Motion Detector Awareness
This past week, while exploring some questions of life with another like-minded individual, we stumbled upon a visual metaphor for the practice of meditation and the shifting sense of awareness that occurs within this practice. We were discussing the popular metaphor of the conscious mind being like a theater and our attention being like the light that fills the stage or the movie screen. Within meditation, we notice what’s on the stage and we notice ourselves sitting in the audience watching. As we discussed this concept, the question arose, “What happens to the stage light when you’re meditating?”
Here’s a visual metaphor in response to that question: you could view the act of meditation as like a dimming of the light. At first, the light of attention is bright and likely is shining on something familiar, a task to complete, plans for later, a replaying of events from earlier in the day, an itch on your forehead. These familiar players likely fill the stage, and we may feel as though we’re on the stage with them. Then, we notice this, return to our basic selves sitting in the audience, and the light dims.
What happens next could be thought of as like a motion detector light. We sit, maybe focusing on the sensation of the breath, repeating a mantra, or attending to some other present-centered happening, and then something unintended pops onto the stage and the motion detector light turns on and moves our focus to it (again likely some plan, worry, memory, pain, desire, etc., stepping onto the stage and triggering the motion detector). This process happens repeatedly, a cycle of intentionally dimming the light followed by some unintended thought triggering it to turn back on, again and again.
And maybe, the deeper you go, the less sensitive the motion detector becomes, or maybe it becomes sensitive to different types of phenomena, dropping through layers of everyday thinking into deeper and deeper basic existential, un-self-consicous layers. And I wonder, if you go deep enough and stay long enough, a natural light begins to rise and begins seeping into the theater of consciousness, filling up the stage and drowning out the need for the motion detector.
What is this natural light?
What is the
light of awareness
like
when you sit
in silence?
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