Your Goal: Natural breathing in your body, with calmed directed thinking.
As relaxation of your body and mind grows, you will become aware of the natural flow of breathing within your body. The pleasure of simply being aware of this natural breathing will begin to teach your mind that there is a reward in letting go.
Your fifth step as an insight meditator is to:
Breathing is a wonderful meditation object on which to develop your skill in mindful observing because it has particular qualities that no other meditation object has:
It is by observing these changes within your breathing as it transitions from autonomous, to stressed and back again, that makes breathing a wonderful object for both tranquility & insight.
.............................................
Mindful breathing gives access to pleasure.
The natural flow of breathing within your body, when we observed through a mind inclined towards letting go, is relaxed is pleasurable. There is a wonderful gentle stretch of your body that can be experienced every time the breath comes in, and a natural calming release that can be experienced every time your breath goes out.
Finding the pleasure of letting go in all aspects of your meditation is both the key and the path. At first you may find that you can't find the pleasure within these simple experiences: relaxing in your body, relaxing in your breathing, relaxing in your mind.
.............................................
Accessing the pleasure of letting go.
It is important to understand that the pleasure of letting go by relaxing effort is always available, and at first you will need to train your mind to perceive it.
Just like learning another language at first your mind may not recognise the pleasure of letting go. With gentle practice this perception will change, and your mind will incline towards this pleasure of letting go, causing it to grow.
This pleasure will settle the restless wandering of your mind and bring balance to your effort making awareness of your breathing over a period of time much easier.
This skill of being aware of the pleasure of your breathing will develop your ability to let go of control during mindfulness of breathing, and importantly, in your daily life.
Your meditation is the same as Meditation 04, except you now develop mindfulness of the experience of the natural flow of each in-breath and out-breath within your body.
.............................................
**Control will appear as effort or strain within your breathing. Softening of control is done by letting a slow breath out through your nose, as in Meditation 03, to relax the mental effort that supports the desire to control your breathing. If at the end of that out-breath you relax and wait, your breathing will reset to natural, uncontrolled breathing, by itself.
.............................................
Meditation Structure:
.............................................
Meditation Instructions:
Step 1: Sit down for meditation on a chair or the floor and gently close your eyes. Develop mindfulness of your body & joyful presence as in Meditations 03 & 04.
..........
Meditation 05 Additions:
Step 2: Become aware of your breathing as it flows within your body.
..........
Step 3: Feel the gentle stretch as the breath draws in, and then relax as the breath goes out.
..........
Step 4: Start to be more aware of how nice this gentle stretch and relaxation feels.
..........
Step 5: Smile with your eyes into your breathing as you would towards a loved one, letting them know how much you care. Feel the gentle happiness of letting go grow within your mind.
..........
Step 6: Apply the GOSS Formula.
.............................................
Adjust Your GOSS Formula
At this stage, make a simple adjustment to your GOSS Formula.
GOSS: Ground --> Observe --> Soften --> Smile.
The fifth marker of mindfulness of breathing, the natural flow of breathing in your body, naturally arises when the joyful presence of the pleasure of letting go enters your mind.
Experiential Markers:
Support Article: 12 Experiential Markers
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
Meditative Hindrance:
Habitual Control, (06) Directed Thinking, (07) Wandering.
Antidote:
Directed Thinking & Wandering: Curiosity + the GOSS formula, use awareness of sensations within your body that you learned in Meditation 04 as your grounding point.
Habitual Control: Let a slow, gentle out-breath through your nose, relax and allow the breathing to draw back in by itself. This will reset natural breathing (more information).
Meditation techniques for weakening hindrances:
You can learn these traditional techniques and add them to your meditation.
Support Article: 16 Meditative Hindrances.
You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 06: Whole of Each Breath when:
Control: If you have difficulty being aware of your breathing without your mind habitually controlling it, Meditation: Skill in Allowing will help you weaken this control.
In this simple map you can observe that when practicing Meditation 05 (blue line) the main hindrances to your meditation will be Directed Thinking & Wandering.
