Exploring Outer/Inner Activations

Previous experience with Basic Mindfulness is helpful but not necessary. Explore both inner and outer sensory experience, and activating inner experience.

Transcript

Once again take a moment to stretch up and settle in.

And for just a moment let's focus with an unrestricted range.

Just sort of lay back and let experiences come or call.

If you wish to label C for anything visual,

That means an inner activation like mental image or an outer activation like a physical sight or a restful state that's visual like looking through things rather than at them or the darkness,

Brightness behind your closed eyes.

Inner or outer active or restful if it's visual C.

And the same thing for auditory sounds,

Mental talk,

Silence,

Mental quiet,

Hear.

These are all things you hear.

You can hear in absence with training as a rest state.

Feel is physical sensation,

Emotional sensation,

Physical relaxation,

Emotional neutrality,

All things you can feel.

If two or three modalities come or call at the same time just choose one to acknowledge and focus on.

It doesn't matter which so we'll call that exclusive emphasis just to keep things simple for starters.

Dictatorialgos Now just for the fun of it,

Let's restrict our focus range to inner activations.

So now C is an abbreviation for CIN,

Which is our in-house term for visual thinking,

Mental image.

Here is an abbreviation for hear-in,

Our in-house term for auditory thinking,

Mental talk.

Feel is feel-in,

Which is body emotion,

Defined as body sensation that seems to you at a given moment to be emotional in nature,

Obviously.

So we're going to focus on the inner system,

And the theme here is untangle and be free,

Or put a little more aggressively,

Divide and conquer.

This is the central insight,

One of them,

Of the historical Buddha,

That if you can fully untangle the sensory elements of selfhood,

Self as thing,

That perception is seen through,

Leading to the experience of self as not a thing,

Which is freedom.

The tangling of the visual,

Auditory,

And somatic inner elements is not just at one scale.

Behind the surface,

See,

Hear,

Feel,

In,

Are subtler versions,

And behind that,

Subtler still.

And these modalities tangle not just at the surface,

But they tangle at each scale.

So actually to fully untangle is a non-trivial task.

But when we finally resolve it into see plus hear plus feel,

The prison of I am-ness goes away.

You might say that the mesh of the bars opens,

And we can now come and go freely.

So this is,

We can call this approach focus in,

Where in is an abbreviation for inner activation.

It's one strategy for liberation,

An early one and an important one.

Right?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Okay,

Good.

Now just for the fun of it,

We're going to explore another strategy for liberation,

Which is the flipping of the polarity,

Focusing out as opposed to in.

This can be done with eyes open or closed.

With eyes closed,

There's just two elements,

Physical sound and the physical sensations,

The non-emotional sensations,

Which is most of the sensations.

Touch of the air,

Touch of the clothes,

The muscles working hot,

Cold,

Itches and aches,

Pressures and pains,

The ongoing physiology of pulse and breath,

Sleepy sensations,

Et cetera,

Et cetera,

The pure physicality of the body is feel out.

Hear out just means not in and not rest.

Doesn't mean it's on the outside.

It's an adverb of quality rather than a preposition of location.

And then there's hear out,

External sounds.

With your eyes closed,

You don't have the see out,

Obviously.

So we're going to start with eyes closed just to make it a little easier.

Now we're going to have background equanimity with in.

In,

What we were looking at before is still going to activate.

It's going to go proactive spinning memory plan fantasy.

It's going to go reactive to out,

Et cetera.

Well,

Let that happen in the background.

Our interest for the next few minutes is just the physicality of the body and the presence of external sounds.

So if you're electing to label hear for sound,

Including the sound of my voice talking right now.

And so here is an abbreviation for hear out now.

And feel is feel out.

That's just your physical body.

So we'll start with focus out with eyes closed.

And then in a moment,

We're going to add see out.

My opening,

But that'll be in a moment.

We'll get a momentum with sound and touch.

So,

Now,

Slowly open your eyes.

And in addition to being aware of sound and the physicality of the body,

Be aware each time your visual gaze,

Your visual axis shifts.

Your visual attention might be drawn from object to object.

Or if it's captured by an object,

It stays in that object but it moves around from place to place within that object.

Each one of those is a new see out.

Once again,

We're taking a passive contact stance,

Just lay back and wait for a physical sight or a physical sound or a physical body sensation to come or call.

It's often the case that two or all three of these arrive,

Arise at the same time.

