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Meditation with Jess
3 Plays2 minutes ago
What’s the detail of the inner experience of meditating? What do you see while body scanning? How does noticing more details of inner experience alter your beliefs about your mind?
Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”!
Today, Vynn and Francis chat with meditator Jess (also known as Frideswyth on Twitter) about the granular detail of her attention and visual imagery while meditating.
Timestamps:
02:07 Why Jess started meditating
08:24 Body scanning
17:28 Visual imagery while body scanning
22:28 Imagery and inner voice every day
25:16 Horror movies
29:36 Phenomenology of emotion
32:13 Changes due to meditation
36:19 Koaning
40:34 "First awakening"
49:09 Thinking nothing
53:15 Meditation is phenomenology
55:04 Each aspect of mind is already missing in someone
Show Links:
- The Power of Now - by Eckhart Tolle
- Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - by Daniel Ingram
- Liberalis Events - for more about JessCamp
- Tales For The New Future - Jess’ blog
- @frideswyth - Jess’ Twitter
Contact Details:
Please follow us, get in touch, tell us about your inner experiences!
Twitter: @imagine_apple @SurenVynn @frabcus
Email: imagine@flourish.org
Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello
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Transcript
Introduction of Jess and Podcast Origin
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Imagine an Apple with myself, Francis and Vin. Today we're going to talk to Jess about the inner experience of meditation, what it is like to meditate from the inside.
00:00:23
Speaker
Jess actually is effectively the person who introduced Vin and I to each other and hence led to this podcast that even existing. That's true. Which is nice. Well, you you opted yourselves in to an event. So it's very much on the participants as well, I would say. So so what are we talking about?
Meditation's Internal Experience
00:00:44
Speaker
We talk about your experiences, long story short, and how you feel your how you feel meditation from the inside of your head. What is it like?
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because ah it's common for us on Twitter to be really into our like internal phenomenology, isn't it? Because... um one of the things you that come that does the rounds, I think in all friendship groups is like, oh, like, how do you see red or like you have a voice in your head or do you see them pictures or yeah. um So I suppose meditation is actually, it's a journey of exploring that space where like, that's almost, your you know, it's your main focus. It's like, what is happening?
00:01:29
Speaker
in your experience. And um unfortunately, if you meditate a lot, you start like not liking words like inside or in your mind or things like this, because I would say the the boundaries become more and more blurry until they're sort of non-existent. But um I think that there are certain things we can agree are sort of private.
00:01:50
Speaker
I've actually met people who like in theory could like even go into places we think normally are private but normally our internal world is private isn't it and ah and ah and inside our bodies is normally relatively private too like you can't you can't sense inside somebody else's body.
Jess's Journey to Meditation
00:02:06
Speaker
Where should I start? What's your background as how you got into meditation and just your level of how much you've done and might be just a bit Great question. Yeah. Well, I guess like many meditators, my background is like ah intolerable suffering.
00:02:23
Speaker
um and And like, I think that this is common also is um a sort of sense of really wanting to get to something that you could call like the truth. So really like valuing something that you might call truth and and also for me it was um it was very much about freedom um I feel like my younger life was very constricted by sort of lacks of various freedoms and so um my journey has been like trying to reach ordinary everyday freedom like freedom from having to work a job you don't like for example as well as um
00:03:00
Speaker
sort of more buddhist sense of freedom like because sometimes awakening is called like liberation and which is also the latin word for freedom so i went through every other avenue of freedom i could possibly do before before i went to some sort of like internal meditation e type freedom um which is hilarious and it it also took a sort of chance synchronous meeting with a very like interesting person for me to actually be kind of forced into finally exploring like like internal ah freedom or mentor freedom
00:03:39
Speaker
and so at first So a lot of my background, I'm 40 and a lot of my background before this was, um I guess, the sort of a general progression through various other like developmental stages, I suppose. So at first it's like freedom to like be in a friendship group that I wanted or find ah a tribe. So I was very into LGBT stuff.
Impact of COVID-19 on Meditation Practice
00:04:04
Speaker
And then a lot of that comes with like ideological questions as well. And um I went through a process of like really integrating with with an ideology. Mine happened to be like Wokey type. Well, social justice, as it was called then. um And like very intertwined with academic learning as well. So um I did a whole bunch of of that. But. also came to the limits of that and I think that's what promotes growth is that if you find something that seems to work you kind of fully explore it but once you start hitting the boundaries of of where that can take you you then sort of break out into ah a new one so i definitely went through philosophy for quite a long time and then um
00:04:44
Speaker
eventually kind of saw the edges of that. So um it got all the way through to kind of, yeah, the the Buddhist side, which I really didn't want to go to religion, particularly because I was raised in a very strict, a very kind of life denying Christian religion, ah which was the Jehovah's Witnesses. And so the idea of going anywhere near religion was very anathema for a long time. But I finally did.
Meditation Techniques and Practices
00:05:10
Speaker
And I would say the turn, which was quite an explosive turn for me in my life at the time, was um about four years ago now. In fact, the anniversary is in October for me. So we went past the four year anniversary of me really switching when we were having our talk, actually, Francis, last October, ah because it was in 2020.
00:05:31
Speaker
October 2020 that this all kicked off and it was right as coronavirus was really settling into its first winter and so I had a lot of time to kind of be by myself in a small room with nothing else to do except explore like the inside of my like personal experience.
00:05:49
Speaker
So I've been, i didn't meditate in the first year. I was quite resistant. or I did off and on, but I was quite resistant to it for a while. So I would say I've been like really regularly practicing for three, three years, maybe three and a half years at this point.
00:06:02
Speaker
And practice for me, well, like I say, in the first year, I did a lot of body scanning, which I think is actually super important as well. And I went through quite few breakthroughs there where I was noticing. That's what's called Vipassana, yeah? Yeah.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it is the personal practice. Yeah, I didn't know that at the time. I was just kind of getting a bit high and like reconnecting with my physical body, um which was super important because i'd actually had a bad connection to it in the past because I had anxiety. And so um i had panic attacks. And so you you quite quickly discover that there are like mental triggers to panic attacks, but there's also physical triggers. So I had very bad digestive problems and anxiety.
