THE ART AND SCIENCE OF AWAKENING
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
BLAISE PASCAL1
The results are in: meditation is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Its benefits have recently become accepted in mainstream culture. In the very near future, regular meditation will be considered as important for your brain as regular exercise is for your body. My hope is that, following the acceptance of regular meditation, awakening will also become a common, intentional stage of growth—much like going to college.
For centuries, spiritual practitioners and meditators have reported positive changes in their lives as a result of meditation, prayer, inquiry, and spiritual practice. These accounts of increased compassion, peace of mind, and improved focusing ability are now being scientifically verified. Over the past twenty years, research has shown that meditation has beneficial effects on the body, mind, and emotions. Since meditation has been recognized for reducing stress-related symptoms, many health professionals and psychotherapists now recommend it. It is documented that meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and chronic pain; improves cognitive function; boosts immunity; and lowers blood pressure.2 Furthermore, mindfulness practices are effective ways to train people in interpersonal and social qualities like ethics, empathy, emotional communication, and compassion.
However, most types of meditation currently studied are only the introductory practices from traditions in which awakening is the goal. These preliminary practices—like one-pointed concentration and deliberate mindfulness—relieve stress and improve focus. Why stop there? We can start with the current neuroscience research that confirms the absence of a separate self that’s centered in the brain, then explore the presence of awake awareness and its benefits.
The open-hearted awareness approach presents the next levels of practice, which are just as easy to learn as the preliminary practices. Though these next-level practices—awareness of awareness, effortless mindfulness, and heart mindfulness—offer similar benefits in terms of stress relief and focus, they’re primarily designed to relieve the root of suffering caused by ego-identification and to help us access our natural potential for joy, wellbeing, and living from an embodied flow state.
Experts in the fields of science and spirituality, who have been mostly at odds with each other for centuries, are now joining in public dialogues and even common ventures (in spite of fundamentalists in both camps). Some scientists are changing their long-held assumptions about the human mind as a result of research on meditation and brain scans of spiritual practitioners. At the same time, some spiritual practitioners are beginning to go beyond the insular beliefs of their doctrines to open their minds and practices to recent scientific studies; some even participate in research. On a number of occasions when the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if scientific studies invalidated his beliefs, he replied that he would simply change his beliefs.
Scientific research operates through a three-part method. The first part is to objectively observe items of study, the second is to create a thesis and conclusions based on these observable phenomena, and the third is to develop a hypothesis and experiments that test these conclusions. Meditation research unites scientific, third-person observation with first-person reports of meditation experiences. Subjective experience can’t be thrown out just because a third party cannot observe it. Those of us in the meditative field need to separate superstition and pseudoscience from the repeatable and beneficial effects of meditation.
Awareness is invisible, and it can’t be seen by an outside observer, but the effects of intentionally applying awareness can be seen in the brain. Modern technology has provided amazing advances in our ability to observe brain functions. Instruments like the SPECT scan (which measures blood flow in the brain) and the fMRI (which uses a magnet about seven times stronger than the magnets that pick up cars) can give precise images of brain activity and the changes brought about by different meditation practices.
Neuroscience is still in its early stages. We cannot make any exact correlation between current brain studies and occurrences in our consciousness. We still don’t know what consciousness is or where it comes from. The research we’re interested in is primarily the clinical applications: whether meditation practices reduce suffering and increase wellbeing. Even early in this field of study, we can say that meditation reliably offers relief from suffering at many different levels.
Recently, a commonly held belief has changed dramatically: the assumption that the adult brain has little capacity for growth. We’ve all heard the saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” But old brains can learn new habits. The brain has more plasticity, the ability to change and grow, during adulthood than anyone had realized. Repeated activities—mental or physical—can create neural networks that strengthen with use. Pioneering neuropsychologist Donald O. Hebb, PhD, states, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”3 One basic premise of neural plasticity is the now-observable ability of the brain to create new neuronal habits through intentional exercises. The collaboration of modern science with ancient methods of meditation has made meditation available to many people who’d previously shied away from it because of its religious associations.
No one can say for sure whether awareness comes from the brain or the brain comes from awareness. But we do know that awareness can change the brain. Awareness practices not only rest your brain, they change its way of functioning. Intentionally moving awareness within your consciousness will upgrade your brain. Scientific observations now validate the positive brain changes that meditators have been experiencing as a result of intentional training through meditation and awareness practices for centuries.
