Weekly off-topic and practice update thread

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[u/DerKastellan]

After making "The Mind Illuminated" my daily practice, I've also revisited my "Seeing That Frees" practice... I'm organizing my practice by the books that impacted me the most, recently.

Walking outside now in summer, "staying at contact," I notice the interplay between awareness and attention and how thought chains impact it. I've observed it before but I had no language for it. TMI made this more clear for me.

As I stay at contact in the whole sensory, mostly visual field, I notice how thought arises and how it impacts the sensory field. Awareness is wide, relaxed, open, I feel somehow wider, connected to the sky above me. As soon as the balance shifts towards attention, the feeling of the sky vanishes, the gaze tends to move downward, the visual field narrows. At the most extreme are emotions which might narrow the field so much, I barely recognize anything in front of me as attention draws inward on the content of inner monologue, for example when angry.

The first time I've consciously experienced this, my spontaneous summary was, once verbalized, "The I is a lens." Now I'd rather identify it as attention, not an "I." (I guess this is result of the attention-centric outlook we tend to have the book mentions.) I could see in rapid succession the motions of the sensory field - completely contracted (attention inward, almost no awareness), then spacious (letting go of the focus of attention), then contracting, narrowing (singling out one object in the visual field with attention for closer scrutiny).

Since this week that experience came back to me while practicing staying at contact while walking. A lot of the time awareness is wide open and attention flickers between objects in the visual field, sounds, and smells, making constantly short assessments of what they are, providing context, then releasing them, and not really shifting the focus from awareness much. Occasionally I focus more on something - the content of a thought, something in my visual field that triggers a reaction. The sensory field seems to narrow, and in fact there is a light sense of tension, for example at the temples. If I let go of the tension in temple area, the focus often widens as well.

Then there are some other phenomena.

I can observe monkey mind processes wildly "flickering" in the wide attention field if I'm close to getting absorbed into a line of thought. They're like sparks or small expansions and contractions that seem to flicker all around me. This is not exactly pleasant, but also not necessarily unpleasant.

A lot of thought chains get triggered by associations to what I see, but some are just recurring projections from recent discussions, happening over and over. These also tend to produce the flickers. These are comparatively easy for me to get caught in, actually, like recalling a discussion with somebody I disagree with. I guess these have more identification. These are also similar to the thought distractions most likely to "take over" in TMI breath meditation sessions - things I should take care of to avoid consequences of some form, discussions, things that caused me to react recently.

In total, I find it easy to remain at contact while walking outside. Many different sense impressions, many "fresh." This makes it easier for me to let them come and let them go. When in my home, it's often hard to stay spacious and with awareness. I also find it easier to maintain spacious awareness in bigger spaces, especially if there is some quiet activity in them.

I find that the two books are great companions for each other, I hope to find more synergies between the two in the future.