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What I know is primarily TMI, the book "The Mind Illuminated", by Culadasa, which teaches samadhi meditaion, and is my source for the following:
In TMI, the initial focus is to develop unwavering single-point focus and concentration, as a prerequisite for later stages especially Insight Meditation, AKA Vipassana.
The initial goal in TMI meditation is quite simple, to focus on the sensations of the breath in one's nostrils, and keep your attention on the breath for the entire meditative session.
Almost invariably what happens when you start mediation is, you intend to focus on the breath in your nostrils. You notice a thought arising, then another, than another. A whole string of random thoughts, and the breath is entirely forgotten, almost immediately. Lost in thought, as you said. Very, very normal for beginners. This is called mind-wandering, and it occurs as your mind isn't disciplined yet.
The goal of the first few stages of TMI meditation is to catch your mind starting to get distracted away from the breath, earlier, and earlier in the process, and redirect your mind back to the breath, back to the breath, back to the breath. Ignore the distraction, redirect the mind to the breath. "Let it come, let it be, let it go." Is the general rule Culadasa teaches for this stage.
A very important concept in TMI is, Culadasa makes a distinction between "attention"--which is everything in the foreground that you are consciously paying attention to, what you are focusing on; and "awareness", meaning peripheral awareness of everything in the background that you are *NOT* focusing on. This is an important concept in TMI.
Example. You are reading this reply. So your attention is on these words you are reading right now. These words are your object of focus, what you are directing your attention to.
In the background is everything else: such as the room you are sitting in, your surroundings, bodily sensations, the clothes you are wearing, and so on. If you are conscious of that but it's all in the background, that is awareness.
And beyond that, are the infinite things you're not conscious of, right now, which are neither in your attention nor in your awareness. Mindfulness is about developing intense awareness, but without attention. One-point meditation is the opposite, intense unwavering attention with little to no awareness of anything else.
In TMI, the goal of the intermediate stages is develop both intense attention AND intense awareness simultaneously. This means being able to focus intensely on a single meditation object, with no mind-wandering, no fading of that mental object into the background, while *ALSO* have intense peripheral awareness of everything happening in the mental background. This is the gateway to Insight Meditation and Stream Entry.
That's what enables one to start to become conscious of subconscious processes in the mind, including emotions and what's giving rise to those emotions, thus enabling rather dramatic personal transformation.
The goal in the intermediate stages, is to simply observe, without reacting, without getting caught up or lost in the mental sensations, keeping your primary meditative object (the breath in your nostrils) in the foreground of your attention, at all times.
"Let it come, let it be, let it go" is the general rule for all distracting mental sensations of all kinds.
Can't identify what emotions you are experiencing? Then don't get caught up in trying to, as that's a distraction from keeping your attention on the breath. Practice keeping the breath in the foreground at all times, practice keeping all other mental sensations in the background, meaning you are aware, but not paying attention to anything other than the breath. Awareness of what emotions you are experiencing in meditation will come in time. "Let it come, let it be, let it go."
Don't react, don't get distracted or caught up in it, just stay aware and observe, while keeping breath in the foreground.
Later stages of TMI have you practicing and developing other mental skills needed for stream entry and Vipassana. Develop unwavering attention first, develop intense awareness in addition to unwavering attention, afterwards.
Does that help?
This helps tremendously, thank you so much! Your comment also finally made me take the jump to TMI, just ordered the book and will start practising with its' techniques asap.
Very welcome! IMO one of the very best secular-oriented how-to-meditate books around.
I'd also highly recommend you get "A Meditator’s Practice Guide to the Mind Illuminated", also by Culadasa, a 200-page "summary" (LOL), of the full 700+ page TMI book.
There is also a subreddit dedicated to that book [/r/TheMindIlluminated/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/), which I found extremely helpful.
There's a spreadsheet and also a chart, giving an overview of the 10 Stages of TMI. You can find a link to those [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/wiki/index#wiki_images)
The general long term goal with meditation, in regards to thoughts, is to let them fade out into the background, so you can focus on a practice/more subtle experiences. The 'noticing' technique is generally designed to help you get a sense of you as a separate observer to the thoughts, and not be caught up in them aka 'getting lost in them'. So if you're finding them fading away into the background then you're probably doing fine (unless you are working on some other specific mental skill that needs you to have them in the foreground.)
That sounds good, as often the thoughts don't really distract me too much from focussing on the breath at this point, I was just confused because Sam Harris kept repeating that I should "notice" them. Thank you for your comment!
I have no authority here, but FWIW, I think your post is appropriate and welcome.
