Exploring What It Means To "Pay Attention" | A Meditation Party Retreat Bonus With Jeff Warren
This episode features a guided meditation by Jeff Warren, focusing on settling the mind and finding an anchor, followed by a discussion with Dan Harris and Sebene Selassie about common meditation challenges like goal-orientation and the changing nature of practice.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to the Guided Meditation and Post-Practice Discussion
Importance of Settling and Stabilizing the Mind
Choosing a 'Home Base' or 'Anchor' for Attention
The 'Sinking In' Quality and Absorption in Practice
Finding the 'Sweet Spot' of Right Effort in Meditation
Guided Practice: Setting Posture and Initial Settling
Guided Practice: Exploring Breath and Body Sensations as Anchors
Guided Practice: Expanding Attention to Space and Sounds
Guided Practice: Cultivating Leisurely Attention and Acceptance
Post-Meditation Reflections: Dan's Experience with Sleepiness
Overcoming Goal-Orientation and Striving in Meditation
Meditation as Building Capacity for Life's Experiences
Extending Awareness Beyond Formal Sitting Practice
Balancing Long-Term Intention with Short-Term Acceptance
5 Key Concepts
Settling/Grounding the Mind
This is a preliminary focus in traditional meditation aimed at stabilizing the mind before moving into insight practices. It helps to quiet the 'noise' of everyday thoughts and worries, creating more capacity for clarity and deeper awareness.
Home Base / Anchor
A chosen object of attention in meditation that is simpler, more steadying, or comforting than one's worries. Examples include the breath, specific body sensations, or sounds, serving as a focal point to return to when the mind wanders.
Sinking In (Shamatha)
A sensual quality that emerges through consistent practice, where one's interest naturally flows into the chosen anchor. This process allows the 'real estate' of the object of attention to expand, leading to a taste of absorption and a pleasurable, focused state.
Right Effort
The optimal balance in meditation between deliberate vigilance and leisurely relaxation. It involves avoiding excessive straining, which can be counterproductive and lead to restlessness, and instead finding a gentle, sustained presence.
Meditation as Cardiovascular Health
An analogy suggesting that consistent meditation practice, regardless of the specific experience in any given session, builds a deeper, long-term capacity to be present with and navigate all aspects of life, similar to how physical exercise builds cardiovascular fitness.
6 Questions Answered
Settling, grounding, and stabilizing the mind is a preliminary focus in traditional meditation to gain more capacity for insight and clarity, making it easier to notice mental nuances amidst everyday busyness.
Choose something simple, steadying, or comforting that isn't your worries, such as a body sensation (breath, warmth in hands, feet on ground), sounds, or even the visual field behind closed eyes, opting for what feels settling or interesting without striving for perfection.
'Sinking in' is a quality that emerges through practice where your interest flows into your chosen anchor, allowing its 'real estate' to expand and potentially leading to a taste of absorption or a pleasurable, focused state (shamatha).
Avoid straining, as it creates restlessness and distractibility. Instead, find a 'sweet spot' between deliberate vigilance and leisurely relaxation, like a 'Jedi way' of presence combined with a 'fisher person' vibe of unhurried patience.
Recognize that the experience of meditation constantly changes; the true measure of success is how you are in your life, not specific feelings during a sit. Accept where you are in each moment and understand that practice builds a deeper capacity over time, like cardiovascular health.
Practices like walking meditation, relational practices, or insight dialogue help extend awareness off the cushion into daily life, allowing the understanding and presence cultivated during sitting to be integrated into interactions and movement in the world.
27 Actionable Insights
1. Choose Attention Wisely
Deliberately choose where to place your attention, focusing on steadying or comforting things instead of worries, because what you attend to ultimately shapes your life.
2. Accept All Experiences
Practice meditation by accepting and welcoming all aspects of your current experience, whether it’s a busy mind, few feelings, stable attention, or distractibility.
3. Adopt Easygoing Attitude
Cultivate an easygoing, non-strict attitude towards your meditation practice, welcoming external sounds and internal sensations without bracing against them or engaging in internal battles.
4. Hold Intentions Lightly
Maintain a lightly held aspiration or intention for your practice, but avoid becoming overly attached to achieving specific progress in any single meditation session or retreat.
5. Cultivate Practice Pleasure
Connect to the inherent pleasure of the meditation practice itself, sitting for its own sake rather than seeking immediate rewards or specific outcomes.
6. Balance Effort in Practice
Avoid excessive straining or effort in meditation, as it creates restlessness; instead, find a sweet spot between deliberate vigilance and leisurely relaxation, like tuning a string.
7. Prioritize Mind Settling
Focus preliminarily on settling, grounding, and stabilizing the mind before moving into insight or mindfulness, as this builds greater capacity for clarity.
