Getting A Little Deep Here

 "Concentration slows down the arising of these mental states and gives you time to feel each one arising out of the unconscious even before you see it in consciousness.  Concentration helps you to extend your awareness down into that boiling darkness where thought and sensation begin.  In developing mindfulness we're temporarily suspending the conceptualization process and focusing on the pure nature of the mental phenomena.  'I' is a concept.  When you introduce 'I' into the process, you are building a conceptual gap between the reality and the awareness viewing that reality.  Thoughts such as 'me,' 'my,' or 'mine' have no place in direct awareness."   

Whew.  It's hard to take the sensation of pain, for instance, and separate it from the construct of self.  To say that the pain is just a meaningless sensation, just pure energy, and it has no meaningful connection to the experience of existing is a tall order.  We're being asked to separate sensation from thought.  If you hear a dish break in the next room while you're meditating, you're almost certainly going to create a narrative around it - who dropped the dish and which dish was it and how much glass is on the floor etc. etc.  But all that has happened is a physical manifestation produced by your environment; sound waves moved through the air, struck your eardrums, and were translated electronically by your brain into an image, a memory, an event.  The trick, as I understand it and not as I do it, I can assure you that, is to react to the physical sensation without building a story around it.  Now, certainly, one type of meditation centers around listening to a noise without judgment; say, waves on a beach.  Mostly, the idea is to get back, again and again, to the breath.  Sounds so simple and yet it's so maddeningly hard to do.

This is conceptual thinking.  It is not part of a good session of meditation.  And it can be really hard to grasp this construct when it comes to pain.  After all, pain occurs when a noxious stimulus triggers a pain receptor which sends an electronic impulse to the brain where it is interpreted as pain.  It's only painful because the brain says it is.  But can I look at it this way?  God, no, it hurts, it serves a purpose, it keeps our hands away from a hot stove.  The trick, as I perceive it, is to apply this separation to my life.  Really, really hard to do.

Why give into every negative suggestion when all we have to do is tell ourselves it is not, and never will be, acceptable?