In all traditions and lineages, meditation has progressive steps, but training styles differ. The open-hearted awareness approach offers a few different ways to begin—each geared toward a different learning style. The Glimpse practices can be considered advanced forms of meditation that are as easy to learn as most beginner-level meditations.
Using the open-hearted awareness approach, which includes practices like effortless mindfulness, you will get the same physical and emotional benefits as people pursuing other mindfulness-meditation techniques. However, by shifting levels of mind, you can also receive additional benefits, which come from the relief of deep existential suffering. In some forms of meditation, you try to calm your everyday mind, but in this approach, you will learn how to shift out of the thinking mind and discover another level of mind that is already calm and alert: awake awareness. Awake awareness has been called the ultimate medicine because it helps relieve suffering and offers us access to a profound sense of wellbeing—no matter what’s happening in our lives.
We have seen how ego-identification is the way most people organize their identities and operate throughout daily life. The creation of ego-identification is so ingrained in our brain that it even occurs unconsciously during our daydreams. A recent discovery in neuroscience has important implications for our ability to live an awakened life. In 2001, Marcus Raichle, MD, coined the term default mode network after conducting an fMRI brain-scanning study. In between taking measurements for an education study, he left the fMRI on. He found that certain areas of his subjects’ brains became activated when they were told to rest or do nothing.4 The default mode network is a system of brain regions that engages in self-referential thoughts when not focusing on a task or the outside world. His first discovery was that our brains are never quiet. Even when we’re trying to rest and do nothing, our brains remain active, usually with a particular kind of conscious activity, such as chattering thoughts and to-do lists. When we look closer, we find a perpetually dissatisfied mini-me is operating unconsciously.
During goal-oriented activity, the default mode network is deactivated, and another network, the task-positive network, is activated. Our brains continuously and rhythmically alternate between the external, goal-directed, task-positive mode and the internal, self-referencing, default mode. If you have ever tried to meditate by focusing on one task like watching your breath, you know how your mind wanders into a kind of daydreaming state. The mind wandering is a particular kind of daydream—one in which ego-identification is the subject. The internally focused default mode is primarily experienced as self-referencing thoughts with the mini-me as the main character. This daydream tells the story of ego-identification’s illusory and impossible search for satisfaction in current dramas or future hopes, and the resulting continual sense of unfulfilled longing and unhappiness.
Psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert conducted a study on the effects of the default mode network with 2,250 students at Harvard University. Using a smartphone app, researchers contacted the students at random intervals to question them about “how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or thinking about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.”5 From the enormous amount of data collected, Killingsworth and Gilbert gleaned that 49.6 percent of students’ waking hours were spent thinking about something other than what they were doing. Research further revealed that this kind of thinking made the students unhappy. The study concluded: “The human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”6
Many people try to stay busy, even becoming workaholics, as a strategy for maintaining a task-positive mode that avoids the unhappiness of mind-wandering. But staying busy is not a solution for the problem of unhappiness. Evidence shows that only 10 percent of our happiness is based on external success. According to Killingsworth and Gilbert, as little as 4.6 percent of our happiness is derived from the specific activity that we’re doing.7
Even if we’re very mindful during our everyday tasks, we still need to learn how to address the unhappiness caused by the mind-wandering of the default mode network. Is the default mode’s self-referencing activity a fixed biological condition? Or is it plastic and able to change? Research shows that the default mode network does undergo developmental change. The infant brain exhibits limited evidence of the default mode network, but in children aged nine to twelve years, default mode network activity has already become more active.8
One potential way to reduce default mode network activity is through the practice of mindfulness meditation. There have been a number of studies showing that the neural activity in a core region of the default mode network—the posterior cingulate cortex—becomes less activated during mindfulness practices.9 Mindfulness meditation practices such as open monitoring, insight meditation, and choiceless awareness reduce the activity of the default mode network, but they do so by observing internal content only. Meditations such as mindful walking and eating, one-pointed concentration, shamatha, and focused attention also reduce the activity of the default mode network, but they do so by focusing only externally, therefore activating the task-positive network. In so doing, these mindfulness meditation practices successfully reduce the default mode network, but they also support a continued dualistic alternating of the two networks. I had an experience of this early in my meditation training.
