Revealing Your Blue Sky Mind

Last week we talked a bit about what it is to begin a meditation practice, and how a few subtle perspective shifts might save you a lot of time and effort. You can find that article here.

This week I want to continue our exploration into the mind with, in my opinion, one of the greatest teachings and experiences that meditation has to offer. Like I said at the beginning of the month, my goal here is to turn these otherwise complex, esoteric ideas into digestible, actionable explanations that actually help beginners and long-time meditators grasp the concepts and lessons that are embedded within traditional meditation education.

Revisiting the Spotlight

Earlier this month, I put up a piece that used the metaphor of a flashlight to signify how our attentional mind works; whatever is illuminated by our flashlight or cognitive spotlight can be thought of as being within our attention. And whatever isn’t illuminated is not in our attention, and we are not aware of it. I like this particular metaphor because it’s relatively easy to understand, at least in theory, and also because it can take us a little further into what attention, or more specifically meditation, is.

Most of us, if asked, would say that we are in conscious control of what we pay attention to, right? There is always at least a small sense of control over our internal drama. However, when the untrained mind sits down to meditate, they quickly discover that they may not be in as much control as they thought. Thoughts seem to stroll in, one after another, knocking our goal to meditate right out of our mind.

Or maybe we just make meditation difficult on purpose? Like some inside joke “ha, I’m going to pull a fast one on myself today. When I try to meditate, I’m going to think up the most ridiculous things possible and make it as difficult as possible to stay on my breath”. I would guess not! It becomes very apparent to you that although you have a sense of control, it’s not as powerful as you might’ve thought. You begin to recognize that you are being pushed along and affected by things that you aren’t entirely aware of.

So if we can’t be sure about our ability to control our thoughts, what can we be sure of?

Meditation can be incredibly useful in reducing the tendency to view particular thoughts as intrusive, and instead, we can look at them like we look at a running river or the way a tree has grown; it’s just the way it is and it needed to be that way. Sure, there are still some uncomfortable thoughts that will stick around for longer than we’d like them to, but our relationship with them changes. Meditation lets us establish a bit of distance between our thoughts and where “you” are, making us feel much safer, less threatened, and ultimately, less reactive and bothered. It’s the difference between having rocks thrown at you from someone right beside you versus from someone outside of your castle walls.

There is something else that we can be sure of. We can be sure that there is an aspect of our inner experience that is just there to witness what is happening. It’s helped me to view this concept almost as if there is another “person”, that is still very much you, that is beside the “you” that is doing the thinking and the feeling and the breathing and all that. Don’t fret if you don’t understand this right away, it’s a difficult experience to fully grasp, even for experienced meditators.

But here’s a little experiment you can try for yourself that might let you catch a glimpse of what I’m talking about. So if you’re interested, after you’re done reading this next blurb, give it a shot!

Catching a glimpse of the Witnessing Mind

Sit or lay down somewhere comfortable. Take a few breaths. As each inhale and exhale passes, try to feel a little bit more of what it feels like to breathe. If thoughts are intrusive and rapid, you can count your breaths like we did last week. If you sense your thoughts slowing down and the sensation of breathing gets large enough to feel amongst the noise, go back to just feeling the breath. When you’re ready, take an inhale, and look for the place where you are feeling that feeling. Not where you physically feel it, like your chest or nose, but look for the place where the feeling is. It’s somewhere in your mind. When you notice your attention has drifted, look to where the thought is. It’s incredibly subtle. Don’t stress, don’t lean in or tighten up. Just go back to the breath. And then, look to where the breath is being felt.

How’d that feel? Leave a comment!

What, or who is feeling your breath? Sure, it’s your sensory neurons sending information through your nervous system that then informs your brain that air is passing in and out of your lungs, but what is feeling that? There must be a surface or place that these sensations are being felt, right? How would they be felt otherwise?

If you didn’t quite get there, don’t worry about it. It can be a difficult concept to grasp and even harder to experience.

Whether you’ve felt it or not, you might still have a subconscious understanding of this state; hat I like to call, your blue sky mind. It’s the aspect of you, although small and quiet, that is behind the clouds of thought, emotion, stories, beliefs, self-image, and beyond.

For me, the mere faith that there is always a blue sky mind behind whatever thoughts may be looming over me is enough to pull me out of some very deep holes. And once you experience it, you carry this concept as a fact. It’s the knowledge that “not all is lost”, despite whatever is happening in your emotional or psychological landscape; there is still an aspect of you that is just watching everything unfold, without reaction or perturbation. You can find evidence for the fact that this aspect of you remains unperturbed because you are still here to witness it all. If this witness were to be perturbed, there would be a resultant psychological experience where you essentially disappear, much like in our example of the flashlight in a dark room. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, it is our thinking mind that is perturbed. The place that the witnessing mind is witnessing is the place being perturbed. We are thrown for a loop, we get stressed, angry, sad, or whatever.

But only if we forget this fact; that you are still there, behind all the nonsense.