{"id":725,"date":"2015-05-04T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickhanson.net\/?p=24714"},"modified":"2015-05-04T12:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:00:39","slug":"open-space-mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/justonething\/2015\/05\/open-space-mindfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is the fourth and final post in the series on developing mindful presence<\/em>. Here\u2019s Part One<\/a>, Part Two<\/a>, and Part Three<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Part Three we did a little mindfulness meditation to \u201ctune-up\u201d our mindfulness and concentration skills.<\/p>\n

Now we are going to distill that mindfulness meditation down to its very essence: abiding as awareness primarily, with little involvement with or even sense of the contents of awareness, almost indifferent to them. The focus is on the open space of awareness itself \u2013 which is the name often used in Tibetan Buddhism<\/a> for this sort of meditation.<\/p>\n

By the way, profound forms of this meditation go very very far, and are sometimes associated with the viewpoint that the primordial essence of awareness is \u201cBuddhanature,\u201d \u201cstainless and pure and unconditioned,\u201d and perhaps even mysteriously Transcendental.<\/p>\n

We are not aiming so high here \u2013 instead pursuing the everyday skill of being aware of awareness itself, and being able at will to rest \u2013 for at least seconds at a time \u2013 in such a way that awareness<\/em> is the bulk of what one is experiencing, rather than its contents.<\/p>\n

A few seconds spent abiding primarily as awareness are great! In the beginning, it is normal for that sense to \u201ccrumble\u201d and for the field of experience to become dominated, as it usually is, by various thoughts and feelings, desires and plans, etc. With practice, the duration of your abiding as awareness will lengthen, but for tonight it\u2019s just fine to go into and out of it.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll also note that I keep using the word \u201cresting.\u201d Abiding as awareness is rooted in a deeply rested feeling \u2013 which is of course the epitome of the experience of the parasympathetic nervous system, whose motto is \u201crest and digest.\u201d (Even more fitting, perhaps, is the motto of the Turtle Club: \u201cStart slow and taper off.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In fact, a traditional instruction for open awareness meditation is to imagine how you would feel at the end of a long day of good work, and you come home and just sit down and rest<\/span>. That sense of abandoning yourself to resting deeply, with a related feeling that it is healthy to do so, is a doorway to abiding as awareness.<\/p>\n

Since you are taking your home in awareness itself, the contents of mind don\u2019t matter much. This includes perceptions such as sights and sounds. That is why people are encouraged, as they become more practiced with this mode of meditation \u2013 actually, this mode of being \u2013 to do it with their eyes open.<\/p>\n

Since sight is such a central sense \u2013 literally about a third of the cerebral cortex is devoted to visual processing \u2013 if you can become relatively disengaged from what you see through being deeply invested in awareness itself, then you\u2019ve come a real way. You can experiment with this yourself during the brief meditations we are about to do, and try them sometimes with eyes open and other times with your eyes closed.<\/p>\n

A couple more tips, and then we\u2019ll try it:<\/p>\n