While I was in graduate school, I traveled to Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal on a fellowship. I studied in the University of Kandy in Sri Lanka and learned mindfulness meditation in monasteries and meditation centers. Being in a different culture and studying meditation was transformational on so many levels. During my first long, twenty-one-day retreat, I felt a continuous state of calm abiding for the entire last week. When the retreat ended, I walked down the mountain in a blissful, peaceful state believing that I might remain there forever.
I got on the local bus at the bottom of the hill, which was packed with people at rush hour. As the local bus continued, more and more people got on until at one point a heavyset man who seemed drunk pushed his way in. He knocked people aside and kicked me square in the ankle. As the pain shot to my brain, my calmness disappeared and I was filled with hurt and anger. I said to him, “Hey, man, watch what you’re doing!” He turned, looked at me, and just laughed. It seemed like the laugh of the universe: “Oh, I thought you had transcended disturbing feelings? Not so easy, eh? Ha ha.” The calm state that took such a long time to develop was gone in minutes.
We don’t want to completely shut down the default mode network because it has positive aspects, including giving us the ability to imagine, free-associate, and think creatively. These cognitive capacities distinguish us from other creatures, as they enable us to imagine future outcomes and plan for them—an evolutionary advantage. If we were to repress the default mode network entirely in an attempt to make ourselves happy, we would lose out on creativity. Is it possible to keep the positive aspects and yet not be hijacked into unhappiness by the default mode network all day long?
One clinical study, in which I participated as a subject, showed that during nondual awareness practices, meditators were able to be simultaneously aware of their internal and external experience while synchronizing intrinsic and extrinsic networks. Nondual awareness meditation “enables an atypical state of mind in which extrinsic and intrinsic experiences are increasingly synergistic rather than competing.”10
The nondual, embodied awareness practices you will learn as part of the open-hearted awareness approach are designed to help you balance the default mode network and the task-positive network, and will help you disengage from self-referencing mind-wandering, which clears up the state of unhappiness and the unconscious hold of ego-identification. Nondual awareness—also called presence, unity consciousness, or one taste — is the experience of awake awareness embodied, where you are aware both outside and inside your body simultaneously. This experience seems to synchronize the default mode network. Your inner world and creativity are still available to you.
We can retrain the brain intentionally to remain synchronized so that we can be effortlessly focused, undistracted, connected, and calm while functioning in the world. When we discover that open-hearted awareness is already naturally unified, we can learn to live from its compassionate view. The power of the default mode network, which unconsciously reinforces ego-identification, can be reduced. At the same time, the positive and creative aspects of the default mode network can also remain available through open-hearted awareness practices.
Andrew Newberg, MD, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, has long been fascinated with the science of brain changes as related to spiritual practices. In one study, Newberg used a SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) scan to look at activity in the brains of meditating Tibetan Buddhists and praying Franciscan nuns. Many meditation studies have focused on the frontal lobes of the brain, which are related to attention. Newberg was particularly interested in the superior parietal lobes, located toward the back part of the brain. These lobes, which he called the orientation association area (OAA), are responsible for orienting us in time and space, among other things. When the parietal lobes are at their normal level of activity, they create a strong sense of a physical boundary and separation from others. The co-opting of the physical-boundary program by ego-identification creates the feeling of being a solid, separate self. Ego-identification uses the OAA to help create the feeling of a bounded self on the level of identity.
From his research, Newberg concluded: “If you could consciously decrease activity in your parietal lobes, you would probably feel a brief loss or suspension of self-awareness. You might also experience a loss of your sense of space and time. We discovered that both the nuns and the Buddhists did just that—they were able to deliberately reduce activity in their parietal lobes while meditating.”11
During meditation or prayer practices, the SPECT scan showed significant reductions of activity in the OAA of participants. At the same time, these meditators reported feeling less ego-centered while experiencing a boundless unity. The changes observed on their brain scans were similar, and participants reported similar experiences of losing the sense of a separate self. Along with the absence of a small self, there was an increase in the positive qualities of unity, alertness, clarity, boundlessness, freedom, joy, love, and connection.
Therefore, when we use spiritual practices that decrease parietal lobe activity, our sense of identity becomes untied from the physical-boundary program and begins to experience our true nature’s boundless condition. It is important to learn meditations and awareness practices that slightly reduce the activity in this brain area in order to facilitate decoupling the normal physical sense of our bodies from our boundless ground of being.
