After doing so much meditation, I came to a place where I was highly proficient at “witnessing” my inner reality.  I could recognize even the subtlest emotions the moment they began—I knew how they felt energetically in the body, their associated thoughts and, often, the underlying reasons they arose.

Seeing all that in real-time was a tremendous way to demystify the ego.  I didn’t really get phased by much.  Good or bad.  I was solidly in the middle.  I lived my life in a place of enormous spaciousness.

And yet, something seemed a little off.

I spoke with a teacher who pointed out that while my strong awareness was definitely the right path, she saw in my eyes a hint of weariness, and suggested maybe I wasn’t channeling it the right way.  She gazed at me longingly and said there are two basic directions for awareness:

The first, dis-identification, she said is a high spiritual quality full of centeredness and aliveness.  A dis-identified person welcomes whatever experiences or emotions come, but also has enough inner strength to not get entangled or carried away.  No matter what’s happening, they remain rooted in their deeper identity and their innate human desire to love and serve.

The second, dis-engagement, she said is a form of aversion that, while spacious and grounded, is devoid of life-force.  A dis-engaged person doesn’t want to deal with certain things, and their inner strength can be used to avoid, even subconsciously, truly experiencing certain places inside themselves.  It leaves a person feeling like something is a little off.

The bridge, she told me, was to palpably feel my feelings.

………..

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Part I – The Four Definitions

Nowadays, the word “awareness” is used very loosely, and often I’m not even entirely sure what people mean when they say it.  I thought it would be helpful to bring awareness (hah!) to what is actually meant by the word awareness.  Here’s four meanings which capture pretty much any possible usage:

1) A more contextual, big picture understanding.

“Ever since his father died, he’s been living with a heightened awareness of what life is really about.”
“After reading this essay, you will have more awareness of the different usages of the word awareness.”
“Are you aware of the implications of touching her thigh?”

2) A present-focused attention that’s stripped of context.

“I’m aware of the bitter and sweet flavors of this chocolate bar on my tongue.”
“Bring your awareness to the sensations of the breathing in your nostrils or abdomen.”
“I’m aware of my current mood of apathy and the accompanying low-energy I feel. Continue reading →

A friend and I were in Myanmar, sitting in the bus station lobby, ready for our 12 hour trip to Bagan.  After waiting patiently for an hour, the bus finally arrived and began letting passengers on board.

When we handed the driver our tickets—entirely written in Burmese—he looked at them, looked at us, looked at them again, and then said, “I’m sorry, you are on the wrong bus.  This bus is going to Bagan.  These are tickets for the bus to Mandalay.  It’s the complete opposite direction.”

As it turned out, the woman we bought the tickets from gave us the wrong ones; and, as the bus to Bagan was now full, we were stuck in the same town for another day.

Bummer.

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Shortly before I went for my 21 month retreat, I told a friend I wasn’t really an anxious person and that I experienced anxiety maybe four or five times a year.  Shortly after completing the retreat, I told another friend that I experienced anxiety just as much as everyone else—maybe four or five times an hour.

It’s not that intensive meditation made me more anxious; instead, it showed me what had always been happening in my mind on a much subtler level.

Upon hearing this comment, some people wonder why I would ever want to be aware of something so unpleasant as frequent anxiety.  I tell them there’s two basic life positions: “knowledge is power” and “ignorance is bliss.”

Knowledge isn’t always comfortable (have you ever read “A People’s History of the United States”!?); but, with respect to my four-to-five times per hour anxiety, I now have a choice on how to handle it that I once didn’t have.  Sometimes I still act reactively, but more and more, I manage to act out of a deeper sincerity.

I’m not sure I could give a greater endorsement for ‘knowledge is power.’

We all have our favorite ways to distract ourselves from the rawness of being.

We have a few hours free, so we pop on the computer, have a snack, read, socialize, drink a beer, make a tea, clean, fix or build something, watch television or maybe even exercise, practice yoga or meditate.

These various distractions are our comfort zone.

There is nothing inherently “right” or “wrong” with comfortable activities.  On one hand, doing things in our comfort zone is a rather pleasant part of human life—one must enjoy oneself!  On the other hand, it often keeps us from seeing and embodying our deeper layers of authenticity.

What is that yearning inside you that you aren’t living?
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When we sit down, relax and bring our intention to present moment awareness, some days it’s quite pleasant and effortless, but other days it’s one brick wall after another.  There’s three basic ways to handle this:

At times, it can be useful to actually stop meditating—if, say, we’re just falling asleep in a sitting position, it might be more worth our while to take a nap instead.  However, if we just quit every time there’s a brick wall, we don’t learn anything, we don’t develop, we don’t realize our deeper sincerity.