00:06:46
Speaker
ah like the the physical could trigger it just as bad as the the mental could. And you start to see that that's a cycle actually. So doing body scanning was, was me not being frightened of my internal bodily feelings actually. And and then yeah, ah the daily practice after that was, it's pretty much daily. Like um I managed to do like one sit a day probably. And then I've only done one or two retreats, like one or two online. And then I've done one in-person seven day silent retreat. And i've actually just come off of retreat, but I was hoping to organize it. So I did actually do three hours of sitting a day, though, even though I was also,
00:07:24
Speaker
dealing with all the practical aspects of a retreat. So I was looking after everyone's food. I was looking after all of those things that you want to not have to look after while you yourself are meditating. So I had to like, you know, make sure everyone went to bed and then they got up and then they had food and then the driveway was clean and that kind of thing. But still three hours a day kind of put me back into this quite intense place about two weeks ago.
00:07:45
Speaker
But generally I would say it's at least, at least a 25 minutes sit. every day, but um gradually as a meditator you realize that you can meditate anytime, right? So those small moments of time when you're normally looking at your phone, like when you're commuting or waiting for the bus or walking somewhere or wherever else, so you end up trying to drop into that kind of aware, ah more aware space.
00:08:09
Speaker
ah anytime you remember and and in fact talking about meditation can be one of those times so I do remember our conversation process was quite psychedelic because the more I talked about my internal and experience the more I was like tapping into my internal experience yeah so yeah I kind of want to ask what you experienced when you're body scanning actually yeah like how you when you say body scanning yeah what's it like to you Yeah. Okay. so generally, because you're um trying to sort of sense out something that you basically can't see, like to to me, the the visual screen, if you like, which is a nice phrase for when you have your eyes closed, but you're not necessarily, you haven't gone to sleep, you know, like, so, but generally that visual screen is kind of dark, but it's available for the mind to like hijack. Yeah.
00:09:04
Speaker
So it's generally a dark space in terms of visual screen, but the mind can sort of propose imagery that appears and disappears while you're feeling into the body.
00:09:17
Speaker
But what happens with the body? Well, I actually did this years ago with period pain, weirdly enough. um So I've already got experience of that. So i was like really feeling into like, what does a pain feel like? Like how much detail can you, discover.
00:09:35
Speaker
um So with period pain, I was focusing on something very, very specific and trying to feel what it was like. And I actually ended up conjecturing a little bit about like, what might be physically happening with what you sort of know from medical stuff about what might be going on. So I had this sense, actually, that maybe things move around a bit um when you're on your period. So and that's actually true. It turns out I didn't I found this out later. But, um but but when I was doing the the main sessions, what does it feel like so? So scanning, it does imply that you start in one place and then you graduate further and further down, you either start like maybe at the head and feel the muscles
00:10:14
Speaker
and the face and in fact you try to sort of relax them and um that can involve also like noticing your breathing so if you focus on slowing your breathing down a little bit um you can kind of relax a bit more and so get more clarity on it so generally you would graduate down the body but I think I wasn't that um I wasn't that are strict. So what I would try to do is just be like, well, when I'm lying down and I'm very relaxed and my eyes are closed, like what is like present for me if I focus on the physical aspects of the body.
Role of Visual Imagery in Meditation
00:10:52
Speaker
And so um quite often there's one or two sensations that capture attention um in a broader sort of empty
00:11:01
Speaker
field. Because when the body's like very relaxed, like there's not a lot of things pinging off, I suppose. So whatever would catch my attention, I would try to notice. So sometimes it's the, you know, one leg is more squashed than the other leg, because you've got your ankles crossed, let's say. So you'd be like, okay, I can sense that there's like a bloom of sensation.
00:11:27
Speaker
And that has a, that obviously that feels like a certain way. And so you might think, is that a nerve thing? Is it a muscle thing? Is something compressed? Is it expanding like along those lines? And what tends to happen for me is that a visual image will also sort of like appear in the, on the visual screen or in the mind's eye. And so you're kind of like, because you, you have a sense of your own body map,
00:11:53
Speaker
But what's interesting is you can make the body map just go wild and and disappear as well, because you normally think, well, you know, i am in my head or many people think that they're in their head behind their eyes, but not everyone.
00:12:06
Speaker
So if it's your leg, you get this feeling of like, oh, it's over there or it's down there or it's like lower than where my sense of self is so you have this like relational aspect almost immediately so if you've got a leg that's under tension because it's being squashed by the other leg that can feel like oh it's down there but what's interesting is that if you have a blank black visual for your body map it might look like a sort of light or a sort of i don't know like um uh
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, I would guess but maybe like little fiber optics. You know, you know, fiber optic toys, they can have little strands and they will have little points of light at the end. So there might be like what I call a bloom, like an almost like a,
00:12:53
Speaker
like in the sea when you have those algae that that that go phosphorescent. So there'll be a tiny bloom um in the visual space and and sometimes it maps to where your leg is and sometimes it's just hanging there in empty space and and the spatial component is actually quite irrelevant.
00:13:11
Speaker
Does it look a bit like the shape of the feeling you're getting, like where the two legs are crossing or whatever? or is it Yes. Yeah. And I think what's quite interesting, though, is that you only have access to like certain points. So maybe there's the point where the leg is touching the other leg because you've got a crossed ankle. So that is a point or a little like fuzz of of light. But the compression might be happening all the way along the muscle, let's say. so yeah the muscle itself is longer and thinner and it's moving out from that point of compression And so they're kind of related. But what's interesting is when you focus your attention, that might become your entire world for a moment. So actually kind of your sense of who you are or what you are is entirely just the sensation. So that can take up the whole
00:13:59
Speaker
the whole sort of like attentional field. And so it becomes very, very big. And weirdly enough, the person that helps to spark this interest, um talked a little bit about how like when you focus in, it can become your whole world. So if you get overwhelmed, you might want to just focus back out and just try to take in the whole body, try to take in the whole room.