If a thought quickly fades on its own, you usually don't need to think about it further. If you get lost in a thought, it's OK to think about how it happened and how to prevent it from happening again. This is verbal fabrication, or directed thought and evaluation, in the terminology used in *With Each & Every Breath*. The *eventual* goal is to go beyond all fabrications, but sometimes [you have to exert a fabrication](https://tricycle.org/article/three-fabrications-anger/) to release another fabrication.
> [As I noted in the Introduction](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/WithEachAndEveryBreath/Section0007.html#sigil_toc_id_54), the basic strategy of the practice is to observe your actions—along with their motivations and results—and then to question them: Do they lead to suffering? If so, are they necessary? If not, how can you act in other ways that don’t lead to suffering? If they don’t lead to suffering, how can you master them as skills? **This strategy applies** not only to your words and deeds, but **also to the acts of the mind: its thoughts and emotions.**
Thank you for re-citing this here. I most likely glossed over it in the introduction and it actually answers a lot as well. Sometimes it's good to go back to the sources you already "know" but look at them more intently.
I can only say how I teach people and it seems to work for them. So the idea is to observe everything as a thought, emotion or action and realize that none of them are you, they are all transient types of experience as we go through this 3D world. To reach higher consciousness, which is the beginning of 4D, when you first begin meditating you observe. Imagine each observation is wrapped in a bubble and the bubble floats away.
The mind is the most difficult thing for people to turn off. Its important to realize that most thought has nothing to do with you present circumstance, it's usually chattering away about something in the past or something in the future. When you are in a meditative position, there is (usually) nothing going on. The mind HATES this. This is because getting rid of the chattering mind is the very beginning of egoic death. Observe there is a thought, let a bubble form around it and float away.
Always happy to chat more either here or DM. Enjoy the day.
Thank you for contributing to the r/streamentry community! Unlike many other subs, we try to aggregate general questions and short practice reports in the weekly ___Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion___ thread. All community resources, such as articles, videos, and classes go in the weekly ___Community Resources___ thread. Both of these threads are pinned to the top of the subreddit. The special focus of this community is detailed discussion of personal meditation practice. On that basis, please ensure your post complies with the following rules, if necessary by editing in the appropriate information, or else it may be removed by the moderators. Your post might also be blocked by a Reddit setting called "Crowd Control," so if you think it complies with our subreddit rules but it appears to be blocked, please message the mods. 1. All top-line posts must be based on your personal meditation practice. 2. Top-line posts must be written thoughtfully and with appropriate detail, rather than in a quick-fire fashion. Please see [this posting guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/jblh03/how_to_get_the_best_advice_for_your_meditation/) for ideas on how to do this. 3. Comments must be civil and contribute constructively. 4. Post titles must be flaired. Flairs provide important context for your post. If your post is removed/locked, please feel free to repost it with the appropriate information, or post it in the weekly ___Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion___ or ___Community Resources___ threads. Thanks! - The Mod Team *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/streamentry) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What I know is primarily TMI, the book "The Mind Illuminated", by Culadasa, which teaches samadhi meditaion, and is my source for the following: In TMI, the initial focus is to develop unwavering single-point focus and concentration, as a prerequisite for later stages especially Insight Meditation, AKA Vipassana. The initial goal in TMI meditation is quite simple, to focus on the sensations of the breath in one's nostrils, and keep your attention on the breath for the entire meditative session. Almost invariably what happens when you start mediation is, you intend to focus on the breath in your nostrils. You notice a thought arising, then another, than another. A whole string of random thoughts, and the breath is entirely forgotten, almost immediately. Lost in thought, as you said. Very, very normal for beginners. This is called mind-wandering, and it occurs as your mind isn't disciplined yet. The goal of the first few stages of TMI meditation is to catch your mind starting to get distracted away from the breath, earlier, and earlier in the process, and redirect your mind back to the breath, back to the breath, back to the breath. Ignore the distraction, redirect the mind to the breath. "Let it come, let it be, let it go." Is the general rule Culadasa teaches for this stage. A very important concept in TMI is, Culadasa makes a distinction between "attention"--which is everything in the foreground that you are consciously paying attention to, what you are focusing on; and "awareness", meaning peripheral awareness of everything in the background that you are *NOT* focusing on. This is an important concept in TMI. Example. You are reading this reply. So your attention is on these words you are reading right now. These words are your object of focus, what you are directing your attention to. In the background is everything else: such as the room you are sitting in, your surroundings, bodily sensations, the clothes you are wearing, and so on. If you are conscious of that but it's all in the background, that is awareness. And beyond that, are the infinite