Working with Dullness

Everyday dullness arises when energy levels become too low to support the functions of your mind, creating the conditions for the clarity of your awareness to lower.

Below is a list of everyday dullness and antidotes: 

Sleepiness: 

• If your life is overstimulated, then you will experience sleepiness.
• When sleepiness is present, investigate your experience of it.
• If sleepiness persists, then you need more rest. 

Over-eating: 

• If you eat big meals, they will affect your energy levels. 
• Meditate between meals or eat less before meditating. 

Stress Breathing: 

• If you stress breathe, the hyperventilation will cause mental fogginess and sluggishness.  
• Retrain your breathing patterns to diaphragmatic to increase mental clarity. 

Lapse of Mindfulness: 

• When mindfulness is weak, interest in your meditation object will also weaken, and clarity will fade. 
• Stimulate your mindfulness by placing effort into detailed awareness of the experience of your meditation object. 

Mental Aversion: 

• If aversion is present towards your experience during meditation, then your mind will start to withdraw awareness to the safe, pleasurable place of not being aware of anything. 
• Your mind will find safety in the dull, sleep-like state of not knowing. 
• Observe any aversion present, softening towards it. 

These are everyday causes of dullness. As an insight meditator, it is important that you can recognise and separate them for meditative dullness.

As strange as it may sound, gross dullness occurs during mindfulness of breathing before Subtle Dullness and is a sign of progression in the development of samatha (calm). Gross Dullness occurs because your mind completely over-calms its ability to be aware of any experience, including itself. The difference between subtle dullness and gross dullness is that subtle dullness still has clarity of awareness but not clarity of the meditation object, while gross dullness is a loss of clarity in both the meditation object and the mind.

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07) Gross Dullness: Loss of clarity of in both your mind and meditation object.

Gross Dullness refers to the experience of an extreme lowering of your ability to be aware of any experience. This is experienced as a loss of clarity in both your mind and your meditation object. Gross Dullness is a sign of progress in meditation and reflects the deepening of a meditator's samadhi (unification). It occurs as the meditator develops physical and mental relaxation, and they inadvertently over-calm the ability for awareness to know an experience. Gross Dullness is a right-of-passage for the meditator. It refines the meditator's skill in relaxing while maintaining a clear comprehension of their present experience. As you learn to balance the effort, the Enlightenment Factor of Right Effort will mature, and you will no longer experience gross dullness.

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08) Subtle Dullness: Loss of clarity of sensations in your meditation object.

Subtle Dullness refers to the experience of the disappearance of your ability to perceive sensations within your breathing (or meditation object). While Gross Dullness is defined as dullness in both your meditation object and mind, Subtle Dullness is defined as dullness in your meditation object and clarity of your awareness. While experiencing subtle dullness, your mind will be clear, lucid, and tranquil. Because of this, it is easy to be deluded into thinking that you have entered an absorption state. If not addressed, this experience will repeat, and you will not reach more refined levels of samadhi.

Recognising Gross & Subtle Dullness.

• Gross dullness is defined as dullness in both your meditation object and mind. 
• Subtle dullness is defined as dullness in your meditation object and clarity of your awareness. 

Balancing Subtle Dullness:

To remove subtle dullness, pay closer attention to sensations in your body & breathing while increasing sensitivity to the pleasure of letting go. If this does not work, increase the objects of your awareness by experiencing breathing methodically in as many parts as possible.

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An unlisted Hindrance: Doubt.

Gross Dullness has a companion: Doubt.

Doubt: Losing trust in meditation practice, technique, or teacher. 

Doubt refers to the rapid flickering of your mind between attraction, aversion, and confusion that occurs when your mind fears not getting it right because everything feels out of control. When doubt is present, the meditator finds fault in themselves, their current teacher, and their meditation technique, causing them to cycle between meditation teachers and techniques to escape discomfort.

When doubt becomes strong in correlation with gross dullness, doubt will develop in your mind and lead to hindrance 01: Physical Restlessness. You will find yourself standing up and walking away from your meditation cushion. Doubt is weakened by daily gratitude reflection and regular contact with a community of fellow meditators and/or teachers. Doubt is a regular visitor in insight meditation until the meditator has reached the level of Stream Entry (Sotapanna). 