Emotional Awareness through Meditation
00:14:18
Speaker
And so you can get away from overwhelm by realizing that actually that's actually a very small part of your awareness. And there are, in fact, much larger parts of your awareness that are available to you if you then zoom back out again in terms of your attention.
00:14:33
Speaker
um so back so that itself is a learning right it's like oh like i can if i focus in it's almost like my entire attentional field is completely filled by this one very small sensation that's in my ankle or it can feel like a very very small sensation far away because this other sensation like let's say a breeze on your face is a much more wispy um much larger much more broad sensation and and then the two have ah a relational context but um they don't have they can be right next to each other in in in your awareness rather than having this big gap. um So the fact that that is very fungible is an interesting thing to explore even just by itself.
00:15:15
Speaker
um So it sounds like you're partly just directly paying attention to the sensing, but you're also seeing imagery related to it and you're thinking conceptually about it as well. You're thinking about yeah the muscle and things. So when the ring blows on your face, do those all come in as well in a different form? It does. Yeah, i actually, my mind is very powerful. So it kind of comes in whether I want it to or not. Both the visual overlay to try and sort of sense make about what what you're paying attention to. And then also, yeah, a conceptual overlay can also come in and sort of helpfully or unhelpfully be like, oh, that's the X muscle or that's the trapezius. Or you get a little flash of like ah but an anatomy textbook or something and and, you know, kind of locate what that must be if you're on a picture of of anatomy or something like that. But those come and go pretty fast, I would say. And you'll keep trying to redirect your attention back to the physical. But these these little visual overlays kind of like pop in and out. um Yeah. Without without agency.
00:16:13
Speaker
I've yeah, I've learned a lot already because so I spent 10 days doing silent meditation in India, like a Vipassana type thing. And I don't have an imagination. and But also I thought part of the point was not to be doing anything except the sensory perception. Right. So so other even conceptual thinking, i would be like not suppressing, but, you know, letting not be there and letting my attention just be on the sensations. Yes. Which is kind of quite very different, but kind of boring in a different way as well. And not really not really engaging the mind in the way you are, which is really interesting. It's very different.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I think I've seen it as a problem in the past and then I've tried to let it be like not a problem. It's just sort of there. um But yeah, it's it's I think like being able to direct your attention is one of the things you're practicing in meditation is like, can you just choose a thing and like go back to it rather than be constantly distracted by other aspects of your experience?
00:17:12
Speaker
um So, yeah, can you have like a meta view so that some part of you at least continues to redirect experience when it gets distracted into other parts that are not the the focus of the attention for that sit? Yeah.
00:17:25
Speaker
But it's difficult. Yeah. Vin? So you said that your mind throws visual imagery at you without your volition. um Yes. Could you like describe what that feels like when when you know something, does it come at you without without any prompting on your part? Or does it just feel like there's part it's partly you and partly you have no control of it?
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think basically it's a habit, um which might take an entire lifetime to break. um So in some sense, it's me, um but I think it's more um a habitual kind of subroutine that got laid down when I was very, very, very young. And it's been perpetually on the whole time. And that's what my system thinks I'm like requesting. So like whenever I'm doing anything, I think the mind is like, oh, me, me, me, you know, like,
00:18:20
Speaker
So it does feel very unbidden, like very, very unbidden. um
00:18:26
Speaker
But cat, you know, can can appear and disappear. So um I think one another thing that meditation sort of trains is like being able to catch very short um sensations. And so I think a lot of these, it does feel like my entire attention just gets hijacked. So i I switch from the body field to the visual screen and this like television screen, if you like flashes a sort of,
00:18:49
Speaker
fairly detailed blaring image um of um of a picture of some kind um and then it disappears again and then it might be replaced by another and another and another but um not always and so it kind of flashes in but it's gone again so you can basically ignore it in a way because it's so fast that I think maybe a non-meditative wouldn't even know it's happening actually ah you wouldn't even be able to spot it um but I've done a lot of contemplative practice that isn't meditating so I was a life model for a long time so you have to sit perfectly still and keep your eyes perfectly still and I did that for over a year so you've got 45 minutes of staring at the floor listening to people drawing you yeah and you're not allowed to move your eyes so I did a lot of that and I've also done a lot of um just staring at the visual screen
00:19:34
Speaker
um while I was high actually, but like you can kind of get like speckles or in your physical vision, I would say like, you know, it's it's your eyes being like, oh, like we're awake, but um but there's no like content. So it kind of the top down processing, I think is probably the best way to describe it. It's sort of flashing little lights and stuff being like, wait, you know, are there colors? is Is there a shape here? And you can actually watch those and encourage those. And I recommend that. And in fact, um sleep deprivation and drugs and various other things can make those more coherent and more like bright.
00:20:04
Speaker
and patterned so that's fun ah but but sometimes it's what I call the conceptual mind which is it's it hijacks the visual field but it's not your actual eyes yeah um it's it's somehow it's the the mind it's just sort of presenting an image to you as I think it's sense making yeah yeah so this leads me to my next question which is okay does your body scanning gradually like evolve into mental scanning
00:20:31
Speaker
Ooh, when I'm body scanning, no, I do try to bring it back to the body over and over. and But I can't stop that visual screen from just... popping in.
00:20:44
Speaker
So I'll have some imagery of some kind, like almost all the time. it's It's just, yeah, it's always it's always popping in. So maybe I'll get a minute of, especially if something new it happens maybe. like So yeah, like I was focusing on my ankle being squashed. So then a breath of air goes across the face. And I'll have like, sometimes I have um a visual image of my own face um from the outside. pop in and it will like be the correct side in terms of where I felt the the breeze and also what another thing I noticed was it will have a very certain angle from which I am seeing this like image of my own face which is normally inaccurate um but it's it's broadly accurate but sometimes it has the wrong hairdo sometimes
00:21:30
Speaker
you know, the actual external things that I can't feel are like obviously in the wrong place. But but yeah, so that's a good example of another visual thing that comes in is like what i would look like if an observer was looking at me, which is interesting, or just the side of the side of my face. um And quite often, yeah for very often it used to be this side on the right hand side. And really recently as actually so like sometimes the left hand side comes in, which I sort of take to be a hemisphere thing actually, could so the right hemisphere. is the left hand side of the face and the left hemisphere, I think is mapped in most people's brains to the right hand side of the face. And I'm a very like, I was a very left hemisphere person. So I'm actually very happy that the image of the right hand side of my face and like the the viewer is like sort of here, down here. um
00:22:19
Speaker
That's actually started coming in more, which I think is actually a fruition of practice, which is awesome. where like the right hemisphere is allowed to look in sometimes. So it sounds like you have a very visual imagination. So in a way you're quite phantasic, if you're like familiar with that term.
