Inner / Outer: Practice Morsels

Meditation can shift perception between inner and outer experiences, as well as zoomed-in and zoomed-out awareness. With practice, it becomes easier to distinguish internal and external phenomena, though boundaries—especially of the body—can blur in deeper states. This isn’t destabilizing and can be reversed easily. Focusing on a small area, like the nostrils and upper lip in Anapanasati, limits distractions and strengthens concentration by providing a stable anchor at the threshold between inner and outer experience.

Transcript

Outer, Inner, Micro, Macro, Zoomed in, Zoomed out, So there's this kind of noticing or perception in meditation practice of whether the phenomena is internal or external. So, We see a sight with the external eyes, The eyes meet an external object and eye consciousness arises and we have our physical eyes closed, But there's still a visual image and then there's the, I guess, Sense organ internally of what is able to perceive that and then there's the arising of internal sight consciousness, Eye consciousness. So, If you've been meditating for a while, You probably fairly easily discern kind of what's inside and what's out to some degree, Then things can get more subtle, Especially when noticing the body, Sometimes the body can be perceived as really having no boundary or the permeability is really great, It's hard to know exactly where the body begins and ends at some point in deeper meditation, It's not really important to know that I think, I feel, It seems, And it's not destabilizing really either because you can easily come out of it and know exactly where the body starts and stops with the skin. Then there's this notion of zooming way in with the observation and pulling way out to encompass a greater area and I think the final little note on this is when doing Anapanasati in a particular way around the Anapana spot, The upper lip and nostril area, One of the ways this can be potentially helpful is there's not this huge distraction or huge range of possibility to diffuse attention and water out, Get lost, Or get super extra interested in all the possibilities and to actually limit those in order to strengthen attention, Concentration, Staying on that surface level of the nostrils and upper lip where it's kind of on the threshold between inner and outer provides a stabling anchor point and stability, Not getting lost in inner and outer and trying to determine is this an inner experience or outer experience.