That's okay,

Just choose one to name and focus on if you name it.

Or if you're doing without labels,

Just choose one to be the momentary target.

And of course,

Stuff will be going on as you're attending to a sight,

There might be a physical sensation but you're totally giving yourself to that sight in that moment.

And then perhaps letting yourself be pulled to the feel.

Exclusive emphasis,

Just to keep the process simple for starters.

And the goal here is anchor out.

Each new arising of sight,

Sound or physical body represents a vehicle that pulls you out of the limited identity of in.

Out is constantly setting us free from in.

If we start to have a continuous samadhi or state of high concentration on out,

We may actually taste that liberation.

It can taste like freedom from selfhood,

But it can also taste like oneness with what was formerly other.

A new relationship,

Not I it,

But I thou.

Sounds good.

짠짠짠 types of sounds.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Remember,

It's merely selective attention on out.

It's not required that we get rid of in.

It's not required that we cease being aware of in.

We might be very aware of the inner system.

But we're not intentionally focusing there.

It's like a redirect on the internet.

The tendency is to go to the inner activation for identity.

It's a sanskara,

Very deep habit pattern.

Probably started when we're two years old.

The terrible twos.

There's a reason for that term.

So you'll get pulled in,

That's okay.

Then you just sort of redirect,

Take the nearest exit,

So to speak.

Maybe it'll be the same modality.

You pulled the mental talk,

Hear out.

You feel in,

Feel out,

You see in,

See out.

Or maybe it's a different modality,

Cross modality.

But you just sort of turn 180 degrees over and over again.

So in is active,

But your background is quantumizing it.

And at some point you may taste a sense of anchoring,

Tranquility,

Oneness.

If so,

Enjoy that.

If not,

That's okay.

It's just an exercise.

Okay,

Good.

Now look back.

We've explored actually four possibilities.

Unrestricted focus range,

Focus in,

Focus out.

Those are three noting practices.

And we also explored working with the inner system,

But instead of passively observing,

We explored actively creating content.

That's four possibilities.

You may wish to weave them in an alternating pattern of sort of a workout routine.

Or you may very much prefer just one or two and you sort of stay with that.

Any pattern is fine.

But for the next few minutes with eyes open or closed as you wish,

Choose one of those four focus options.

Encompass everything.

Turn in,

Turn out,

Or be good.

It's all good.

But be clear what your focus range is and what your focus strategy is.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Reviews

Very insightful. Thank you!

Really beautiful and splendid structured mediation. Brilliant! Genius

Amazing. This will definitely help deepen my practice. Thank you
💜🙏

For those familiar with Shinzen's United Mindfulness method, this is an excellent guide to helping focus on 'in' perceptions in a structured way.

I’d definitely only recommend to others who are aware of Shinzen’s system. While he uses vocabulary that is pretty straightforward, the language is nevertheless quite different from other popular mediation techniques & so can be confusing. As someone familiar with his system, this is a great one.

Really helpful....made me realise the vast amounts of sensory input there is and how important it can be to untangle it and separate out the different elements. I noticed how doing that is actually hard work and takes up lots of effort in working memory. While focussing on specific elements and differentiating between inner and outer...and seeing, hearing, feeling, there is no space left for random wandering. Thank you an eye opening experience that it will be helpful to keep repeating.

Cleared up a lot of confusion and provided great instructions on some new strategies

Another wonderful teacher told me about this great track. I very much enjoyed paying attention to all my senses. I will listen as often. Thank you for your insightful explanations.

Fantastic and insightful. Also brought up many questions for me. Hope to see Shinzen soon to inquire.

Wow! So helpful and encouraging as far as developing concentration. A great practice. Thank you.

Different and eye opening

Very interesting. I actually appreciated being given the time to practice what was being explained. Quite helpful.

Nice thank you❤️

That was very enlightening thank you so much. Namaste
👌I will refer back to this often I would think.

Will listen to this again so I get to grips with the terms. Bookmarked. Thank you 🙏

Learned some new techniques.

Useful way to work on clarity through focused attention on the sensory channels As Shinzen states, untangling sense of self from what is going on. Brought me back to felt sense of body breathing as important anchor for presence.

Analytical method of de-tangeling inner and outer activations. Interesting. Will try to add this to my standard practice.

Before this I found the term "activations" confusing. Now I realize that it just refers to activity in one of the sensory categories of see in, see out, hear in, etc. This meditation helped clarify my understanding.