Observe = Be happy when you notice you have been lost in mind stories.
3. Soften = Return awareness to your body by softening/relaxing your body and mind. 
4. Smile = Smile with your eyes into the pleasure of letting go to reward your mind.

GOSS is a circular formula that develops insight and offers a pleasure-reward for your mind, for returning to mindfulness. When skillfully used, it will gradually decondition defensive, unwholesome, and unskillful patterns within your mind (akusala).  As you soften, smile and enjoy how nice it feels, begin to notice how your awareness naturally returns to and grounds in your body and you can continue to smile to re-establish Joyful Presence. 

How to weaken the mental habit of habitually forgetting.

1. Once you have created a foundation in Step 4: Place your hands in your lap with one thumb touching the other to help create a defined grounding point for your attention. Maintain a background, peripheral awareness of presence in your body, and a foreground focus of attention on the touch of your thumbs.
2. Relax your attention and allow your attention to wander if it wants to.
3. Smile and be happy whenever you notice that you got lost in mind stories to reward your mind for returning to mindfulness.
4. Once you have acknowledged that you are mindful again, apply the last two steps in the GOSS Formula: soften > smile to bring mindfulness back to the presence of your body. Smile with your eyes and enjoy this presence to re-arouse Joyful Presence and reward your mind.

Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the 12 Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into and calming the conditions supporting the associated Meditative Hindrance.

Your fourth step in meditation is to develop Marker 04: Joyful Presence (right column) to calm Hindrance 04: Habitual Forgetting (left column).

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                       Meditation Markers.

                                                               01: Body Relaxation.

                                                               02: Mind Relaxation.

                                                               03: Mindful Presence.

04: Habitual Forgetting.          →      04: Joyful Presence.

05: Habitual Control.                          05: Natural Breathing.

06: Mind Wandering.                          06: Length of Each Breath.

07: Gross Dullness.                            07: Breath Sensations.

08: Subtle Dullness.                           08: One Point of Sensation.

09: Subtle Wandering.                       09: Sustained Attention.

10: Subtle Distraction.                      10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.           11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                      12: Access Concentration.

Other Hindrances: It is important to note that although your focus is on settling the Hindrance of Habitual Forgetting at this stage of meditation, all the other Hindrances listed above may also be present. It is essential to settle each Hindrance in the order presented in the above Map for Mindfulness of Breathing, as each Marker is the antidote for its associated Hindrance.

As you become more mindfully present in your body, you will develop a heightened sensitivity to gaps within the continuity of your mindfulness when you forget your body's presence. This forgetting is your mind slipping into habitual delusion. You may notice it is happening as small gaps in your mindfulness or when you become completely lost in thinking. What will become clear to you is the anatta, the autonomous nature of remembering and forgetting during meditation. 

By developing intimacy with the pleasure of relaxation in Markers 01 & 02 and contentment with Marker 03: Mindful Presence, content-enjoyment will arise within your mind, and your mind will find greater reward in staying mindfully present than in the pleasure of some thought or fantasy.

Progression: Once you weaken the habit of habitually forgetting your meditation object and experience a content-enjoyment of the presence in your body as you meditate, with the experience of breathing throughout your body becoming more apparent, you are ready to develop Marker 05: Natural Breathing.

Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention. It is skillful to view them as an opportunity for insight into your mind rather than something to overcome.

Meditative Hindrances

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Drifting.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Mind Wandering.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Subtle Distraction.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

Meditative Hindrance: 

Habitual Forgetting (04).

You completely forget your meditation object and that you are meditating.

Habitual Forgetting refers to when your mindfulness grows weak, and your mind forgets your meditation object and even that you are meditating. This lapse into forgetting during meditation is a survival mechanism of your mind designed to save energy by following repeated patterns, like a screen saver on a computer. You may first notice that your mind has forgotten your meditation object after you realise that you have been off thinking or fantasising about something for some time.

Sleepiness & Drifting, Habitual Forgetting and Mind Wandering are connected.

The process of the mind is this: 

1. Your mind becomes sleepy and drifts around causing you to lose clarity of the sensations in your body. 
2. You then habitually forget your mindful presence in your body. 
3. Your mind wanders and becomes habitually lost within thoughts, fantasies, memories, etc., for a while (like entering a daydream). 

The important part in working with this is to first remove Hindrance 03: Sleepiness & Drifting, by increasing your mindfulness and the clarity of your mind's comprehension of the experience of your meditation. This will gradually shorten the length of time that your mind habitually forgets your meditation and make it easier to weaken Mind Wandering. As Habitual Forgetting weakens the thoughts and fantasies associated with Mind Wandering will become background, random thoughts that no longer disturb your meditation.

Antidote: If you do not weaken habitual forgetting, your mind will slip back into Hindrance 03: Sleepiness & Drifting. You aim to shorten the length-of-time that your mind forgets your mindful presence and gets lost in thoughts, memories and fantasies. This is done by taking an interest in noticing when you have become lost within thoughts, memories or fantasies and rewarding your mind by softening & smiling (GOSS) to return mindfulness to your body. The effect of this can be increased by enjoying it to reward your mind for returning to mindfulness.

