Is It Possible To Meditate Without An Anchor?

In this session we discuss the possibility of meditation without an anchor offering guidance and suggestions of techniques to explore and the benefits. This is a more advanced practice as there is a risk of being lost in thought.

Transcript

What are my thoughts of open awareness meditations? Meditations where there are no anchor. Do I do this? Is it the ultimate goal of mindfulness to drop the anchor and just be aware or present? Is it a step to work towards or something we should practice in conjunction with a narrowed focus? Good questions. I explore this practice but I find it quite challenging. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposely paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment. It is just being aware. In a sense, Yes, Just awareness of what is happening is sort of the goal, Right? That is what mindfulness is and that is without anchor. It is just being aware, Not being lost in thought. But it's very hard to discern initially what is just open awareness and what is, Oh, I'm over here, I'm over here, I'm over here, Bouncing, Right? But are you openly aware or are you stuck in a thought? There have been moments and times when I've gone deep in meditation. I did a 10-day Vipassana retreat where we meditated for 10 to 12 hours and there were moments where I felt this just open expansiveness, Lost a feeling or a sense of self, Lost the feeling of ego and just a presence. Now, Was I mindful in that moment or was that just yet another experience for me to just be aware of and return back to the breath? I don't know. And it's hard to verify such deep levels of practice internally. But what I do know is that for me personally, My practice of daily mindfulness meditation focusing on the breath, Mind wanders bring it back or whatever other object we're focusing upon, The mindfulness practice with narrow focus like you're saying, That produces the most functional benefit. I'm agnostic about the idea of enlightenment, So to speak, Or the ultimate goal or any other sort of deep ending spiritual sort of outcome. If it happens, Great. But every tradition says it's something different and I think it's all sort of fingers pointing to the moon on this potential state. There have been moments that I felt quite and quite enlightened and then I come back to my normal self, Right? Is this state supposed to be permanent? Is it supposed to be a thing that we experience? Is it something that we gradually to move towards? Is it a something that happens all of a sudden or is it a slow incremental thing? I don't know. What I do know is, Is that the more that I meditate, The more that I focus my attention on the breath and become aware, The more functionality I get in my life, The less reactive I am, The calmer I am, The more I'm able to do with my work, The more satisfied I am with my life. Now that is more, I guess mundane, But it is, I think the reason why I and a lot of people meditate. Some people meditate for an ultimate goal. Some people don't, But I meditate for functionality. It helps. It helps with the symptoms of mental illness. It helps us to focus. It helps us with goal attainment. That said, I'm also curious about that space. So there are times where I will practice with no anchor, But I do find myself just getting lost and it's like, Is this worth it? Am I doing it? That said, There are a couple of analogies. There's an analogy of you must use a thorn or like a splinter to remove the splinter from your eye, Right? We're all blinded in Maya delusion and meditation helps us to see through that delusion. So we use the splinter to remove the splinter, But then we have to let go of both and just be. And there is an aspect of that that I see in myself. There's an aspect of going, Okay, Well, I'm meditating mindfully, But there's always more to do. And it goes more than and far beyond just the basic practice of what we're doing here. But I can't speak to that space beyond because I'm not there. And I'm almost sort of skeptical of people who claim to be there because it's unverifiable. But even just saying that, Maybe that's my own inner biases, My own conditioning, My own attachments from the past that I need to unpick more. Do you sort of see what I'm saying? So I guess the summary is, I can't speak to the ultimate goal of mindfulness beyond functionality, Beyond a focused mind, Beyond where we are here. But if meditation without an anchor is something you would like to explore, Explore it, Practice it. There is a technique from Naval Ravinkant called the Inbox Zero technique. And he uses the analogy of a email inbox. And he will set a timer, 60 minutes for 60 days, And just simply sit. No goal, No anchor, Nothing. Just sit for the 60 minutes in silence, Doing nothing. And the goal is just to allow the mind to drift and to wander. And it's almost like that process is answering the emails. Every day we get a number of emails coming in. And until we start the practice, That email has built up, Up and up and up and up and up. So here the idea of that practice is to just sit and allow yourself to reach inbox zero by sitting in silence and doing nothing, Just allowing your mind to wander. And eventually the goal of that practice is just to get to and remain at inbox zero. I've explored that practice and I'm a massive advocate of silence and of just allowing the mind to wander. From an evolutionary perspective, We didn't evolve to have continuous back and forth discussions, Continuous podcasts and tracks and influences and all of these things. We were more in silence. So there is a benefit there as well. Something to explore.

Reviews

I always appreciate your teachings and perspectives.

Interesting idea and not something I had heard of before. I will be trying this myself in small amounts and see how it goes