Our brains are wired to focus on the particular content of what is happening and not the context. By opening and looking from spacious awareness, we retrain our brain to open beyond the hypervigilant scanning for potential danger—focusing on each particular movement inside or outside. When you are resting as spacious awareness, one famous pointer simply says, “Don’t particularize.”
In fact, we can experience this sense of egoless-ness and boundless interconnection as a highly functional flow state, like we are in “the zone.” In this way, we shift from feeling that our identity is located in our heads behind our eyes to a more spacious, yet embodied and interconnected experience. As we train in open-hearted awareness, we can learn to feel boundlessness and interconnectedness as our identity, and yet remain embodied and responsive to our physical environment. With the open-hearted awareness approach, this slightly reduced parietal lobe activity does not lead to being spaced out. Instead we feel even safer, and more relaxed, sensitive, open, and responsive—like a tai chi master.
It is important to note that in Newberg’s meditation study, three aspects of experience were the same for both the participating nuns and Buddhists, while one area was different. The three aspects in common were: 1) SPECT scan images during meditation, 2) immediate subjective changes in perception and increased positive qualities, 3) the reported capacity to intentionally access these changes during daily life.
The one major difference among participants was their interpretation of the primary cause of their experiences. Although both groups articulated similar qualities, each used the language of their own tradition to report and interpret their experiences. For example, Buddhist meditators might say, “It feels like I am part of everyone and everything in existence.”12 In contrast, one of the Catholic nuns described having a “tangible sense of closeness with God and mingling with Him.”13 Each person viewed and described their experience through the lens of the belief systems of their religious traditions.
Interestingly, after Dr. Newberg published the results of his study, he received letters from scientists who claimed his research proved their belief in materialism, confirming that all spiritual experience could be reduced to brain activity. But, he also received numerous letters from religious practitioners proclaiming that his study was proof that human beings are biologically “hardwired for God.”
Instead of engaging in discourse about the differences between meditative paths or philosophical interpretations, in this book we’re going to focus on effective practices that lead to common benefits. It has been said that when the Buddha had his initial awakening, he despaired over putting his realization into words and teaching it to others. When he finally decided to try communicating what he’d realized, he used the medical model of his time instead of religious language. He spoke about the way to relieve suffering by asking: 1) What is the illness? The diagnosis identified the illness and the nature of the illness; 2) What is the cause? The etiology identified the causes of the illness; 3) What is the cure? The prognosis identified a cure for the illness; 4) What is the treatment? The prescription offered a treatment for the illness that could bring about a cure.
The Buddhist parable that best illustrates this practical approach posits a person who has been shot with a poisoned arrow. The person could be focused on who made the arrow, what its origins were, or even who shot it; or he could get treatment for his wound first. If he insists upon asking questions about the origin of the arrow before getting treatment, he may die before he receives any answers. In fact, it is said that the Buddha would never enter theological discussions. Instead he said, “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.” The most advanced awareness practices seem to work regardless of belief about ultimate causes. If we can learn the intricacies of our human consciousness the way we have learned human biology, we can reduce suffering and increase individual and societal wellbeing.
Most of the early explorers of awakening were associated with a particular religious tradition. Upon awakening, these inner astronauts described their experiences in their own cultural or religious languages. Because similar discoveries were made in many cultures and religions, it seems clear that something common in human consciousness is being explored. The differences we see expressed are the result of the different languages, cultures, lineages, and worldviews through which our experience is filtered. Awakening is not part of any one tradition and does not reveal any specific religious doctrine. Awakening and awake awareness are part of the human lineage we all share. Everyone can experience awakening and awake awareness while maintaining his or her own beliefs, philosophy, and theology. You don’t have to join any religion, or leave your current one, in order to awaken.
Awakening is part art, part science, and a good deal of mystery. Once we learn the principles of upgrading our common human consciousness, we see that awakening has observable principles and patterns, and is both teachable and learnable. Awake awareness may seem new, but it has been recognized by meditation masters for millennia and given names like spirit, grace, true nature, source, and the ground of being. In the twenty-first century, there may be opportunities to describe this dimension of reality in a new, common language.
