Midl meditation system

Welcome on your journey, into MIDL Meditation. Your first step on the path, is to fulfill Mastery 1, by developing unification of your attention. You do this by following systematic training, in four mindfulness of breathing skillsets. 

These 4 Skillsets are fulfilled by:

1. Developing the skill of abandoning participation, through softening.
2. Developing the skill of self-observation, through flexible attention.
3. Developing the skill of clarity, through unification of attention.
4. Developing the skill of mastery of the first four jhanas (absorptions).

Skillset 1: Develop Skill in Softening

Link to Skillset 1

Softening:

• Meditation Skill 01: Retrain Your Breathing
• Meditation Skill 02: Learn How to Soften
• Meditation Skill 03: Skill of Softening Into

In Skillset 1, you prepare your breathing and mind, for mindfulness of breathing, by developing your skill in softening, and relaxing resistance.

Skillset 2: Develop Skill in Flexible Attention

Link to Skillset 2

Self Observation:

• Meditation Skill 04: Ground Your Awareness
• Meditation Skill 05: Focus Your Awareness
• Meditation Skill 06: Overcome Habitual Forgetting
• Meditation Skill 07: Overcome Habitual Wandering
• Meditation Skill 08: Overcome Habitual Control

In Skillset 2, you develop your skill in self-observation, to monitor your mind during mindfulness of breathing, and to develop insight into the minds true nature.

Skillset 3: Develop Skill in Unifying Attention

Link to Skillset 3

Mindfulness of Breathing:

• Meditation Skill 09: Remember Each Breath
• Meditation Skill 10: Experience Each Breath
• Meditation Skill 11: Learn to Body Breathe
• Meditation Skill 12: Unify With the Breath
• Meditation Skill 13: Calm With the Breath

In Skillset 3, you refine your skill in mindfulness of breathing, by separating its stages of development, into sequential parts. Once each skill in this Skillset has been developed, you will have the steadiness of attention needed to reach the level of access concentration.

Where to From Here?

Once completed, the skills learnt in Meditations 1-13 come together, to create a complete mindfulness of breathing practice. If you enjoy guidance, you can find a guided meditation for your daily mindfulness of breathing here:

Meditation: Daily Mindfulness of Breathing

From this point on you have two choices:

1. Develop your mastery in the first four jhana's, in Skillset 4.
2. Develop insight, and mastery in Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in Masteries 3-5, before  mastering the first four jhanas.

Which Path to Take?

Everything up to Mastery 5 needs to be developed, before starting Masteries 6-7. However, different meditators have different natural tendencies: 

1. If your mind inclines towards jhana during mindfulness of breathing, then take advantage of this natural inclination towards jhana, before developing insight. Once you have mastered the four jhanas, then complete Masteries 4-7. 
2. If your mind however does not want to unify at this point, and inclines towards wandering, then take advantage of this natural inclination to develop insight. Begin investigation in Mastery 3, following the path up to Mastery 5. Then return to developing your skill in Jhana, before starting Masteries 6 and 7. 

Skillset 4: Develop Skill in Complete Unification

Jhana:

• Meditation Skill 14: Develop Your Skill in Jhana

In Skillset 4, you continue to train unification of your attention towards mastery of the four jhanas (absorptions). This goes beyond the level of guidance of a guided meditation. I am currently writing instructions in my new book on the complete MIDL Meditation System, and in the future will include a framework of instructions for jhana, on this website.

For your meditation practice to truly mature, it needs to transfer from seated meditation, into all aspects of your life. In Mastery 2, you will develop three levels of meditative skill: 

1. The skill of maintaining meditation, while changing postures.
2. The skill of maintaining meditation, while walking.
3. The skill of maintaining meditation, while living your life.

Mastery 2, can be done concurrently with development of unification of attention, and meditative jhanas, in Mastery 1.

