21 NATURAL AWARENESS MEDITATION

MARINATE AND REFRESH

The previous chapter discussed mental shifts we can make to move toward natural awareness. Another way to shift into natural awareness is through the glimpse practices scattered throughout the book. Once we have shifted into natural awareness, through whatever means, we have moved along the spectrum of awareness practices from classical mindfulness meditation into natural awareness meditation.

Now we can meditate with natural awareness in order to refine, deepen, and prolong the experience. Some people call this “abiding in natural awareness”; the teacher Loch Kelly calls it “marinating in natural awareness.”1 When you lose touch with natural awareness in the midst of the meditation, you can learn to “refresh.” Natural awareness meditation depends on our ability to marinate and refresh.

Marinate

When you marinate chicken, you let it sit in the marinade (I prefer ginger, soy sauce, and olive oil) for a period of time (thirty minutes minimum) so that the seasonings soak into and infuse the meat. The longer the chicken marinates, the tastier it is. What does this cuisine analogy have to do with the mind? Well, as I have described, even a moment of natural awareness, like a little bit of marinade, can be impactful. But when that moment is extended, the flavors of the natural awareness really come out, so to speak. In natural awareness meditation, we practice extending, abiding, and resting in natural awareness.

When we rest in natural awareness, we might notice qualities that are present, like joy or humor or some other facet of the diamond I spoke about in chapter 11. In that case, marinate. Keep letting those qualities unfold. Experience them; notice what is happening in your body and mind. But don’t try too hard, because too much effort might pull you out of the experience. Anything can happen: The qualities may grow and intensify. Other qualities may arise. The original qualities may fade away.

Thoughts will enter and, like clouds in the sky, just move through us. We might find emotions coming and going. Sometimes when I do extended natural awareness meditation, I feel joy, then vulnerability, then poignancy, then hilarity. I ride the wave of whatever is happening.

But sometimes, as we’re marinating, a particular thought or emotion gets a bit ornery and demands attention. This tends to rock the natural awareness. What is happening is we are getting caught in or identified with the thought or emotion, and that clinging or identification is disturbing our awareness. If the clinging or identification starts to outweigh the natural awareness, we may soon find ourselves lost in thought or emotion. But if we notice that we are lost, just the noticing may allow the thought or emotion to dissolve, like salt in water. And natural awareness may be invigorated—or not.

Refresh

When a website isn’t loading properly or is acting funny in our web browser, we often hit the refresh button. Usually that resetting fixes the problem. We can do the same thing in natural awareness meditation.

Let’s say that after some time resting or abiding in natural awareness, you realize you are spacing out or lost in thought and disconnected from natural awareness. You will recognize this in the same way that in classical mindfulness you often realize you have gotten distracted and are lost in thoughts. So you might verbally (but silently) say to yourself, “Refresh.” This reminder can initiate a subtle kind of resetting, in which you realign yourself with the natural awareness, which is actually not too far away. A few seconds prior, you were resting your mind in this place of well-being. So there is a noticing that you are no longer abiding, a reminder to refresh, and then a reconnection in a mostly effortless way—as if you had gently pressed the refresh button on your browser. You may have to refresh dozens of times while abiding in natural awareness. This refresh is what prolongs and deepens your natural awareness meditation session.

Ultimately natural awareness may dissipate on its own. In fact, it usually does. And that’s absolutely fine. If we tried to make it stay all the time, then we’d be clinging to natural awareness, which is missing the point. Please trust that the movement in and out of natural awareness from ordinary mind is as natural and as expected as ocean tides moving toward and away from the shore.

In the meantime, marinate, abide, rest in natural awareness when it arises, refresh when necessary, and see what happens. It can be quite tasty.