It’s been notoriously difficult to describe the nature of awake awareness in language. This does not mean that it is less real or less important. Invisible forces like gravity are difficult to describe, and yet we need to understand our relationship to them. The world-renowned quantum physicist David Bohm suggests that rather than throwing out the word “spirit,” we should redefine it for modern times by going back to the original definition to see why it’s so important. “What is spirit? The word is derived from the Latin word meaning ‘breath’ or ‘wind’ (like respiration or inspiration). It is suggested by the trees moving with the invisible force of the wind. We must then think of spirit as an invisible force—a life-giving essence that moves us deeply, or as a source that moves everything from within. Spirit is, therefore, not manifest. Although unseen and ungraspable, it is of key importance.”14
The awareness that is naturally available to you is dynamic and yet invisibly inherent in all experience. Paradoxically, awake awareness may seem much vaster than you are, and yet it is not “other” than you. Some people have defined the direct experience of awake awareness as completely “other,” by projecting it outward onto the image of a deity or spiritual teacher. Some people mistake it for a quality of their own unique personality. Some people may have missed seeing that awake awareness is equally available to each of us and as each of us. Our most revered wisdom teachers have pointed to this deep understanding by saying things like: “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Here, “within” does not mean “inside of you” personally. It means, “within you and all of us,” like space is within all atoms.
However, in most institutionalized religions, the main taboo is experiencing that we are inseparable from spirit, God, Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, the ground of being, or universal reality. Many meditation masters and mystics were excommunicated or burned at the stake for sharing insights about how to connect directly with the spiritual dimension within us, rather than relying on a religious institution. The Protestant Reformation (which led to modern concepts of democracy) made sacred texts available to ordinary people by translating those texts from Latin into their native languages. However, it often happens that the teachings of one era’s innovator evolve into the orthodoxy of the next era’s institutionalized religious dogma. It always struck me as funny that so many reformers who critiqued and split off from the traditions in which they were raised ended up becoming fundamentalists about their new belief systems instead of being more open to innovation. It seems counterintuitive to discover boundless love for everyone without wanting to share it. Why retain for a small group something so beneficial for the relief of suffering? It doesn’t make sense, especially in these times when helping more people to awaken would so greatly benefit our planet. The challenge now is to find a way to experience these truths directly and to build community while respecting diversity.
Some people who have experience with awakening focus on teaching a few students in their own traditions. Others have spoken in favor of making awakening available to anyone, and have been thrown out of their traditions. Others became innovators inside or outside of their original traditions by creating new models and methods of helping others to awaken. Most religious traditions have kept the higher levels of consciousness to themselves, keeping esoteric knowledge in the fold and feeling reticent to share it with outsiders. Some religious traditions take the perspective that it is dangerous to awaken without joining and going through traditional training.
I was fortunate enough to study with teachers from many different backgrounds who were willing to offer these direct methods freely and who encouraged me to teach in a modern way. My teachers Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and Mingyur Rinpoche gave direct teachings at public talks and to those who were sincerely interested. Open-hearted awareness practices do not have strong energy and physical practices and are not any more dangerous than introductory mindfulness practices. Another of my teachers, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, writes: “The practice of Mahamudra is free from such dangers and complications. It is simply a matter of looking at our mind, recognizing its nature, and remaining within that recognition. The Mahamudra instructions penetrate right to the essence of the teachings, and if they are followed there is no risk to body or mind.”15
Awake awareness training introduces you to the support necessary to deal with changes in your consciousness, and today many people are spontaneously awakening outside of any tradition. It may be more dangerous at this crucial time in our human history to withhold these simple and profound pointers from people than to offer them teachings and risk that they might be misunderstood or intellectualized. One reason often given for why more people do not awaken is that most people have limited capacity. I have seen many people of different backgrounds begin to awaken, and it seems the limitations are not in the student but in the teaching methods.
Recently, many meditation talks have been updated with contemporary metaphors and explanations that speak to contemporary people. My interest has been to adapt meditation and inquiry practices for people in these new times without changing the basic principles. For example, one woman was able to shift into awake awareness—and began to live from there—after many years of meditation study and practice. She remarked, “I thought I had tried everything and that I was dense. This is just a different doorway that was here all along.” It is important to point out awake awareness as the nature of mind, but then there are equally important pointers for the unfolding from recognition to realization, to stabilization, to expression.