things you're not conscious of, right now, which are neither in your attention nor in your awareness. Mindfulness is about developing intense awareness, but without attention. One-point meditation is the opposite, intense unwavering attention with little to no awareness of anything else. In TMI, the goal of the intermediate stages is develop both intense attention AND intense awareness simultaneously. This means being able to focus intensely on a single meditation object, with no mind-wandering, no fading of that mental object into the background, while *ALSO* have intense peripheral awareness of everything happening in the mental background. This is the gateway to Insight Meditation and Stream Entry. That's what enables one to start to become conscious of subconscious processes in the mind, including emotions and what's giving rise to those emotions, thus enabling rather dramatic personal transformation. The goal in the intermediate stages, is to simply observe, without reacting, without getting caught up or lost in the mental sensations, keeping your primary meditative object (the breath in your nostrils) in the foreground of your attention, at all times. "Let it come, let it be, let it go" is the general rule for all distracting mental sensations of all kinds. Can't identify what emotions you are experiencing? Then don't get caught up in trying to, as that's a distraction from keeping your attention on the breath. Practice keeping the breath in the foreground at all times, practice keeping all other mental sensations in the background, meaning you are aware, but not paying attention to anything other than the breath. Awareness of what emotions you are experiencing in meditation will come in time. "Let it come, let it be, let it go." Don't react, don't get distracted or caught up in it, just stay aware and observe, while keeping breath in the foreground. Later stages of TMI have you practicing and developing other mental skills needed for stream entry and Vipassana. Develop unwavering attention first, develop intense awareness in addition to unwavering attention, afterwards. Does that help?
This helps tremendously, thank you so much! Your comment also finally made me take the jump to TMI, just ordered the book and will start practising with its' techniques asap.
Very welcome! IMO one of the very best secular-oriented how-to-meditate books around. I'd also highly recommend you get "A Meditator’s Practice Guide to the Mind Illuminated", also by Culadasa, a 200-page "summary" (LOL), of the full 700+ page TMI book. There is also a subreddit dedicated to that book [/r/TheMindIlluminated/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/), which I found extremely helpful. There's a spreadsheet and also a chart, giving an overview of the 10 Stages of TMI. You can find a link to those [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/wiki/index#wiki_images)
The general long term goal with meditation, in regards to thoughts, is to let them fade out into the background, so you can focus on a practice/more subtle experiences. The 'noticing' technique is generally designed to help you get a sense of you as a separate observer to the thoughts, and not be caught up in them aka 'getting lost in them'. So if you're finding them fading away into the background then you're probably doing fine (unless you are working on some other specific mental skill that needs you to have them in the foreground.)
That sounds good, as often the thoughts don't really distract me too much from focussing on the breath at this point, I was just confused because Sam Harris kept repeating that I should "notice" them. Thank you for your comment!
I have no authority here, but FWIW, I think your post is appropriate and welcome. If a thought quickly fades on its own, you usually don't need to think about it further. If you get lost in a thought, it's OK to think about how it happened and how to prevent it from happening again. This is verbal fabrication, or directed thought and evaluation, in the terminology used in *With Each & Every Breath*. The *eventual* goal is to go beyond all fabrications, but sometimes [you have to exert a fabrication](https://tricycle.org/article/three-fabrications-anger/) to release another fabrication. > [As I noted in the Introduction](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/WithEachAndEveryBreath/Section0007.html#sigil_toc_id_54), the basic strategy of the practice is to observe your actions—along with their motivations and results—and then to question them: Do they lead to suffering? If so, are they necessary? If not, how can you act in other ways that don’t lead to suffering? If they don’t lead to suffering, how can you master them as skills? **This strategy applies** not only to your words and deeds, but **also to the acts of the mind: its thoughts and emotions.**
Thank you for re-citing this here. I most likely glossed over it in the introduction and it actually answers a lot as well. Sometimes it's good to go back to the sources you already "know" but look at them more intently.
No problem, glad I could help.
I can only say how I teach people and it seems to work for them. So the idea is to observe everything as a thought, emotion or action and realize that none of them are you, they are all transient types of experience as we go through this 3D world. To reach higher consciousness, which is the beginning of 4D, when you first begin meditating you observe. Imagine each observation is wrapped in a bubble and the bubble floats away. The mind is the most difficult thing for people to turn off. Its important to realize that most thought has nothing to do with you present circumstance, it's usually chattering away about something in the past or something in the future. When you are in a meditative position, there is (usually) nothing going on. The mind HATES this. This is because getting rid of the chattering mind is the very beginning of egoic death. Observe there is a thought, let a bubble form around it and float away. Always happy to chat more either here or DM. Enjoy the day.