Comments on “The Mind Illuminated, a journal: Day 3”
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Wonderful insights and sharing, thank you.
“My nose went off to the left of my face at one point. My breath wasn’t in my nose, the nose was somewhere else, etc. I just let the nose do whatever and stayed with the breath. Felt like a Picasso”
Its like you re foreshadowing parts of a book you have not read yet, I love it. (He speaks of this phenomena in an upcoming interlude.)
I think the reason the practice seemed to create the problems it’s trying to address is maybe because you’re not including the 4 steps of preparation TMI explains at beginning where you “transcend but include” peripheral awareness of environment, and then body, and then overall breath sensation and then nose—you never let go of peripheral awareness. TMI explains (somewhere between stage 3 and 4?) that too narrow of a focus means the mind is less energized and you get dull. Perhaps you end up figuring this out…
In my personal TMI practice I try and keep my labels to one word only. Anything beyond that and it becomes more of a thought, as you noticed. I also try and keep them simple, so sometimes it’s just “thinking” and other times it’s “planning” or “analyzing”.