You can expand further:
introduce a kinetic element - dance, hum, bounce the rhythm on a yoga ball.
And/or you can refine it:
Instead of just clenching attention, try to exclude all other impressions. Hear just that part. Instead of opening to the song, open to everything.
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If you turn the dial fast enough from a sharp and deep focus to a vast and spacious awareness, you sometimes lose your sense of focus AND awareness altogether.
Instead of a narrow or broad projection of awareness to objects (sensations) from a subject ("you"), you disappear.
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I don't mean this in some mystical sense - just that the (sort of) persistent feeling of being a "you", interacting with an environment, is gone.
You can't separate anything from anything else. It all becomes one big field of stuff. Your breath. The sky. That chair. Everything
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This may sound disorienting and maybe not even desirable - and it can cause quite a bit of nausea!
But it turns out feeling everything in reference to "you" is actually pretty stifling.
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Have you ever spent time around someone who is probably a clinical narcissist? A Donald Trump type?
You know that way they suck all the air out of the room, and everything has to gravitate around them ALL THE TIME?
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Seeing everything in reference to a sense of self is kind of like that.
"Oh, stomach ache. What does this say about me? Am I stressed? Shit, it's probably about that thing Susan said. I wonder if-"
Every fucking thing becomes all "me, me, me!"
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If this goes, a sensation becomes just a sensation.
A call to action or investigation, maybe, but seldom an exercise in self-torturous thought olympics
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It's not for everyone, but for a lot of us that freedom is worth a bit of existential disorientation.
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Anyway, enough proselytizing. If you do this just for a general sense of well-being and increased awareness/improves concentration, that's fine.
But if so, I'd recommend passing on the more hardcore exercises. It can become quite a trip.
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Replying to
Are you describing the convention selflessness observation here? Or is it something different?
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Replying to
I just mean if you look at some of the more transformative effects (like no-self/monistic awareness) and think that's not for you...
... then a small, constrained regimen of light meditation exercises will do just fine.
Not everyone wants to train for an ironman, after all.
Especially around here, people tend to get very upset about certain ontological statements
"What do you mean 'I' don't exist? I'm right here!"
That's of course missing the point, but there is little sense in fighting people on their dearest beliefs IMO.
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(If this doesn't answer your question, feel free to rephrase.)
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