If you find yourself in Gross Dullness during your meditation and cannot get out of it, you can cycle through points of touch to arouse energy. Slowly cycle your awareness through different points of touch within your body. Be aware of one point at a time. The important part is to take your time being aware of the experience of each point of touch. Mentally 'feeling' the sensate quality such as pressure, hardness, softness, warmth, etc. within it. 

Touch is experienced as pressure, hardness, softness, warmth, etc. As you experience the sensate quality within a touch point, you can use a silent label: "touching, touching" to direct your attention to it. The first label brings your awareness to the point of touch, and the second label brings your awareness to the experience of the point of touch. 

In this way, you apply your attention and sustain it by rubbing awareness within the experience before moving on to the next touch point. Cultivating momentum of mindfulness and arousing mental energy. 

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Meditation Instruction:

SoundCloud: Guided Meditation. 

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Step 1: Bring awareness first to your whole body and silently say: “sitting, sitting”, while mentally feeling your whole body. 

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Step 2: Next, bring awareness to a point of touch such as your buttocks on the floor, and silently say: “touching, touching” while mentally 'feeling' that point of touch.  

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Step 3: Cycle slowly between these two points of touch: "sitting, sitting" (feel the body), "touching, touching" (feel your buttocks touch), spending time being aware as clearly as you can of each.
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Step 4: Gradually add points of touch to this cycle. 

Example: 

1. "sitting, sitting" (whole body), 
2. "touching, touching" (left buttock), 
3. "touching, touching" (right buttock), 
4. "touching, touching" (left ankle), 
5. "touching, touching" (right ankle), 
6. "touching, touching" (hands), 
7. "touching, touching" (lips), 
8. "sitting, sitting" (whole body) and so on cycling through.

In this way, you will generate alertness. Once sleepiness has faded, return to your original meditation object or continue with your touch point meditation, depending on the outcome you are after.

During mindfulness of breathing, gross dullness occurs while being aware of the whole length of each breath in Meditation 06, and aware of sensations within your breathing in Meditation 07.

When gross dullness occurs, you will experience an extreme lowering of your ability to be aware of any experience. Your mind will feel dull, heavy, sluggish, and drift between floaty dream-like states, unable to rest or experience anything clearly. When at an extreme, gross dullness transforms into what is known as Sinking Mind, where you will start to get head and body collapses each time you completely lose awareness.

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Your first step.

Even though it is difficult to be aware of anything in gross dullness. It is possible to be clearly aware of how unclearly aware you are.

1. Touch your thumbs together and use them as a grounding/reference point.
2. Put constant, gentle awareness towards continuously knowing how dull your mind is. 

This stream of remembering will strengthen your mindfulness.

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Your second step:

Investigate Gross Dullness.

1. What is the elemental experience of gross dullness in your body? 
2. What is the elemental experience of gross dullness in your mind?

Insight into gross dullness develops by pulling it apart. Can you experience dullness, tightness, heaviness, floatiness, movement, warmth, coolness, stickiness, etc.?

If Gross Dullness is a regular visitor in your meditation, develop insight into the conditions that create it. From the beginning of each meditation, take your time on each Experiential Marker.

Meditation Markers:

• 01: Body relaxation.
• 02: Mind relaxation.
• 03: Mindful presence.
• 04: Joyful presence.
• 05: Natural breathing.

Gross Dullness occurs:

• 06: Length of each breath.
• 07: Sensations in breathing.
• 08: One point of sensation.

When developing each Marker, take your time and develop a clear awareness of two things:

1. The Marker's elemental qualities.
2. The feeling of the pleasure of relaxing/letting go.

To enhance your mind's perception of elemental qualities, use simple silent mental labels such as warm, cool, soft, hard, tense, heavy, vibrating, etc. To enhance the connection of your mind to the pleasure of relaxation, enjoy and smile at it. Take your time. Rest in the pleasure that is available in each stage of relaxation. Feeling its growing ease, contentment. 

Gently smile into this pleasure with your eyes and allow it to enter your mind. Find the pleasure in sitting in meditation in your body, in your breathing, and in letting go within your mind. Balance the calming of relaxing/letting go with increased comprehension of what you are experiencing now. This will decondition the tendency of your mind to associate relaxation with a lowering of awareness.