5 Ways to Know Yourself
as a Spiritual Being
Core Curriculum
Standard Instruction
Blocks
Work with your thoughts and emotions: mental images, mental talk and emotional body sensations.
Focus on physical sights, physical sounds, and physical body sensations.
Find/create pleasant restful states in all three sensory systems: visual, auditory, and somatic.
Work with flow (movement and energy).
Sometimes the bulk of your sensory experience may seem quite stable and solid, but if you know what to look for and where, you can usually find some indication of change, if only subtly. But subtle is significant! The more you focus on change, the more prominent the change becomes. This leads to numerous and important positive consequences. Basic Mindfulness offers two ways of working with Flow: Sensory Flow and Expansion-Contraction. In Sensory Flow you note whether the flow is in your visual, auditory or somatic experience.
Focus on Expansion-Contraction Flow and Do Nothing
This instruciton block covers two techniques.
You’ll work with Flow in terms of Expansion and Contraction. This is a way of incorporating the expansion-contraction model of consciousness into the framework of mindfulness practice. The expansion-contraction model of consciousness was originally developed within Zen training (most notably by Jōshū Sasaki Roshi). In Basic Mindfulness, it involves analyzing the flow of experience into its basic components: expansion (yáng) and contraction (yīn).
You’ll work with the “technique of no technique”, which in Basic Mindfulness is called Do Nothing. This represents a simplified and secularized form of practices such as Tibetan Dzogchen or Nondual “Call Off the Search”. Although perhaps not evident on the surface, Expansion-Contraction and Do Nothing share a common goal – return to the Source. (Just Note Gone also leads there.)
Create, maintain,and project positive thoughts and emotions. The main themes are: Positive Affect (i.e., pleasant emotion), Positive Cognition (i.e., rational, productive thought), and Positive Behavior Change. Other themes, such as working with ideals/archetypes, will also be discussed.
Work with all 4 themes of visual experience: mental images, external sight, visual rest, and visual flow. Work with all 4 themes of visual experience: mental images, external sight, visual rest, and visual flow. Appreciate the entire visual system as it ranges over the various states of inner activation, outer activation, rest, and flow. Focusing exclusively on visual states for a while tends to create a merging of subjective and objective seeing, leading to the oneness of inside and outside.
Work with all 4 themes of auditory experience, mental talk, external sound, auditory rest, and auditory flow. Work with all 4 themes of auditory experience, mental talk, external sound, auditory rest, and auditory flow. Appreciate the entire auditory system as it ranges over the various states of inner activation, outer activation, rest, and flow. Focusing exclusively on auditory states for a while tends to create a merging of subjective and objective hearing, leading to the oneness of inside and outside.
Work with all 4 themes of somatic experience: emotional body sensations, physical body sensations, somatic rest, and somatic flow. Work with all 4 themes of somatic experience: emotional body sensations, physical body sensations, somatic rest, and somatic flow. Integrate experience of the entire somatic system as it ranges over the various states of emotional and physical body activation, rest, and flow. Focusing exclusively on somatic states for a while tends to create a merging of subjective and objective feeling, leading to the oneness of inside and outside.
Focus on All and Just Note Gone
This instruction block covers two techniques.
Work with all twelve basic atoms of experience, broadly floating among them (but only focusing on one at a given instant). This corresponds to some interpretations of Choiceless Awareness or Just Sitting.
Focus on the moment when sensory events vanish (Gone). According to the classical manual of mindfulness, The Path of Purification, this is the focus that immediately precedes Enlightenment.