Viewing your experiences through your consciousness
Hey, folks. I'm a 39M who's been dabbling with meditation for 12 years or so. I rekindled my daily practice and got serious last summer. I generally sit for 20-45 minutes/day (1-2 sessions), starting with focusing on my awareness and transitioning into my main practice, focus on the breath. I've gotten a lot of great tips and insight from this community and wanted to hear your thoughts on something that crossed my mind as I was sitting today.
It occurred to me that I live my entire life through my mind. What I mean by that is I feel like my mind is the interface for all of my experiences and that my constant thinking, judging, and intellectualizing is what dulls my experiences. When I meditate, I feel like I'm trying to get out of my mind and stay in my consciousness for as long as possible. When a thought comes up, it's my mind trying to grab the wheel and take back control of my experience, but I gently come back to my breath, which roots me in my consciousness. I feel like the practice is a constant vacillation between these two "modes".
That may not make any sense, or it my be obvious to some, but I never thought of it in those terms. I figured maybe it'll help someone with perspective or, at least, generate some discussion.
Posted Mar 1, 2017, 2:43 AM UTC
You're right on point. When you do your meditations or practice being aware you switch back and forth between being asleep and being awake. Almost every persons default state is one of being asleep. In other words, we're entranced by the continuous flow of thoughts and are pulled along by the thought stream. When you practice awareness you begin to break out of the thought stream for moments at a time, and over time the frequency of how often you awaken out of the "dream" of thinking increases. It's wonderful to hear other people word experiences that I've felt and been aware of before also. Blessings on your journey :)
Thanks for this. I was afraid that my words were inadequate. All the best.