00:22:36
Speaker
I am familiar. And yes, I am, except I've actually improved it over my lifetime. hyper phantasic. Yeah, well, I never really, i don't, well, I don't, I don't, didn't used to be.
00:22:48
Speaker
um And it started happening, I think, with a fine art degree, a visual arts degree. I noticed it with coding um where I would end up with this, but coding is extremely abstract. So I'd end up with this like blank visual field, but, and there's more of a feeling to it when it comes to coding, which is interesting.
00:23:06
Speaker
um But I think I've improved it over time, basically with with practice. and i would I think a lot of my memories are visual as well.
00:23:17
Speaker
Like I'm able to to conjure visual memories quite easily now but like I say I do think the the years of focus on visual phenomena and and after I did my fine art degree I was a photographer for a while I think it actually strengthened it does it come with say the background like so it becomes like a video and and so just like visuals only uh no okay so this is a great question so not necessarily but I have an extremely extremely strong inner monologue like extremely like it's pathological
00:23:51
Speaker
So the audio that I hear is typically a voice that is my own voice. And sometimes it's singing a song, like you've got a song stuck in your head, in which case it's a fairly fidelitous version of the song. So it's like I'm listening to the song, even though I can't hear it.
00:24:10
Speaker
So that must be playing from memory in some way. um that has the instruments of someone playing it, or it just has you singing it? Yep, it has the instruments, yep. um And it has them singing it, not me. So like the the voice of the singer, if I've heard the song many times, it would be like their voice.
00:24:28
Speaker
And oh, yeah And when I'm reading novels, I actually okay this is one of the first things probably i ever noticed when I was 18. I read American Psycho and that has an extremely strong character's narration voice. And of course, that character is a sociopath and is possibly insane.
00:24:46
Speaker
So I noticed that after reading the book for an hour or something, my inner monologue would switch to Patrick Bateman's style of inner monologue. And I was like, oh, my God, like, you know, art can get inside your head, basically, was was the revelation that had there. And it would take a little while for it to to disperse, like probably half an hour to an hour before um a more neutral kind of inner monologue would come back.
00:25:11
Speaker
So that that kind of like reminds me of another interview we did with someone who ah who can't watch horror shows or scary movies because it's too overwhelming. um And it's because like their imagination just goes wild. And I wonder if you experienced this. this Is this something like, oh, and this is like too overwhelming. Art really gets inside of me, and that's why I can't read any ah details that are too graphic or watch movies that are two too much.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah. There was a time in my, but before my early twenties when I would just watch anything and it was kind of fine. Like somehow I just had this extremely robust, um, oh, well that's not real and I'm me and that's fine.
00:25:56
Speaker
But, um, yeah, in my mid twenties, I actually developed the like anxiety disorder. Um, so uh again probably facilitated by drugs um but uh i i think i just came across um this like concept that like my inner world which i hadn't even looked at in the past or i hadn't questioned i suddenly realized it would end that i would die um so the form that my anxiety took was death anxiety so after that i became extremely sensitive
00:26:29
Speaker
um to horror movies, mainly because of the content, because of it bringing up these topics, which I wanted to try to avoid in order to not have a panic attack. And then for a while I was kind of numbed out and so could watch these like movies, but the violence was so, so bad. I actually watched um No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers movie, which is about a serial killer. And oh man, i I watched it and like it was half dissociated and a half like really feeling it and just in this very strange place where i was like enduring, um, the film.
00:27:07
Speaker
But in general, I've, I've struggled with low affect emotionally. So in general, I love, love, love movies because I like to have my emotions, um, sort of incited. i like to be carried away by characters and a story.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I like to experience, um, emotions or emotional reactions to contexts that I haven't had before. And yeah, I was pretty low affect as a child. So One of the things I really liked is like families, for example, like how do they interact with each other? Like, what does love feel like in a family or like, what does a noisy family feel like? Cause mine was very quiet and, and I was, yeah, I very much, I very much enjoy like romance movies, feelings of love, like stuff like that. Yeah. But by low affect, do you mean you don't experience emotion often or? Yes. Yeah. I felt very numbed out in my teenage years and my, and my whole twenties as well, actually. And I actively worked on it for my entire twenties to try and, ah bring it back. But yeah, like, um, I didn't know what i liked. I didn't know what i wanted.
00:28:12
Speaker
um Yeah, that there was very low variance, on except for, well, I had relatively sad feelings, but they were mostly numbed and and suppressed. So I would say I was depressed.
00:28:24
Speaker
um And the highs were very blunted. Like there weren't many highs or like a high would come in, but then
Expanded Awareness and Sensory Experience
00:28:29
Speaker
it would be overwhelming. And so I think I shut down from that too. And so trying to like get the, a sense of aliveness back was a project of my 20s for sure. And did succeed?
00:28:43
Speaker
Yes. ah Yeah. And it's still an ongoing project. I think one of the ways you can tell is like if you have like um if you have your inhibitions lowered by something like i think alcohol is a classic one, then how do you behave? Like, are you different or are you the same? And so the difference between just normal you and drunk you can sort of show like are there still emotions that are repressed in your day to day life or something? um And yeah, luckily I'm a happy drunk.
00:29:08
Speaker
So it's actually quite happy feelings that are um inhibited. So having like disinhibiting um substances can sort of show you what can come out of you when you're in less control. I think I was very clamped down and very in control, which was encouraged by both my family and the religion, of course. So i was only being a good girl when I was all clamped, clamped down. Hmm.