The Experiential Marker: awareness of Natural Breathing, developed by Meditation 05 is the method you should use to calm/weaken the present hindrance.
During quiet times you can bring this simple skill of being mindful of your breathing into your daily life to relax your body and refresh your mind.
From the foundation of mindfulness of your body, as you learned in Meditation Skill 01, you can start to observe how the experience of your body changes throughout the day as a direct reflection of your state of mind.
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.
Emotions and feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness you experience in your body are reflections of your state of mind.
It is helpful to observe these reflections know clearly how you are relating to things within your life.
Applying your GOSS: ground --> observe --> soften --> smile formula will help to relax any of these resistances and gradually weaken them over time.
From your foundation of GOSS, you can begin to train attention skills learnt in seated meditation, into your daily life.
Meditation 05 in Daily Life:
Questions can be submitted at: MIDL Community Reddit Forums.
Question: From marker 05 "natural breathing", do we need to have the sensation of stretch/relaxation in peripheral awareness?
Stephen: As we prepare for mindfulness of breathing in Meditations 01-03 we develop an overall sensitivity to the whole of our body as we sit in meditation.
While there may be background sounds or thoughts our awareness of the experience of our body as it sits is in the foreground.
In Meditation 03: Mindful Presence we have a clear peripheral awareness of the elemental qualities of our body such as warmth, coolness, pressure, touch, heaviness etc. as an overall experience of our body.
Our attention at this stage is focused on and rests on the border of our body. With the main focus of our peripheral awareness and attention focused on our body, this is referred to as being grounded.
In Meditation 04: Joyful Presence you enjoy this mindful presence, finding the simple pleasure/ease within it, and the experience of being grounded within your body matures.
This is known in MIDL as our Viewing Platform.
In Meditation 05: Natural Breathing you will, without effort, become aware of breathing within your body. This movement appears as a natural stretch and relax movement within our body.
At this stage while you maintain a peripheral awareness of your whole body in the background, the focus of your attention moves from the borders of your body to the movement of breathing as it occurs.
Question: Do we need to have the sensation of stretch/relaxation in peripheral attention?
Stephen: No. The experience of stretch and relax refers to how we experience Markers 05: Natural Breathing & 06: Whole of Each Breath. It is an object of attention and not an object of peripheral awareness during these early stages of mindfulness of breathing.
Question: Do we keep the center of attention the various successive markers "Whole of each breath", then "Sensations in breathing", then "One point of sensation"?
Stephen: From this stage of as mindfulness of breathing develops, your attention will gradually become narrower in focus: body breathing (body) > breath length (body) > breath sensation (nose) > one point of sensation (nose), while in the background you will maintain a peripheral awareness of your body.
As this happens the focus of attention on the experience of your breathing will come more into the foreground, and awareness of your body more into the background.
In percentages we can think of it as this:
It is important to note that these aren't accurate and more to give you a feel about what is happening.
*Peripheral Awareness (PA) = in the background.
* Attention (A) = focused on in the foreground.
Question: I would really appreciate if you could say anything about what it actually means when attention has a very low percentage (zero in M11!), this seems a bit strange to me as I've always associated "little/no attention" with dullness.
Obviously, we don't have dullness in M11, so clearly, I've been making some sort of conceptual mistake there? So, what does it actually mean in MIDL for attention to be "non-existent" (0%, as in M11) or nearly so (10%, as in M04, M10, etc), without any presence of dullness?
Stephen: In Meditation 09 attention is sustained and there is no potential for gross or subtle dullness. Gross Dullness was overcome in Meditation 07 and subtle dullness in Meditation 08.
Sustained attention means that the focus of attention is stable, unmoving and flowing with the object of meditation - by itself.
Once attention is sustained it no longer wanders and also has no interest in secondary objects within background peripheral awareness.
At this stage we can let go of attention, as our mind is doing it itself, and instead bring all experiences within peripheral awareness to the foreground.
In Meditation 10 we still have some background awareness of attention resting on its object, but we narrow 90% of the energy of peripheral awareness into the experience of our whole body as it breathes.
