"I've been stuck at a relatively stable amount of forgetting the breath for a few months now. A week ago, I've come to what I believe is an important insight for my progress."
You "believe" this is an important insight, this is no good ground to work on. Beliefs are coming and going, you must see through that which experiences, as the experiencer is always present. Beliefs know nothing of direct experience.
"The common trait of these tweaks is that they are all designed to let me meditate on autopilot. Focus only on tactile sensations as opposed to being open to many different sensations; focus on your emotional state so that less awareness is needed to meditate later; rest between breaths and take cue from the beginning of the breath to „tune back in“ to automate the process of being aware."
This is the process which eventually takes you to a complete automation of the process of being aware, it will be permanent and unchanging, and nothing could distract you. You would be well marinated in enlightenment, and you would come to a point where thoughts no longer bother you at all and there will be pure consciousness only. It is your natural state.
Meditating on autopilot is exactly what you want. If your "auto-pilot" is to be aware and present, then it is natural to be on "auto-pilot". You are not supposed to be tangled up in thoughts, emotions and sensations all the time, because ultimately they do not matter. They all come and go. But you are the one thing that never came and will never go. That is where you want to be within your self. Not the thoughts, sensations and emotions that are like the clouds passing, you are the SKY! You must simply be aware of your self as the sky. Once you are aware that you are the sky, the clouds will be meaningless. They are all fleeting. You are timeless. You are infinite. You are NOT the clouds, and that is good! Because that is the truth of what you are.
"Autopiloting works for everything except the practice of awareness, but even for everything else it’s not optimal. If you automate your pull-ups you won't notice new details (and there's always more, about anything), stagnate, and won't change the details of the exercise unless injury or some other factor strongly turns your attention."
If you automate your pull-ups to the ideal form (meditation) then the automated pull-ups are everything you need. You must not go and explore all the wrong methods of making pull-ups. You see the natural, most correct one, and you stick with it. You do not go looking around for injuries. The same with your mind. The automated meditation is all you need, because that is already automating the divinity within your self, if meditation which is your natural state is automated, that simply means you've arrived at your true place. So, if instead of automating meditation you go looking for thoughts, emotions and sensations (injuries), that's fine though, because you can completely leave the mind right now and simply be meditative. You don't need to go back to the thoughts, emotions and sensations. "I changed my approach. My primary goal now (along with appreciating returning to the breath) is to be ready for anything with each breath, to be present without many rules and work on sustaining that presence. Sitting became a time to be watchful. As a result, I’m looking at different aspects of the breath, exploring everything that can be found in it. I try to notice everything that could distract me before it does, and in doing so, am aware of pain, sound, bubbling thoughts, etc. I look at every breath as potentially bringing with it something new, something that wouldn’t be enveloped by a rule I could make, which I’ll have to wrestle with in the moment." So now the mind has constructed a "primary goal" to each meditation. Instead of simply being meditative, it now must act according to a set of beliefs. One belief says "to be present without many rules" but that is already a rule! You can simply be present.
If the sitting became a time to be watchful, then when are you ever meditative? All the time you go to work or go to school and you are watchful. You watch the thoughts, the emotions and sensations that all these activities include. And now you got home and sit to be in joy, peace, compassion and love which is your natural state, but instead you are being watchful of thoughts, emotions and sensations even in your free time! Haha! It is funny how the mind can trick the experience like that. It is never true though. The mind has no true power as long as we see its workings.
So instead of being peaceful, compassionate, loving and joyful, you were busy looking at different aspects of breath, exploring it, "noticing everything that could distract me before it does", noticing all these distractions IS YOU BEING DISTRACTED. Haha. The mind is fucking tricky bro. It will do fucking everything to distract you, and make you believe that it isn't doing so. It will even turn against itself. "the mind trying be ahead of itself". "Those are all the things I should be doing anyway! They come spontaneously now. When I was trying to do apply them earlier, it was difficult and barely productive because of the underlying tendency toward autopilot practice. Now that I’m trying to be aware, they flow naturally." You must not be doing anything. There is nothing you should do. If you were aware of what you truly are, any should would seem comical to you. You are not this body and mind. You are beyond the body and beyond the mind, you are the awareness which is aware of being aware. You are literally the formless awareness in which everything is appearing and is perceived. There is only you. Nothing is separate from you. You are the one and only consciousness, the highest being in existence, infinite, timeless. It is the ONLY true being in existence. AND YOU ARE IT. Notice what is truly here in this present moment. Put aside all ideas, thoughts, emotions, sensations, even who you think you are, put everything aside for a moment and see what is ACTUALLY HERE NOW in your direct experience not from past. Rest in that which you are. The mind will never be able to fathom because you are beyond the mind. Rest the attention only on the highest which is your own true nature.
Simply knowing this in each moment from now on, is enlightenment. Being in realization of the self is enlightenment. Stay knowing of your self.
- Sebastian Key
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