00:29:35
Speaker
Did that, ah ah paying more attention to emotion, was there a phenomenological thing in terms of how you feel emotion? Because there's different ways of experiencing emotion. ah Yeah, in in retrospect, I would say I only felt my emotions conceptually.
00:29:51
Speaker
Um, which is kind of sad because, you know, I would profess boundless love to my boyfriend and things like this, but I think it was on more of a conceptual level and it's only in my very late thirties, um, that someone kind of.
00:30:08
Speaker
pointed out that like emotions can be felt in the body. And that, you know, I did feel so emotions in the body, most notably fear. That's very obviously like bodily sensations. And and it goes in like fear can be in a number of places, but I think the stomach is a classic one.
00:30:24
Speaker
um So you can have butterflies if you have and positive anxiety, you can feel sick to your stomach. If um for example, let's say you've forgotten an extremely important appointment.
00:30:37
Speaker
And, you know, your your heart, like people say your heart sinks, but I think your stomach sinks but or your intestines sink or they flip over. So I felt all of those. But the idea that a positive emotion would be in the heart was quite a radical thing. And that was really only barely unlocked in my very, very late thirty s um But you start realizing that greetings card type euphemisms are not metaphors. You start realizing that they're literal. So my heart went out to them or you know, my heart jumped.
00:31:11
Speaker
Like those are physical feelings in the heart space and and that they might live there somehow or be be located there. So I had a lot of negative emotions, and some of which I think were quite conceptual.
00:31:24
Speaker
But you get imagery at all for emotions. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, much less so. Yeah, no, I would say they are, they're embodied, or they're translated into practical things. So like, I think I loved my boyfriend, because he was into the same things as me. So it would be like keyed to, oh I love you're so literary.
00:31:47
Speaker
Like we both read books. I love that that you read books. I love you. But it's all just based in the head. It's all based on, oh well, we have the same interests we are. And I would think that we're the same person, which is interesting. um Like, again, when you look back, you're like, wow, how did i how did i think that way? But um yeah, so I think it is quite embodied or conceptual, but not like visual, which is interesting.
00:32:14
Speaker
So how has meditation affected your experience of like emotions, but everything else and general more generally?
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, I don't, yeah, like I said, I'd already done an awful lot of sort of contemplation, but I think you could probably call it mind based contemplation. and And that has only expanded, which is cool. So but But there's a lot of talk in the meditation community that you that you might want to, like, awaken all aspects of you. And so some people point out other aspects that you could actually work on. So the heart space, which kind of implies emotions. um Some teachers talk about the gut and gut instinct, gut feeling, um which you might call, let's say, the body.
00:33:02
Speaker
And um one teacher I know also has a grouping called the soul, which is... kind of and it encompasses the imaginal but it also encompasses um like i would say almost like spiritual cravings or life journey cravings um which somehow feel meaningful on some deep more murky level that's not just directly related to have i eaten enough have i do i have friends you know am i slept well enough or am i safe but yeah the the changes for me well the i think one of the things is um
00:33:39
Speaker
Spaciousness definitely feels increased. um So what the mind can, well, maybe perceive perceive itself to be, but maybe also like the size, the size of the mind. And now this is where the boundaries become really strange. And so dissolving boundaries is is is one of the really fun things. So I think in our talk, Francis, I was in a very like spacious space place like empty place um and I think it's because of transferring your sense of identity from the mind whether that's voice based in a monologue or whether that's visual screen imagery or conceptual understanding is like
00:34:26
Speaker
if you cease to identify with that and think that that is you and that that is kind of only you, you kind of get more space in terms of like, well, there's much more in my awareness if I choose to kind of expand my field of what I'm paying attention to.
00:34:45
Speaker
and so like one of the huge things that happened for me on retreat actually two years ago was really encompassing the back half of my body. like into a into my conscious awareness. And so that led to a strange fishbowl type feeling where it's like, oh, like the way i described it was my awareness isn't sort of trapped inside of the body, inside the head.
00:35:16
Speaker
My awareness is actually huge, my own sensory awareness. and it And the body, both the back and the front, is inside of this larger space.
00:35:28
Speaker
And so it felt fishbowly because it's like, oh, there's this back part of the world, which I can directly sense through the literally my skin. And also you can conceptually fill in what's behind you in the room and stuff like that. That's a little bit more fuzzy, of course. But anyway, you get access. I got access to like at least two meters behind my body, which is weird because then it puts your sense of self much further forward in your assumption.
00:35:54
Speaker
of of what your awareness is because you were thinking that your awareness starts at the face and everything else is in front of the face. But actually there's this sort of like realm that's behind you that is also inside your awareness. So that led to a sort of enlargening of my sense of um what my mind is capable of like perceiving in terms of sense perception.
00:36:18
Speaker
And on the other hand, in the mind, i call it koaning yourself, which this is when, yeah, if you, if you manage to make up a good koan to make your mind be a little bit confounded for a second. Yeah. And the mind sort of has no immediate answer. um You can kind of experience the inner monologue actually turning off and the visual assaults that I get all the time as well. that They might go quiet. And so,
00:36:46
Speaker
suddenly the mind being this large, empty, cavernous realm, which is available for use, but not currently filled, um was also a huge revelation for me. And this was only last year, at the end of an intensive period of a year of meditation.
00:37:03
Speaker
um So with that one, koan that i used, it might be interesting. The koan that I used was, gone where are, and where is excellent, because where is something you can't really answer. um Where are all the memories from all of my entire life that I've obviously got access to generally, but not, but you know, where are they right now? like in this moment.
00:37:27
Speaker
And if you try and go looking for every memory you've ever had, like yeah my mind at least is like, oh like what? It just stops. It's like, ah like, it doesn't even know where to look.
00:37:39
Speaker
And then after about a minute or two, I mean, the first time this happened to me, it was probably about three minutes long, which is then an ocean of time compared to usual. yeah And what what actually happened was a random memory from some time, random time in my life just appeared on the visual screen. And it was as if the mind was like, do you want this one?
00:38:01
Speaker
And then I, i met you know, I'm meditator, so I managed to just let that pass. And then like another memory surfaced, And it was as if the mind was like, what about this one? Like you're asking for memories.