8. Use Breath for Posture
As you breathe in, stretch up or out to lift the spine and find alertness; as you breathe out, allow for a downward motion, settling and arriving in the present moment.
9. Extend Out-Breath to Settle
If you feel keyed up or energetic, extend your out-breath slightly to promote a feeling of settling and relaxation as the diaphragm relaxes.
10. Select a Home Base Anchor
Choose a simple ‘home base’ or ‘anchor’ for your attention that is not your worries, especially if your mind has a lot of momentum.
11. Diverse Anchor Options
Select a settling anchor point like body sensations (warmth in hands, feet contact), sounds (tones, hums, birds), or visual sensations (back of eyes), avoiding the breath if it causes anxiety.
12. Feel Ground Contact
Notice the simple sensation of your body making contact with the seat or ground, as this can serve as a profound and supportive anchor point.
13. Practice Sinking In
Engage in ‘sinking in’ to your chosen anchor by letting your interest flow into it sensually and without straining, allowing your attention to expand within that object.
14. Accept Split Attention
Understand that meditation doesn’t require perfect focus or the disappearance of thoughts; split attention between your anchor and thoughts is normal and acceptable.
15. Cultivate Unhurried Attention
Foster an unhurried, leisurely quality in your attention, allowing your chosen anchor to come to you rather than forcefully seeking it.
16. Expand Attention Broadly
If you prefer a wider focus, open your attention to include sounds in the space or the sense of space itself, with or without your body at the center.
17. Count Breaths to Settle
To help settle the mind, count your breaths by assigning a number (one to ten) to each out-breath, then repeating the cycle.
18. Let Go at End of Sit
For the final moments of meditation, practice letting go of all specific focus and simply ‘be’ as you are, coasting on the existing momentum.
19. Permit Sleepiness
If sleepiness arises during meditation, give yourself permission to fall asleep and avoid struggling against it, as this can paradoxically make it less likely to occur.
20. Return to Body from Inquiry
If intellectual inquiry in meditation feels dysregulating or restless, try backing off and coming into your body without making it ‘a big deal.’
21. Enliven Checked-Out Practice
If you are overly relaxed or checked out in meditation, try incorporating more deliberate, animated inquiry or curiosity to enliven your practice.
22. Observe Worries Objectively (Advanced)
As an advanced practice, observe worries as a meditation object, noticing their qualities (voice, pauses, tone) rather than getting lost in them unconsciously.
23. Self-Attune Your Practice
Approach meditation as a process of self-attunement to discover what your unique system and body need, rather than strictly following universal instructions.
24. Evaluate Practice by Life Impact
Evaluate meditation success by its positive impact on your daily life, not by specific experiences during a sit; consistent practice builds capacity to engage with life.
25. View Practice as Lifelong
View meditation as a lifelong practice with changing seasons; consistently returning to it over time builds a greater capacity to be present with all experiences.
26. Integrate Walking Meditation
Incorporate walking meditation into your practice to extend awareness beyond formal sitting sessions, bringing mindfulness into movement and daily life.
27. Explore Relational Practices
Explore relational practices like ‘insight dialogue’ where you engage in conversation with a partner while maintaining meditative awareness, applying mindfulness to social interactions.
5 Key Quotes
What you pay attention to becomes your life.
Jeff Warren
If I fell asleep in meditation, that would be progress.
Sebene Selassie
You will never feel that way again.
Dan Harris's friend
The litmus test of whether a meditation is successful, whether it's landing in your life, is how you are in your life.
Sebene Selassie
You can have a lightly held aspiration, intention, direction, but don't get too hung up on making progress in any particular sit or retreat or weekend.
Dan Harris
1 Protocols
Guided Meditation: Exploring Anchors and Effort
Jeff Warren- Choose a comfortable sitting, lying, or standing posture.
- On the in-breath, stretch up or out to find alertness; on the out-breath, settle and relax, potentially extending the out-breath to enhance settling.
- Notice the sense of being supported by the seat or ground as a potential home base.
- Adopt an easygoing attitude, welcoming sounds and internal experiences without bracing against them.
- Explore the breath itself (soft breath through nose, chest, belly, or the whole flow) as an anchor, potentially counting breaths from one to ten on the out-breath.
- If breath is unsettling, explore other body sensations as anchors: contact with seat, tingles in fingers, air against skin, or a specific point like the belly or heart.
- (Optional) Expand attention to sounds in the space or the sense of space itself, allowing the body to remain in the middle or not.
- Cultivate a leisurely, unhurried quality of attention, letting the chosen anchor come to you rather than straining.
- Accept the current state of mind (lots of mind, little mind, stable, distractible) as the ground for meditation.
- For the final moments, let go of all specific attention and simply 'be as you are,' coasting on the existing momentum.