Support Meditation: Technique for weakening Habitual Forgetting.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 05: Natural Breathing when:

• When you are confident in your ability to arouse joyful-happiness (sukha) when smiling with your eyes into the experience of mindful presence, and the period of time you habitually forget during meditation only lasts for a short time before mindfulness returns. It is important to note that you will still experience mind wandering to thoughts, fantasies and memories but will still have your meditation object, the pleasure of your body, within your awareness for most of your meditation.
• Another sign that you are ready to progress is when you become naturally aware of the flow of breathing throughout your body. If the breathing experience is unclear, it is a sign that you need to spend more time developing a Joyful Presence and are not yet ready to take the breath as a meditation object.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer: Guided Meditation.
• You Tube: Video Instructions.

From the foundation of the Joyful Presence you learned in Meditation Skill 04, you can observe how your body experiences change throughout your day. One of the insights you will begin to develop is the understanding that much of how your body feels during the day is directly related to your present state of mind. 

For example, if you feel mentally happy, you will also feel happiness in your body as a feeling of lightness, comfort and calm energy. If you feel mentally averse and angry, you will also feel anger in your body as a feeling of hotness, tightness, tension, and upward-moving energy. By mindfully observing the relationship between these changes in your mind and body, you will understand that your body, directly and truthfully, reflects your state of mind in the same way a lake reflects, without judgment, the mountain, clouds and sky. 

What is meant by 'direct reflection of your mind' is that your current state of mind can be observed by your body's reaction to it in terms of its elemental qualities: warmth, coolness, heaviness, lightness, hardness, softness, etc., and the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness that surrounds it. Checking in and observing these helpful reflections in your body during your day will help you to clearly-see how you are relating to what is happening in your life at this time, allowing you to soften, relax and let it go if it is based on desire or resistance.

Tip 1: Use simple reminders.

Use a simple reminder, like walking through a doorway, washing your hands, or having a cup of tea, to check-in on how you feel.

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Tip 2: If you feel stressed.

If you are resisting something, you will notice experiences within your body such as tension and tightness in your throat, chest, or belly. This will also have a feeling of unpleasantness or unease in the background. Taking slow, softening breaths in your belly to relax, as you learned in Meditation Skills 01 & 02, will lower your experience of this stressed feeling. 

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Tip 3: If you feel anxious.

When you feel anxious, ground your awareness by feeling your feet touching the ground. You can also ground by gently squeezing one hand in the other to make you more present. Next, place your palms below your belly button and use slow, softening breaths in your lower abdomen, like in the previous meditation, to re-engage your diaphragm. Re-engaging your diaphragm with slow belly breaths will lower the anxious feeling.

From your foundation of mindfulness of your body, developed in Meditation Skills 01-04, you can begin to train your mind to let go of habits and be more mindfully-present in your body, in your daily life. 

Meditation Skill 04 in Daily Life:

1. Ground: Gently soften and relax your body and mind to bring awareness into your body until you feel grounded and mindfully present (as in Meditation Skill 03). 
2. To carry this presence throughout your day, allow your body's mindful presence to shift into your background (peripheral awareness) like you would allow quiet, gentle music to rest in the background of your awareness while you move about your home.
3. Observe: Check in during the day and notice if you have lost that background awareness of your body. If you have, you will find that your mind has become caught up in some thought, fantasy, reaction, etc.
4. Soften: Take a few softening breaths to relax your body. Be mindful of your awareness returning to your body when you relax, and notice how nice it feels to re-establish a background mindful presence.
5. Smile: Gently smile with your eyes and bring them to the pleasant feeling of your background, mindful presence. For a few moments, smile and encourage the enjoyment of it to grow, rewarding your mind for letting go. Let go of this presence and go about your day, checking in now and then. Softening and smiling to re-establish it if your mind has forgotten your body.

Practised in this way, following the GOSS Formula, your mind will gradually develop a positive habit of being mindful of your body during the day. At first, the periods of background mindful presence of your body will be short, but gradually, the periods of mindful presence will increase, and habitual patterns of desire and aversion will weaken.

Question: After working on this for about a week now, I’ve discovered that softening only feels pleasant with certain sensations as opposed to others. Softening into the sensations of the body for instance almost always leads to pleasure. Softening into sounds and temperature just makes me feel neutral. Is this a problem on my part?

Furthermore, I’m wondering what the difference is between dullness and pleasure I get from softening into sensations?

Stephen: To understand what you are experiencing we need to define the difference between relaxing and softening.

"...Softening into the sensations of the body for instance almost always leads to pleasure..."

Our body is full of sensations and these sensations directly reflect effort held within our body and mind. The pleasure that you experience in this case is the pleasure of relaxing effort within your body. As effort is relaxed within the body it always feels nice.