Secondly, we can use sheer willpower to force ourselves to keep sitting and endure, pounding our way through the sit.  We could power through with the aid of a tool, a “meditative sledgehammer,” like mindfulness of breathing, mantra, counting thoughts or whatever else.  We could also just psych ourselves into an attitude of intensity and determination.

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During my middle school baseball days, I would run from the dugout, glove in hand, over to second base to play defense.  Every time the pitcher hurled the ball to the batter, I would lightly bend my knees, hunch forward with weight on the balls of my feet and ever so slightly sway side-to-side.  This body positioning wasn’t my invention—it was what the coach spent hours training us on during practice.  He called it “ready position.”

There’s baseball ready position, but there’s also kindness ready position, generosity ready position, patience ready position, and just about anything else you can imagine. Continue reading →

During a stretch studying yoga in Southern India, another student and I went on early morning philosophy walks with a local holy man.  I felt in his presence a deep centeredness that I had rarely found in anyone on my multi-year spiritual journey.  And, so, even though the spirit of our walks was a light conversational dialogue, I would generally come prepared with a few elaborate questions on Indian spiritual practice.

One morning, as the dawn sun was glowing over the palm trees, I asked him, “if inner freedom is the goal of the Yoga Sutras, why does the text overwhelmingly talk about a single method of attaining that goal (samadhi), when that’s just one method among many?”

He made like a politician and talked around my question for about 10 minutes before asking if we had any other curiosities.  I forcefully interjected, “but you didn’t actually answer my question!”

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Formal vs. Informal Meditation

This post will discuss the difference between formal and informal meditation, and the different nuances within each of those.

Before we start, here’s a metaphor to chew on: the difference between formal and informal meditation is like the difference between “lab science” and “field science.”

One of them is in a special room, with perfect conditions and all sorts of precise tools.  The other is out in the messy world, where nothing is controllable.  In spite of those obvious differences, at the core, they are both just doing science!

In other words, while formal and informal meditation have clear differences on where/when they’re done, they are actually the same practice—a relaxed awareness of the present moment.

Here are more specific and practical descriptions:

Formal Meditation

This refers to taking a period of time, at least five minutes, where our sole focus is meditation.  This is an opportunity to get rid of all external distractions and work directly on our meditation practice.

Usually, it’s done in total physical stillness, like sitting or lying down.  However, it could also be done in motion, like walking back and forth, or even activities like Yoga or Qi Gong (assuming we know the routine so well that we don’t have to think about what we’re doing, and can put all our focus on awareness).

A special case of formal meditation is retreat.   Here, meditation is our sole focus not just for 20 minutes or an hour, but for a stretch of days.  For those who want to really deepen their meditation practice, a classic recommendation is to spend at least a week a year on retreat.

Informal Meditation

This is sometimes called daily life meditation, and it means meditating throughout the day.  There are two basic types:

1) Micro-hits.  These refer to little spaces, ranging from 5 seconds to 5 minutes, where we take a pause in the day to make meditation our sole focus.  It could be while waiting for something, taking a minute before or after a meal, pausing before transitioning to a new activity, or just going into stillness anytime we find we have a few minutes to spare.

2) Background.  This is when we are meditating while doing many different activities throughout the day.  We could roughly say there are “easy” situations to have a background meditation, like cleaning, cooking or driving; and, there are “difficult” situations to have a background meditation, like socializing, reading or doing computer work.

The Relationship between Formal Meditation and Informal Meditation

My teacher, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, entitled his most recent book, “When Awareness Becomes Natural.”  What this title suggests is that the more a person does formal meditation, meditating for periods of time each day, and going on occasional retreats, then it becomes easier and easier to do informal meditation.

More specifically, it’s as if our “baseline state of mind” becomes more and more hardwired to meditation.  The impulse and desire for micro-hits comes naturally.  The background meditation happens all by itself, and it’s not difficult to maintain. It’s as if the momentum of our practice has a life of its own, and it can keep going most of the day.

Remember, even though formal and informal meditation happen in different contexts, and they feed each other, they are actually the exact same thing: a relaxed awareness of the present moment.

Want to try out a 20 second micro hit?  Bring your attention to the contact point between your feet and the ground.  Feel the body sensations happening there for the next 20 seconds.  That’s a micro hit!