These teachings are not just interesting philosophical concepts or wise poetic sayings. They are ways of transforming our consciousness, our motivations, and our interactions with the world. We cannot develop our full human potential if we do not awaken as well as grow up. Today we are in much need of the clarity and love that become available through learning to live from open-hearted awareness.
There are many movements and dialogues between science and spirituality today, including conferences on contemplative science. Books like The Coming Interspiritual Age by Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord describe how interspiritual dialogues are happening more often. You may be part of a specific religion, or you may consider yourself “spiritual but not religious.” You may believe that awakening is a matter of human consciousness and choose not to use the word spiritual in relation to these matters. I’ve seen this work for people of all faiths and no faith. The effectiveness of this awakening process is based on working with your human consciousness, not on your belief system.
The open-hearted awareness approach overlaps spirituality and psychology, but it is an awareness approach. Changing your physical body, your mental thoughts, your personal psychological inner life, or your consciousness are each different levels of experience and require different approaches. This is an experiential approach that focuses on exploring the subtlest dimensions of consciousness, using tools of awareness. Most of the ancient meditation systems were practiced in religious traditions so we can honor them as containers for the flourishing of inner exploration. Some people benefit from joining and staying with one particular tradition. The advantage of studying and practicing in one tradition is consistency in language and system, making it easier to be clear about subtle distinctions. However, you can be at a disadvantage if the methods of practice don’t fit your learning style.
The main role of a teacher is to point you toward your own inner teacher. It was when I learned to look within that awake awareness showed me its own capacities, clarity, and love. It is important to have mentors and teachers who have traveled farther along the path to offer guidance. From psychotherapy studies, we know that transference, idealization, and projection are normal parts of our psychological relationship to a mentor. However, failing to recognize transference or overreliance on a teacher can keep you dependent. Those of us who know people who followed gurus into cults are aware of this potential trap.
Although teachers can share supportive energy, awake awareness cannot be transmitted from one person to another. Awake awareness is invisible and equally inherent within each of us. Whereas energy can travel from one person to another, awake awareness is already everywhere, so another person can only point it out to you. It needs to be discovered and realized by you.
A well-trained teacher can provide detailed instruction and cautions for avoiding traps, and he or she can help with an occasional checkup or tune-up. We can move from authority-based ways of finding truth to learning to look within and seeking methods of mutual exploration and support. Adyashanti says, “The keys to your happiness are no longer in anyone else’s pocket from the past. They’re in yours.”16 Although a teacher can give you a good map and point you in the right direction, only you can make the difference by prioritizing your own growth daily.
One example of a contemporary democratic model for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth is a twelve-step program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, in which leadership and speakers rotate. In twelve-step programs, there’s a set of common principles, but each person is allowed to choose a higher power of their own understanding. People in recovery start as a sponsee and then become a sponsor as a way of mentoring one other.
There’s no reason why awakening cannot be studied, learned, and taught like psychology, biology, or something seemingly ineffable like music. Many kinds of learning are conceptual, but awakening is more experiential and subtle. Like learning to balance on a bicycle, practicing these principles cannot be easily put into words, but it can certainly be learned. Historically, something has been called “esoteric” or “inscrutable” until its principles are revealed. For example, people originally thought that fire came from the gods, or that banging any two stones together would bring forth flames. Eventually they realized that two flint stones work best to produce fire. The science of flight and the ability to perform heart transplants were originally considered beyond possibility, but later a turning point occurred in which their basic principles were discovered.
One way to combine ancient spiritual practice and modern science is to consider everything I write as a hypothesis. I begin by stating a thesis, outlining experiments for you to try, and then encouraging you to discover what is true for yourself. You can share your own reports about what you find, read my reports, and hear the experiences of others. Here is a report from Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist and author of My Stroke of Insight, who describes what she experienced when a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain changed her consciousness:
I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.
But I realized “But I’m still alive! I’m still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.” I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be—what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover. 17
Dr. Bolte Taylor’s initial shift happened unintentionally; she felt the boundless quality that Newberg’s subjects described. Today, her hope and motivation for sharing her story are that people will experience a shift intentionally. The open-hearted awareness approach offers you tools to purposely choose to come into this awake, loving space at any time, but it works best if you are motivated to make awakening a priority in your life.