"...Softening into sounds and temperature just makes me feel neutral...."

Softening is related to relaxing the focus of attention as it rests on an experience. This relaxing of focus releases the habitual grip of attention. When this grip is softened the relationship of the mind of liking or not liking is also relaxed, this is what creates the experience of neutrality.

As you soften in this way there is however a hidden pleasure. Not the one found in the object of your attention, but rather one found in the releasing of effort within your mind, relaxing your interest in it, letting it go.

This pleasure found within the mind is a more subtle pleasure then relaxation of your body. It is the pleasure of putting down something that is felt to be heavy, the pleasure of going on a holiday, the pleasure of relief. 

This pleasure can only be found within the mind, not the body, and is known as sukha: joy & happiness. This pleasure in the mind is independent of the object of attention and is always available when the mind has let go.

Being of the mind, this pleasure can be enhanced by gently smiling into it with your eyes, falling in love with it, developing intimacy with it, in the same way you would smile at someone you're really love to let them know how much you care.

Learning to tune into this pleasure is like learning a new language. At first no pattern can be seen and it is only sound, but with practice a pattern becomes clear, and the mind focusses on the meaning rather than the sound. In the same way gradually, the mind focusses on the pleasure of letting go, basks in it, enjoys it, rather than the release of the object of attention. 

This perception is what is being trained in Meditation 04: Joyful Presence. 

"...Furthermore, I’m wondering what the difference is between dullness and pleasure I get from softening into sensations?..."

Since softening relaxes the focus of attention, softening makes attention dull. This relaxing of focus is necessary to release the minds habitual grip on objects.

To brighten the dullness that comes from softening it is necessary to train the mind to perceive the pleasure of letting go. Then when the mind releases the focus of attention it becomes aware of the pleasure of that release in the background peripheral awareness of the body.

It is this process that creates the circular nature of the GOSS Formula: Ground > Observe > Soften > Smile > Ground > .....

Question:  I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to approach downturns such as this - where joy and pleasure feel far away while practicing. Is it best to just experience and note the absence of joy, or to observe and understand these experiences?

Stephen:  It is importantly to recognise that when practicing insight meditation based on the pleasure of letting go, such as MIDL, that your mind will naturally go through three cycles:

• calm: samatha phase > insight: vipassana phase > letting go: sila phase > ......

• = calm > insight > letting go > calm > insight > letting go > .....

This is a naturally cycling that your mind will enter when your meditation is based on letting go of effort and control.

The development of the pleasure of letting go and calm that comes with it that you developed earlier has two important purposes:

1. Reward your mind for letting go.
2. Increase the clarity of your awareness so that your mind can clearly comprehend the anicca: impermanent, and anatta: autonomous nature of experience and experiencing.

When number 2 develops and clarity of your awareness increases, your mind will naturally start to clearly comprehend anicca and anatta and become disturbed by it. It will start to fear that it is not in control and start grasping after experiences to find stability.

This leads to a collapse of samatha based calm, and a restless mind that feels out of control.

While this feels uncomfortable, your mind has simply entered a vipassana based insight phase. 

Trying to get back to experiencing the pleasure of a samatha-based calm phase is pointless since this pleasure is only accessed through letting go.

When the mind enters an insight phase it will grasp onto everything to find some stability because of the perception of anicca and anatta, this includes the idea that pleasure, calm and stability of attention should always be present.

What to do

The first thing to acknowledge is meditative joy and the pleasure of letting go will be inaccessible when grasping is present, it is only accessible when your mind is letting go of ownership and control.

Understanding this clearly defines the meditative path.

When in an insight phase you will not be able to access Joyful Presence in Meditation 04, and this is perfectly ok. Your meditation will tend to cycle through the first three experiential markers: 01: Body relaxation. 02: Mind relaxation. 03: Mindful presence.

Your focus is on developing mindful presence as a viewing platform for the anatta nature of your mind. This begins with finding relaxation and ease within your body.

While the pleasure of letting go is not accessible at this stage, relaxation of effort within your body is. Begin your meditation session by taking your time and relaxing effort held within your body part by part. Your task is not to relax tensions but rather held effort.

As you relax effort held within your shoulders, chest, belly, arms etc., it will feel good. Tune into the ‘it feels good’ in this relaxation. As you relax in your body you will feel more present. Begin to notice and relax any mental effort held within your mind. Effort to be mindful, effort to do anything at all.

As you do you will become very mindfully present within your body. Enjoy this presence.

Your only task now is to observe the whole show mindfully from your body. If your mind is restless it doesn’t matter. If your mind thinks it doesn’t matter. Simply notice how it is all happening by itself.

If your attention wanders and you become lost within thinking it also does not matter, this is simply another opportunity to notice how your mind does things autonomously by itself.

As soon as you notice observe the returning of mindfulness of your body. Notice the held effort in your body and mind, and soften back into your body, noticing how nice it feels. For a short time, smile into and enjoy the returned mindful presence. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, how nice this feels.