Shifts

Shifts in awareness, perspective, things like that. Zooming in and/or zooming out, changing your plane of focus.

Another remix

Remember two of the marks of existence: impermanence and no-self.

A direct approach

• Notice what’s arising.
• Notice that it’s the contents of consciousness.
• Notice that you are the context of consciousness.

A Headless approach

• Look for the edges.
• Look for the centre.
• Look for yourself, at zero distance.

A conceptual approach

• Notice the thoughts that things should be different.
• Notice the thoughts that things could be different.
• Notice your direct experience, before thoughts.

A story approach

• Notice the story that things should be different.
• Notice the story that things could be different.
• Accept the situation and your/self as you are.

A problem approach

• Let go of the feeling that you need to solve the problem.
• Let go of the feeling that there is a problem.
• Rest in the feeling of things being as they are.

A verbose version

• Notice that the story that there’s a problem.
  • That things could be different.
  • Then let it go.
• Notice what’s arising.
  • Name the emotions and feeling tones.
    • Give everything a warm welcome.
  • Watch it (finish) arising. Wait, and watch if pass away.
    • Be patient, wait a little longer.
• Notice the story of the self.
  • That you could be different.
  • Then let it go.
  • Notice that you are the context of consciousness.
• Notice the story that there’s a need to solve the problem.
  • That things should be different.
  • Then let it go.

Remixed, with pointers

Move from self-centered stories to an open, direct, embodied experience without a self.

• Problem and the need to solve it
• Story and the self it’s happening to
• Thoughts
• Embodied experience
• Nondual experience

The Three Marks of Existence

• Suffering (Dukkha)
• Impermanence (Anicca)
• No-self (Anatta)

Oh no, oh well, ohm

• Oh no.
  • Notice the story that there’s a need to solve the problem.
  • That things should be different.
  • Then let it go.
• Oh well.
  • Notice that the story that there’s a problem.
  • That things could be different.
  • Then let it go.
• Ohm.
  • Notice the story of the self.
  • That you could be different.
  • Then let it go.

Emotion Outshifting

I found this in the Awakening Emotions session of Loch Kelly’s Effortless Mindfulness course on the Waking Up app.

• I am emotion.
• I am aware of feeling emotion.
• I am the awareness.
• emotion is welcome.
• Awareness and emotion are not separate.

RAIN

• Recognize.
  • Notice what’s arising.
  • Name the emotions and feeling tones.
• Allow.
  • Give everything a warm welcome.
  • Be patient, wait a little longer.
• Investigate.
  • The embodied sense of it.
  • The story you’re adding to the feeling tone and the raw sense data.
  • Deeper prodding
    • What are trying to protect yourself from?
    • What are you unwilling to feel?
    • What are you numbing or distracting yourself from?
    • If you dropped the story you’re adding, what would you be doing instead?
• Nurture.
  • Find a sense of what would be comforting right now.

When you have trouble with the N of RAIN, go back to the I. Look more closely for what and where it’s hurting.

After a RAIN meditation, stay in the open, awake, awareness for a while.

My philosophy, another spiral

• 🎯 Notice the causes, conditions, and patterns. (Reality is one, indivisible, whole)
• 🏹 Look for the edges, the gaps between. (Concepts create division, layers, stages, often as poles)
• 🎯 Notice the motion, the changes. Watch it arise, watch it pass away. (Reality is flow, motion, change)
• 🏹 Look for what’s static, fixed. (Concepts are fixed, static)
• 🎯 Notice the fractal nature of everything. (Reality is complex, deep, rich)
• 🏹 Remember that the map is not the territory. (Concepts flatten, simplify, exclude)
• 🎯 Notice (the details of) the map you’re using. (Who you are determines how you see determines what you see.)
• 🏹 Take the more integrated picture, multiple viewpoints at once. (What qualities you see depends on the scale.)
• 🎯 Come back to the direct, embodied, experience. 🏹 Look for yourself, at zero distance.** (Your true nature is the context of consciousness, not the contents.)
• 🎯 Notice the causes, conditions, patterns that make you who you are. 🏹 Leave things as they are, without adding a story or a label. (The contents of consciousness arise in the world.)

Radical nonduality

Remixed and lifted from my Painting the Sidewalk with Water notes.

• 🏹 Look closely for solidity, substance, continuity in any form. (Forms have flow, motion, change.)
• 🏹 Look for the doer in non-human things. Is there an entity in there that is changing from a seed to a tree? (The “doer”, “thinker,” the “author,” the “chooser”, the “self” is only an image, an idea, another thought.)
• 🏹 Look for thinker of thoughts and notice its absence.
• 🎯 Notice that the need to solve the problem is a story. (Nothing is really a problem. Concepts, including the self, and their stories create problems, confusion, suffering.)
• 🎯 Notice the problem itself is a story.
• 🎯 Notice that the self is a story.
• 🎯 Bring open attention, simply notice what is. Without any agenda or goal. Without wanting to change or control or correct.
• 🏹 Look for the looker. If you see the looker, look for who’s looking at that. Notice that you are prior to any object you can see. (Some sense of self is functionally necessary and unavoidable.)
• 🎯 Notice the playful nature of everything. (The cosmos is exploring and realising itself, playing hide and seek. It enjoys finding and being found, again and again.)

Added 2024-04-23, last updated 2024-05-24.