Skillset 5: Develop Skill in Meditating in Daily Life

Link to Skillset 5

Mindfulness of Movement

• Meditation Skill 15: Meditate While Standing
• Meditation Skill 16: Mindfully Change Postures

In Skillset 5, your task from this point is to transfer your meditation practice into your daily life. You do this by deliberately living your life, fully engaging it with effort towards full comprehension. this means facing that which you run away from, embracing that which you fear, and softening deeply into all aspects of your life.

Once you have developed skill of unifying your attention at least to the level of access concentration, you can start to intersperse your jhana practice, with insight practice. In Mastery 3, you develop insight into the habitually deluded mind, by training your skill in observing four areas of human experience:

1. Kaya: bodily sensations.
2. Vedana: feeling tone.
3. Citta: heart/mind.
4. Dhamma's: Conditioned Processes of the previous three. 

These are observed in terms of the three characteristics to develop insight:

1. Anicca: impermanence, unreliability.
2. Dukkha: suffering, friction.
3. Anatta: not-self, impersonal, autonomous in nature.

Skillset 6: Develop Insight into the Habitual Mind

Link to Skillset 6

Investigation:

• Meditation Skill 17: Observe the Four Elements
• Meditation Skill 18: Observe Borders of Perception
• Meditation Skill 19: Observe Attention Move 1
• Meditation Skill 20: Observe Attention Move 2
• Meditation Skill 21: Observe Attention Flicker
• Meditation Skill 22: Observe Thinking Processes
• Meditation Skill 23: Observe Thinking Patterns
• Meditation Skill 24: Observe Past and Future

In meditations 1-13 you created the structure for your formal seated meditation practice up to access concentration (initial unification of attention). This structure in MIDL is referred to as your Viewing Platform. From this Viewing Platform you can do many things, such as cultivating your attention, and passively, or actively, investigating reality. Once you have learnt an individual investigation skill, intentionally bring that investigation into your daily  mindfulness of breathing. In Investigation 1, for example, you practice your daily  mindfulness of breathing, while taking interest in the elemental qualities found within any experience that arises. All the other investigations are practiced like this in order to cultivate insight.

As insight weakens habitual defensive tendencies, it will also reveal weaknesses in your ability to connect with yourself, and others. In Mastery 4, you create the conditions to settle the mind, and unify it with the heart.

Skillset 7: Develop Skill in Balancing the Habitual Mind

Link to Skillset 7

Abandoning:

• Meditation Skill 25: Learn to Calm Mental Activity
• Meditation Skill 26: Learn to Expand Awareness
• Meditation Skill 27: Learn to Use Touch Points

Skillset 7 is concerned with calming, and developing skill, in working with the five characteristics of disturbance that arise within the deluded mind: 

1. Attraction.
2. Aversion.
3. Restlessness.
4. Dullness/sluggishness.
5. Doubt. 

When applying these techniques, don't do it to suppress the five disturbances, but rather with the intent to develop insight into their true nature. Simply:

1. Understand how you experience them.
2. Understand how they come to be.
3. Understand how they cease.
4. Understand how they will never arise again.

Skillset 8: Develop Skill in Wholesome Qualities

Link to Skillset 8

Cultivation:

• Meditation Skill 28: Cultivate Loving Kindness 1
• Meditation Skill 29: Cultivate Loving Kindness 2
• Meditation Skill 30: Cultivate Loving Kindness 3
• Meditation Skill 31: Cultivate Skill in Forgiveness
• Meditation Skill 32: Cultivate Skill in Gratitude

Skillset 8 is concerned with cultivating wholesome qualities of heart, that may be weak in you. When defensive habitual patterns become weak, wholesome qualities of heart will not miraculously appear. Even though the human potential is towards kindness, caring, compassion, generosity and gratitude, they are not an innate state found within all of us.

You practice your personality every day. If you normally act through anger, then love and kindness, may not come naturally to you. If you normally react with jealously, then you may not naturally feel joy for others, when they succeed, and you don’t. Wholesome qualities of heart, need to be intentionally cultivated, like anything else.