GLIMPSE 1 Open-Eyed Meditation
Modern brain research tells us that “vision is the product of a complex system of which the eyes are only one part. The processing of visual information—the receipt of visual stimuli through the eyes, its interpretation by various brain centers, and its translation into visual images—has been estimated to involve as much as 40 percent of the brain.”18
When our eyes are darting around or scanning for a specific threat, then we’re on alert. Sometimes our attempts to be calmer by having our eyes be more narrow and concentrated can keep our brain in a fixed, task-positive mode. Learning panoramic awareness will help us drop into a nondual, balanced flow state in which we are relaxed and confident.
There is a Tibetan Buddhist practice called sky gazing. You go to a place with a wide-open vista and become interested in looking at the open space. First you notice the open space in front of you, then within you, and then behind you.
The goal in this book is to help shift to another operating system, called open-hearted awareness, where all our senses and systems—including vision—are functioning in their natural state. In order for us to do this, we need to learn how to shift our awareness and live with our eyes open.
Here are some helpful hints for preparing to have your eyes open while shifting awareness. Throughout the remainder of the book, as you do different glimpses, these hints should come in handy. You don’t necessarily need to experience all of them as I describe them. Use what works for you.
1. Relax your eyes and soften your gaze so that your eyesight is not dominant, and all your senses are experienced equally.
2. Instead of looking through a narrow tunnel of vision or in a pinpointed way at one object, see the forest as well as one tree. Put your pointer fingers together above your head and in front of you, then part them to either side, drawing a big circle in front of your body. Look equally at the periphery of that circular frame as you look at something in front of you. Open your gaze to include the entire circumference all at once so that you see in a broader, more open way.
3. Rather than looking at one object, create a diffused view like a soft-focus lens on a camera by looking to the wider scene of what’s in front of you. You can try looking at the top of a table that has objects on it. Instead of focusing on one object, see the tabletop and all objects on it equally.
4. Extend one hand in front of you with your palm facing you at the distance you would be looking at a friend’s face. Look at your hand and the space around it. Now drop your hand and look at the open space. If your eyes habitually focus on the first object you see, repeat the previous steps until you get a feel for resting your eyes on objectless space.
5. Notice that your eyes do not operate like your hands. You do not go out to see something as your hands go out to pick something up. Your eyes work in a similar way to your ears. Just as your ears are receiving sound, light is reflecting off objects and coming to your eyes. Seeing is receiving.
6. Rest back as the light comes to your eyes then goes to open-hearted awareness within you, behind you, and all around you—all while all your senses are open. Feel like you are equally aware of all your senses rather than focusing on thinking or seeing.
7. Feel like you are receiving light as you soften your eyes while having a wide-open view of the periphery.
GLIMPSE 2 Panoramic Awareness
In this practice, you will move awareness around your body in a full circle, starting at the front of your body and moving to the sides and then behind you, so that you feel and perceive from a 360-degree panoramic awareness.
1. Sit comfortably with your eyes open and look directly in front of you. Allow your eyes to look into space rather than focusing on one particular thing.
2. Without raising your chin, bring your gaze slightly upward, as if you were on a beach, looking at the open sky.
3. Without moving your eyes or head, begin to slowly and gently expand your peripheral vision out to the sides.
4. As your peripheral vision widens, allow awareness to continue to open gently around the sides of your head.
5. Allow awareness to move from seeing to becoming aware of the space at the sides of your head through which sound is coming and going.
6. Continue to open awareness to the felt sense of space behind you where sound is moving.
7. Feel the sense of spacious awareness all around.
8. Notice how your view is open in a panoramic way.
9. Expand your awareness out until you reach the edge of the room. Then have awareness turn back to be aware from panoramic awareness to see thoughts.
10. Inquire: “Am I aware of the field of awareness or is the field aware of my thoughts, sensations, and feelings?”
11. Now, notice how awareness is mingling with space to discover spacious awareness.
12. Be aware that the panoramic field of awareness is spacious and pervasive within everything.
13. Feel the balance of awareness equally outside and within your body.
14. Remain undistracted, without drifting into thoughts or daydreams.
15. Breathe in and allow a smile to come to your face, and then feel spacious awareness and aliveness equally all around and within.