00:38:11
Speaker
So it offered one, one at a time, but it couldn't answer this question of like, where are they all right now? Because where they all are right now is somewhere kind of inaccessible to like the RAM, if you like, of your yeah you're working awake aware memory.
00:38:29
Speaker
So that was huge for me actually to to actually be able to experience my mind, um, which merges with awareness a lot. So like the, you know, the mind body um as like mostly empty, because if you just sit in a quiet room, you know, the the physical space is not bringing anything to you. There's not much sound either. So you can suddenly see that, you know, there's actually not a lot in the present moment. There's not a lot going on.
00:38:58
Speaker
Like if the mind has confounded itself and and shuts up for a minute. So I think a sense of expansion is is really big for me. But there's a whole bunch of other things too.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yeah, like metacognition, I suppose, is one. Like being aware of what's happening as it's happening. But speed, ah sensory speed is one which, you know, the Daniel Ingram School also talks about. It's like how how many noticings per second can you actually but experience in the moment they call it notice things per second because he really tries to point out that like you can probably be aware of like you know five ten twenty sensations per second um and i think that taking that as a goal is quite interesting it's like how could you even get to that stage and it's like well you'd have to be aware, you'd have to be present, you'd have to be super fast, you'd have to not hold on to any one sensation and start talking about it in your head. You know you'd have to like ditch all of that um in order to get more in.
00:40:04
Speaker
Is that aware of each one in sequence or simultaneously? Well, I believe that's something that Daniel actually encourages is like, can it be in sequence or is it simultaneously? And his assertion is that actually it has to be in sequence. We are actually only single threaded.
00:40:18
Speaker
um So this, so yeah, this is in sequence. Yeah. So 20 in sequence, one after another. off And you can do that. No, like 20 per second is is insane to me, really. But like there are some people who really go hard on this and, and you know, it it makes them wake up like it makes them able to directly see almost the workings of the mind. And I think what it actually shows is the flaws or the fudges of the mind. And so i think because you can see the inner workings more, you stop believing in it.
00:40:49
Speaker
as much or you stop investing your sense of self into it and that's what helps you to awaken is is
Identity Shift and Enlightenment through Meditation
00:40:55
Speaker
that this thing that was constantly going on that you thought was continuous that you thought was you that you thought was um unchangeable or whatever it's actually just like a mess so you've had that experience from some of the metacognition stuff then have you um so me personally e i'm say yeah I'm gonna ask you
00:41:22
Speaker
I might actually have to go all the way to like literally what I've been doing in the last two days. So I've been trying to do what many practitioners would say is either the first awakening or it's even a preliminary. In some very strict traditions, it's only a preliminary that doesn't even get mentioned, but it's the first move and it's the move that Eckhart Tolle did by accident. And he talks about it in the power of now.
00:41:45
Speaker
which is to rather than be what they call mind identified. So you think that you are your thoughts. You realize that there is a version of being present and aware um that isn't your thoughts.
00:41:59
Speaker
And he did it by accident because he said, I'm sick to death of myself. And suddenly he realized, hang on a minute. How can i be sick of myself? How can there be two of us in, in here?
00:42:13
Speaker
um And so I think he more or less was like, oh, one of them is fake. And so he ended up having a weird psychedelic experience all night in his bed, passed out from the exhaustion of the whole thing and woke up like enlightened. um And I think many people would say, well, that's first enlightenment.
00:42:29
Speaker
But anyway, that's what he talks about in The Power of Now is like be with the part of your experience that is not the monologue, is not the imagery. he is...
00:42:41
Speaker
the and it i can And it can only live in the present. Like, it's only there. It's not anywhere else. um And it's not saying anything. It's more or less only awareness. Like, it's it's not the part that takes a half second and then makes a comment.
00:42:59
Speaker
It's the part that experiences in real time, I suppose. So that's why it's called the power of now. And people call that different things. They call it resting as awareness. um And one of the big shifts for meditators is they stop believing that they are their thoughts and their visual imagery and maybe a bit of the senses. They stop thinking that they are that and start to think that they are this like,
00:43:27
Speaker
pure awareness thing okay which is what we are i think i think that's true so i've been practicing with that in the last couple of days so when you're in that the awareness of everything that's happening that isn't the mind so feelings or or you know the thoughts too actually you can kind of be aware of much more of it what feels like simultaneously but i think it's just that that part of awareness is actually super fast um and Whereas the mind is painfully slow compared to um the super fast awareness part of the mind, which kind of explains people who say they don't even remember putting their foot on the pedal but to brake when they saw a child in the road. They didn't even see the child. This is a common story. If a child runs out in front of the car,
00:44:15
Speaker
the foot's on the brake well before the conscious mind is aware that the child is even on the road. And so I think that shows the difference in speed between, i don't know, the reptilian brain, the the danger brain that has to be lightning fast compared to the conscious mind that sits there going, oh, look, there's a child. I should probably put my foot on the brake.
00:44:36
Speaker
So in that context, that is where I've most recently experienced a much faster, frame rate, if you like, of awareness. So just to, yeah, I'm think i'm thinking of it in terms of, so Hurlbut, who's the researcher at Las Vegas University, who we talked about a few times before on a podcast, who studies, like samples people's minds in normal everyday life and feel for what they are.
00:44:59
Speaker
And he has different kinds of thinking categorized from that. And you're talking about, yeah, you let imagery, you're not paying attention to imagery, you're not paying attention to inner voice, right? But it sounds like we might still be paying attention to senses or not. They're sort of ambiently there maybe, but not detail or? Yes. Well, in, in, I know there's detail as well, but yeah, in the power of now, like the question is how do I access that awareness? And so he says to like, be like, go and look at the body, be rooted in the body, um which which is, which senses. So it'll be, you know, the touch, it'll be skin and proprioception and visual touch.
00:45:38
Speaker
um actual imagery rather than mind imagery and sound. So would you feel like emotion and metacognition stuff as well in that state? Yes, because emotions are either a thought or they're a sensation in the body and typically they're tightly connected both.
