Open Awareness

“The suffering and stress that mindfulness practice is meant to help address is less about how things are and more about our relationship to how things are. Fortunately freedom is not as much about what is happening in the world or within us, but more about how much freedom we have in relating to what is happening.” -Gil Fronsdal

Theory

Often, the start of a Mindfulness Meditation begins with focusing on bringing attention to the breath, feeling the physical sensations of breathing, and using them as an anchor for grounding Awareness into the present moment. When attention inevitably drifts away, is drawn away or gets lost or caught up in something else, the attention is gently brought back to focusing on the anchor of your choice. With practice that strengthens and stabilizes attention and an increased ability to notice what is happening without getting lost in it, you can begin to let the attention move or float to whatever calls it without necessarily returning focus back to the breath. The breath can always be used as an anchor to the present moment, or you can practice Open Awareness (sometimes called Choiceless Awareness).

With Open Awareness, you let the focus of attention move or float to whatever calls to it. You explore it with openness and curiosity. If you get caught up or lost in it, you gently move the attention away from that and let it float until it becomes interested in something else. This is called Open Awareness because it is open to whatever without getting lost. It is sometimes called Choiceless Awareness because it feels as if the attention goes wherever it wants to go, not directed by us. No focus is chosen by us. With Open Awareness you might notice "everything" all at once, or this specific thing, then that, then another. Within your awareness you may notice:

• breathing happening, sensations in the body happening, emotions happening, and thoughts happening, and,

• the quality of the breathing happening, the quality of sensations in the body happening, the quality of emotions happening and the quality of thoughts happening, and,

• our relationship (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) to the qualities of and happenings of breath, sensations in the body, emotions and thinking, and,

• that all of these are interrelated and always moving, changing, transforming – alive.

Practice

Begin with Mindfulness of Breath Meditation. Once you feel “settled”, let the focus of attention move from feeling the breath to open, choice-less awareness. Let attention go to whatever calls to it. Remember to pay attention to whatever it is you are thinking, feeling or sensing. Be open. Be curious. Explore. Whenever the attention gets lost or caught up in whatever it's focused on, you can either:

Disengage the attention from whatever has captured it and let it float to whatever else calls to it.

OR

Bring the attention gently back to the breath. Sustain it on the breath until the attention feels focused and stable, then let it go again to whatever calls to it.

If the attention returns somewhere it's been before, be sure you don't just become lost in it. Explore a different aspect of this "same" place. For example, if attention keeps returning to the content of thinking, a story or scenario playing out, when you disengage attention and it returns, then bring the focus of attention to another aspect of thinking. Instead of the content of the thinking, the story or scenario, focus on a quality of the thinking such as the intensity or duration or emotions happening at the same time or physical sensations happening at the same time. If the attention doesn't feel "free" or "floating," then bring it back to the breath and use the sensations of breathing as the anchor to the present moment.