This withdraws energy from the six sense fields and narrows it down to this experience to close down awareness of the six sense fields.
In Meditation 11 we become so absorbed in the pleasure of peripheral awareness of the body that awareness of the sustained attention fades, that why 100% peripheral awareness is mentioned.
As the body sense fades all that is left is 100% awareness of piti sukha (pleasure in the body, joy/happiness within the mind), as the mind narrows down from sensory experience to just this pure experience, free from hindrances, as it reaches access concentration.
Question: Attention isn't really controlled or considered at all during M04 (as long as it's not doing anything which is interfering with the ability to maintain mindfulness of each joyful presence focus in peripheral awareness) ... and, for that reason, we say that M04 is 90% peripheral awareness and only 10% attention? Is that a correct understanding of what the percentage breakdown means, in this case?
Stephen: Yes, that's right. Attention is not deliberately trained until M05 as we begin mindfulness of breathing. That is why from M05 to M09 when attention is sustained, attention gradually becomes more dominant.
The changes in percentages occur because peripheral awareness and the focal point of attention both draw their energy from the same energy pool. So as one increases the other weakens.
Interestingly it is understanding of this relationship between peripheral awareness and attention that allows insight meditation to transfer into daily life. Hence the GOSS Formula is taking advantage of this.
Question: It would be great if Stephen could explain the place of such practices (asanas, pranayamas, qigong, tai chi) in the MIDL system, how they interact in the terminology of MIDL,
Stephen: Instead of focusing of the terminology of these practices, we should clarify the importance of framework and intention because it drives the way that our mind perceives what it is we are doing.
And hence way that the path unfolds for us when we practice them.
I can practice my qi gong form with the intention and framework taught to me by my qi gong teacher, and I see the flow of qi in everything, my health and longevity improve, my ability to heal, spontaneous qi movements, psychic powers and one with the universe.
I can practice my qi gong form with the intention and framework taught to me by my meditation teacher, and I see impermanence in my body and mind experience, suffering when my mind clings, and freedom from suffering that comes from surrendering to its autonomous nature.
With this second intention, my focus is not on qi, healing, longevity etc. it is on weakening and uprooting the unwholesome/unskillful and cultivating and establishing the wholesome/skillful as a natural way of being. It is to bring the suffering of samsara to an end.
Two different frameworks & intentions that lead to two different perceptions and therefore unfolding of path, yet the same set of physical movements and human mind.
My intention towards what I am cultivating, what I see as important and not important, and how
I am perceiving experiences completely changes the unfolding of the path in any activity I do be it yoga, tai chi, the gym or even sitting in meditation. Intention and framework change the way experience unfolds.
Question: Could you explain the place of such practices in the MIDL system, ............ and how this correlates with the Seven Enlightenment Factors and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Stephen:
To do this we need to stick with the Buddhas framework.
Our intention is towards:
This is done by:
This is expressed in asanas, pranayamas, qigong, tai chi by:
Question: Could provide general recommendations on preferred physical practices (asanas, pranayamas, Tai Chi, Qigong) and ways to integrate them into MIDL into a coherent structure?
Stephen: From the very first Meditation Skill in MIDL training we are focused on defining and cultivating sensitivity to dwelling within peripheral awareness of our body: kayagata sati.
In Meditation 03 we learn to ground both prethermal awareness and attention in our body through relaxing, letting go and skill in observing when attention wanders.
During this training, from Meditations 01-04 we develop the GOSS Formula, a way of skillfully changing habitual behaviour of our mind through an insight and reward system.
From Meditations 05 onwards we begin to isolate and train attention while maintaining peripheral awareness of our body. Attention and peripheral awareness become clearly defined as two separate things that are intimately connected all the way up to access concentration.
From Meditation 04 onwards, with the establishment of skill int he GOSS Formula, we have all the tools we need to bring our practice into any activity in our daily life by following the same intention and structure trained in Meditations 01-04.
Copyright © 2023 Meditation in The Shire - Stephen Procter - All rights reserved.
Using Material? Please link back to this website and give credit to author Stephen Procter.