 In Mastery 5, you develop the natural tendency of your mind, to incline towards abandoning, letting, go, relinquishing, giving up. A mind that no longer clings or grasps onto anything. 

Skillset 9:  Develop Skill in Deconditioning the Mind

Link to Skillset 9

Abandoning:

• Meditation Skill 33: Learn to Abandon Intention
• Meditation Skill 34: Learn to Re-engage Diaphragm
• Meditation Skill 35: Learn to Lengthen Out-breath
• Meditation Skill 36: Learn to Relax the Eyelids
• Meditation Skill 37: Learn to Relax Frontal Lobes
• Meditation Skill 38: Learn to Decondition Mind
• Meditation Skill 39: Decondition Emotional Charge

In Skillset 9, you apply the wisdom you have so far developed, towards deconditioning habitual, defensive patterns, from your mind. To do this requires steadiness of attention, and further refinement of your skill in softening, and inclination towards stillness. 

Once your meditative skill has matured, you will be able to intentionally bring up and be with, painful memories, or defensive tendencies. This will allow you to access the underlying vedana that drives reaction, and through softening your participation, you will gradually decondition the habitual tendency.

Skillset 10: Develop Skill in Abandoning Participation

Link to Skillset 10

Abandoning:

• Meditation Skill 40: Abandon With Breathing
• Meditation Skill 41: Abandon Within Body
• Meditation Skill 42: Abandon Within Mind
• Meditation Skill 43: Abandon all Participation

In Skillset 10, you begin training in disentangling awareness from sensory objects. While appana samadhi was developed during jhana, to incline the habitual mind towards abandoning, and for clarity as a basis for insight. Nirvikalpa samadhi (objectless unification), is developed to accelerate the inclination towards abandoning, and disillusionment from insight, completely disentangling the habitual mind from all six sense fields, dissolving habitual clinging to the Five Aggregates Associated with Clinging: 

1. Form.
2. Feeling tone.
3. Perception.
4. Formations.
5. Awareness.

Before starting Mastery 6, you need refined skill in Softening, Jhana and Nirvikalpa Samadhi, in order to enter deeper levels of the path. In Mastery 6, you observe and disentangle awareness from the six sense fields using your developed.

Skillset 11: Develop Skill in Disentangling Awareness

Link to Skillset 11

Disentangling:

• Meditation Skill 44: Remember Awareness
• Meditation Skill 45: Mindfulness of Seeing
• Meditation Skill 46: Mindfulness of Hearing
• Meditation Skill 47: Mindfulness of Smelling
• Meditation Skill 48: Mindfulness of Tasting
• Meditation Skill 49: Mindfulness of Touching
• Meditation Skill 50: Mindfulness of Knowing 1
• Meditation Skill 51: Mindfulness of Knowing 2

In Skillset 11, you continue to disentangle awareness. As many of the grosser habitual tendencies are now deconditioned, the natural inclination within your mind, towards abandoning, will increase. You will find that your mind now naturally relinquishes entanglement with sensory input. In this final stage of the path, you intentionally engage with the six sensory fields, to observe subtle clinging. And by applying your softening and Nirvikalpa Samadhi skills, you relinquish participation by subtly relaxing habitual engagement. Giving the deconditioned mind a gentle push, towards the unconditioned.

In Mastery 7, you enter into the final stage of deconditioning, in regards to the habituated mind. You aim to reach the stage of complete disentanglement, and fulfillment of the Four Noble Truths. A mind, no longer entangled with anything.

Skillset 12: Disentangle the Habitual Mind

Link to Skillset 12

Disentangling:

• Meditation Skill 52: Calming all Mental Activity

In Skillset 12, you enter the final stage of deconditioning, to reveal a mind free from all habitual defensive tendencies. This stage of the path, requires refined sensitivity, softening, and complete disentanglement of awareness with sensory experience. This includes at the highest level of skill, disentanglement of awareness from itself. At this stage of the meditative path, all habitual ties are broken, the mind inclines towards the unconditioned.