00:45:57
Speaker
So sometimes a thought causes an emotion to arise. Sometimes an emotion sort of comes out of nowhere and a thought comes and starts talking about it and sometimes amplifies it actually. You can keep yourself in ah in an emotion by having continuous thoughts about the emotion. times If that thought is words, then you're you're no longer, you're kind of then back into not being now, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I would say right probably emotion.
00:46:24
Speaker
But what's weird for me is this is a first step that I've been attempting to make so to make habitual for a long time. But I've also like got a few things have kind of disappeared. So what I find hard for me now is like, well,
00:46:37
Speaker
the the awareness, the bare awareness, if you don't even pay attention to senses, right, which is content, as they sometimes call it. um What is that? Well, the answer is, the answer is nothing, like, or or rather, like, there is not, there is not a thing you can call what that is. um It feels to me more like a sort of empty, and this is, I'm going to use one of the really contentious Buddhist phrases. It's, it's an empty space ready and you know constantly filled with content but it itself is quite hard to define or talk about um it's more like the space inside of the cup than it is the cup but like the space is obviously continuous with the outside of the cup also so like a space isn't a thing um anyway so i find it quite hard to identify with that because it isn't a thing
00:47:33
Speaker
But anyway, I've been trying to force myself these last few days because it's like I keep accidentally re-identifying with thoughts. um And it's like, oh my God, I've got to get out of this. I've got to habitually go somewhere else at least. Then I can like defabricate that as well. Like once I'm more secure. um But yeah, like I walk around with the sense that even grounding in the body is actually you're just focusing on content.
00:47:58
Speaker
the The sensory realm is also just content. um so what is it that can sense all of this stuff you know who am i or what is this so people could progress from this first stage which is sometimes called the i am stage because all you can say about it is just like well i in brackets i don't know capable of awareness um and all of the content is not me because that comes and goes as the buddha says those thoughts come and go sounds come and go emotions come go body feel comes and goes, twinges in the back, you know, it all comes and goes.
00:48:35
Speaker
And yet there is something that is capable of sensing all of that, which kind of doesn't come and go. It's kind of always there. And that's, people point at this sometimes when it when when they say like, oh, like, you know, what is it that doesn't come and go? And I saw that the answer was there isn't anything that doesn't come and go.
00:48:54
Speaker
But actually, there is a kind of continuous sense of awareness, which honestly, you know, jumping to the end, I think you defabricate that as well. But but anyway, there is... Is that similar? So I don't like I don't have mental imagery and other people don't have an inner voice and some people don't feel emotion. and if you go through every every single one of the common modalities of thought, there is a person i know that never has that. yeah And um people have been, some of the people, but sample have like hardly any of them. And it feels like you can just sort of let all of those things disappear.
00:49:24
Speaker
And there's still some kind of, There's still a kind of a thing I do know that gets left, which is like an ambient sense of presence that isn't specifically attending to particular senses or pretending. Right.
00:49:36
Speaker
But just this I exist sense, I guess, and in the world of this. But it's very, that feels like maybe that's a low level of all of the others rather than actually getting rid of them, and perhaps. I don't know.
00:49:48
Speaker
yeah I don't know either because I'd probably need to meditate more. But um I do know that a lot of people who don't have any of those they actually are feeling, they're feeling in their body or they, they cog cognating, cognizing with their physical body actually. And they're just not really aware, but I think that I do it and it's surrounded by the gut actually, or it's like a mixture of maybe proprioception and,
00:50:17
Speaker
yeah, like stomach feel. And that actually there's something fairly strong going on there. And I was speaking with a meditation teacher and he was like, yeah, I think basically those people that don't have an inner monologue or um a visual imagery are probably cognizing with their bodies.
00:50:33
Speaker
And so it's a feel. So it's and the other, you know, one of the senses. um But yeah, if you even got below that, like what would you be left with? And I think the secret answer is actually there that isn't a thing.
00:50:48
Speaker
that That sense of aliveness also can be defabricated. And that's when you really start falling down the rabbit hole. I think that your infinity falling is is what you kind of get left with for a bit because the you know the mind, the body mind is like, no. um Apparently the trick is to think of it as floating and you'll be all right because you'll never hit the ground.
00:51:11
Speaker
And what stage are you at? Floating stage? Well, I'm really trying to just abide, yeah, in that that sense of I exist as an alternative to i am my thoughts.
00:51:27
Speaker
um And I think I've done it before without realizing that's what I was supposed to be doing. And now I'm trying to just turn that into a habit. And I want that to be my default state before I then defabricate that.
00:51:42
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Because this defabrication keeps on going for a long time. I mean, I've read Daniel Ingram's book. Right. There's a lot of, there's a, it feels like there's a lot of richness to how long you can do that.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Apparently forever. And is, i think you're de-identifying with it as well, right? Because eventually you realize that the content is the feeling of I exist.
00:52:08
Speaker
Like they arise together. Um, so there's not actually, there's not actually a separate awareness that is experiencing content. I think you realize that awareness arises with the content.
00:52:22
Speaker
Um, but then it like goes again. And so awareness is almost always pegged on something. But if you'd go into the higher genres, you can, for example, you can experience how like you don't actually have to peg on anything. And then it's as if you don't even exist.
00:52:36
Speaker
Um, So you can go all the way down there, but yeah, apparently there's always like little, so little slivers of bits and bobs happening. I don't know.
00:52:46
Speaker
But yeah, I'm not there yet at all. I'm still trying to habitualize the, I'm not my thoughts thing, but in another way, like I think when I'm present, I'm not identified with anything, like not the body, not sounds, not, not the mind. So it's like, well,
00:53:06
Speaker
how long before I just kind of give up and start, start floating. I don't know. It might click.
00:53:15
Speaker
Yeah. How much a meditation would you say is basically exploring phenomenology and. oh I mean, 90%. you Well, because depends. Yeah.
00:53:28
Speaker
I mean, it's, I think it's all phenomenology and then there's, um, well one One of my questions is, can you verify the metacognition as being yourself? And I think that you can. And so that's a trap as well. But anyway, the metacognition starts to make make you feel like that's what you are.