16. Notice how your ears are receiving sound without effort.
17. Notice, in the same way as sound, that light reflects off things and comes to your eyes.
18. Notice how the field of spacious awareness is alive, balanced, and continuous—and that it does not come and go.
19. Notice the dancing waves of thoughts, emotions, and energies within the ocean of awake awareness as you seamlessly welcome whatever is arising.
GLIMPSE 3 Effortless Focus
Unlike the everyday mind, spacious awareness is not made of changing thoughts. When we’re looking from spacious awareness, we can focus effortlessly. This is a version of a Mahamudra practice called “King of Samadhi,” which uses the image of a mother bird in the sky focused on its nest below. This glimpse practice is one I use in the Effortless Mindfulness Experiment that I discuss in chapter 12. Observe how easy it is to count and maintain effortless focus from the witnessing self. Sustaining focus can become automatic after training your brain to remain in an awareness-based level of mind.
This practice builds on the previous one, so if you liked it, you can do that practice first and then move to step 4 below.
1. Have local awareness unhook from thought, go up to a corner of the room, and look back to become aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations from spacious awareness.
2. Be aware of the vast, clear sky of spacious awareness.
3. Now see what it’s like to be aware from spacious awareness.
4. Be aware from the sky of spacious awareness that is viewing from outside your body and the sensation of the breath moving within your body.
5. From the sky of spacious awareness, become interested in one point of contact within your body where your breath is moving, like your nostril or your chest.
6. From the sky of spacious awareness, begin to focus on the sensation and movement of your breath in this small area. Once you feel the breath has begun to move in, label it “One.”
7. Then feel a natural pause at the top of the in-breath. Be aware of spacious awareness in the pause before the out-breath.
8. Then, feel the point of contact with your skin as your breath goes out, and label it “Two.”
9. Feel the pause before the next in-breath and rest in the sky of spacious awareness.
10. Continue to focus effortlessly as you label each following breath, in and out, with a number up to thirty.
11. Now shift to look from spacious awareness at thoughts, sensations, and emotions arising and passing. Simply allow them to pass by like birds or clouds. Notice any tendency to become drawn in by pleasant content or to contract against unpleasant feelings.
GLIMPSE 4 Nondual Balance
By experiencing balanced awareness of both outside and inside simultaneously, we can decrease the self-referencing mind-wandering associated with the default mode network. This type of daydreaming ceases when the two networks of the inner and the outward focus become synchronized. In this practice, we’re shifting from a detached, witnessing self to embodied awake awareness. Try this glimpse practice a number of times until you get the feel of the equal balance of awareness outside and within as a continuous field. Once you get this for about three minutes, it seems to break the default mode habit; then most people experience a stable, nondistracted flow.
1. Unhook local awareness from thought and have it go to hearing from one ear.
2. Notice the effect of awareness focused on a small area and simply hearing.
3. Now, just as the local awareness can focus on a small area, experience local awareness opening to the space outside your body where sound is coming and going.
4. Instead of focusing on what is moving through the space, allow local awareness to become interested in objectless space.
5. Now, notice the shift from awareness of space to noticing that space is aware.
6. Allow awareness to be aware of itself as a contentless, formless, timeless, spacious field of awareness. Notice that awareness is knowing itself without using thought. Take as much time as you need to feel the shift into awareness aware by itself.
7. Now feel the discovery that the field of spacious awareness is already within your body as an ocean of awareness that is the same as the waves of aliveness and sensation.
8. Feel the continuous field that is aware both outside and within simultaneously.
9. Feel the seamless unity of awareness presence that has no outside or inside. Feel awareness embodied in a way in which you are able to easily be with pleasant and unpleasant feelings.
10. Without going up to thought or going off to a daydream, stay with the knowing from the field of spacious awareness that is naturally inclusive and undistracted.
The first section of this book presents research and practices designed to help you shift into the already-available level of mind that is experienced by seasoned meditators. The goal is to abide here. By doing these practices, you will eventually be able to: 1) be aware and knowing without going to thought, 2) feel the boundless, panoramic view that is free of ego-identification, 3) feel that spacious awareness is inherent within your body and is able to be free from clinging to pleasant feelings and rejecting unpleasant feelings, 4) live from open-hearted awareness with your eyes open, 5) feel the awake awareness that is balanced internally and externally so we can be in the now without constantly being distracted.