00:53:46
Speaker
Yeah, so there's two things. So there's the phenomenology. i think to the point of all the phenomenology exploration is so that you disidentify from it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:57
Speaker
And you have to realize the truths that the Buddha says, the impermanence of everything, the no selfiness or no inherent essence of everything and the dissatisfaction of everything.
00:54:08
Speaker
um So that you stop thinking that any of it is relevant. um that's yeah and so that you just say identify with all of it and i think some people really love to see the inner workings of the machine and realize that it's it's all a trick and that's what wakes them up and i think others i mean for me i feel like i would have been obsessed with content my whole life if i hadn't had teachings i would have been thoroughly bought in to the content i would not really have been like oh i'm allowed to identify as
00:54:41
Speaker
the space around all of the content or some other mysterious thing that is experiencing the content. I would never have made that move, or maybe after many years. um I think I just love to identify stuff.
00:54:53
Speaker
So for me, it's the identification where it's like, oh, this is me, this is me I've got a really strong sense of what me is. Mm-hmm. It's fascinating that different people are clinging on to different bits of that and to different amounts. Right, right. kind of thing they have to let go of to attend to the space is different.
00:55:14
Speaker
Yes. According to the person. And it's sort of interesting. It's almost like if joined everyone together, they all know part of it isn't there. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that would be lovely. If we could all just be telepathic and just connect to some very long-lived Zen master, we could all just be like, oh, boof, we're gone. you don't do that all the time. Like, yeah, first talking someone who's anxious all the time and going, oh my goodness, you don't, you experience anxiety all the time, basically. I experience it like once a year and I'm like, that's completely different. And similarly, yeah, I don't,
00:55:46
Speaker
yeah remember faces suddenly or something all these things are kind of yeah yeah it would be beautiful if we could jump in each other's bodies i think it would probably only take seven or eight maybe ten and and everything would be gone someone would have would be absent of of enough yeah yeah yeah i think we we yeah it's like yeah we're all kind of on some cliff face clinging on to different things and then actually yeah if we let go we're floating somehow i just yeah yeah And thank goodness there's so many meditation practices.
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah. This meta truth might finally be available via the internet now. It's like, wait, we're all clinging on to different things. Like, you know, do some general stuff so that at least you're aware of what's going on in your own mind, like frame by frame if you can, or at least quarter of a second by quarter a second.
00:56:37
Speaker
Notice it all and notice which bits you're clinging to. yeah And then do the practice that might help unseat that. specifically rather than trying to unseat something that you wouldn't even cling to in the first place yeah yeah so is there a difference between i mean no one knows what we don't know is there a difference between enlightenment and just being really aware of your phenomenology and fully understanding it in complete depth well and disidentifying from it Right.
00:57:08
Speaker
It's almost getting rid of it, isn't it? And not having the phenomenon of not and being the center. Because it's because because the almost the word puts attending to the content as being the thing that we are, doesn't it? It's like, goes what are we attending to as content right now? that's what What are you experiencing right now?
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think there's definitely the two-step there, I think. It's like being aware of what it is, which is quite a tough step for many people. um And then...
00:57:36
Speaker
not believing that that's what you are. Yeah, that's the two. um and And then you get a lovely paradox come in where like, because you're in a way getting rid of it, it it then comes in Technicolor.
00:57:51
Speaker
It's actually, because it's liberated, it's all allowed and it's all coming and going in this amazing, you know, thing. And because you're not, if you're identified with it, you're gonna like,
00:58:05
Speaker
cling to some things and try and push away other things. So you're gonna mind hole some of it and just be like, that's not allowed, that's not allowed, that's not allowed. So you feel, you might feel like you're losing something or the way we're speaking right now, you might feel like you're trying to become a completely dissociated, um you know, ah sensory deprivation tank person, but that's actually not the case. It's that you're just not attached to all the things or pushing all the things or ignoring all the things. Cause just like, well, that's boring.
00:58:33
Speaker
um which again is very Buddhist, but but still. so but But by releasing that grip, um it's actually all allowed and it's all available and it all comes in and it can be as like you know close to your face as it as it as it is, as it really is. um and And yeah, one of my favorite teachers always emphasizes the lack of separation. Like we think that there's some sort of separation between us and all of this phenomenological experience that we've just spoken about.
00:59:04
Speaker
And there isn't, it's actually all, it's all intimately connected and undivided. And apparently that's very peaceful and relaxing but and like joyful and life affirming and good, you know?
00:59:19
Speaker
So, yeah, I think they're right. I think they're right. Yeah. with that Fantastic.
Conclusion and Jess Camp
00:59:26
Speaker
think that's a pretty good and high note to end on.
00:59:31
Speaker
Agreed. Yeah. Thanks so much, Jess. That was... Oh, thank you.
00:59:38
Speaker
Lightning. accurate Yeah. um will I'll probably yeah get you to send links and ask you at some point where we edit it for things to put in show notes that are relevant.
00:59:51
Speaker
Do you have anything you'd like to promote? We could always add that into the... Well, those who know me, there's know that there's Jess. I'm Jess off camp. One thing that I do that I might promote is indeed Jess camp. It's just a gathering of people who love to talk about this stuff.
01:00:09
Speaker
um And yeah, a lot and be together in physical space so that we actually end up um doing fun things like wrestling more when we're together. So there is going to be one this year. I'm still being coy because I need to,
01:00:24
Speaker
check out the venue but yeah come to Jess Camp um buy a ticket meet your friends enjoy life it is really good i literally went there and started talking about this stuff and Vin was like oh this is really interesting and like he we started talking about the cultural aspects rather than the individual aspects and I was like oh let's start a podcast and he goes great let's start a podcast imagine apples born just like that very yes and energy yeah yeah Yeah, amazing. Amazing. I hope we can actually recapitulate the heights of Just Camp 2, which was a very special camp.
01:01:00
Speaker
Just Camp 3 was different, but Just Camp 4 going to be good again, i think. It's going to be chill. Fingers crossed.
01:01:11
Speaker
right Super. Thanks very much. Thank you. Have a beautiful rest of your day, everyone. You too, guys.