The Mind Illuminated, by Culadasa (2015, Hay House). I got the book from Alibris, new for $17. It’s a huge book, as one would expect as it is a systematic compilation of Culadasa’s life-long study of meditation and neuroscience. It’s dense but extremely well orgniazed, very readable, with lots of nice illustrations, graphs and charts. I appreciate the graphic illustrations. It makes a wealth of dense information easily accessible.

I’ve worked through the first couple of chapters and I’m ready to dive in. I’m excited by the wealth of kowledge that he presents, and how that could inform my practice.

After reading the introductory chapters, I began with walking meditation. He suggests a half hour of walking meditation per day, as part of your total hour of meditation, which I think is a great idea. I read the Appendix on Walking Meditation and went for a half hour walk.

Culadasa’s method is to distinguish between ‘peripheral awareness’, which I call ‘field’, and focused concentration, which I call “focus.” His instruction for walking meditation is to keep one’s concentration on the sensations on the soles of the feet. Then one simultaneously broaden’s one’s awareness to the peirpheral ‘field; the full spectrum of awareness. As objects come into sensory perception, a beautiful tree, a singing bird, clouds, you allow your attention to focus on those objects, without evaluation or commentary, then let them go, back to the broad awareness of the ‘field.’

I had a lovely walk through my neighbourhood on a perfect sunny afternoon with billows of clouds in the blue sky. I noticed something right away. I was able to concentrate on the feeling on the soles of my feet, yet maintain a broad visual field with peripheral vision. Occasionally I “tuned in” to a flock of sparrows, the shapes of the clouds. They came into focus, but never caught my full attention, and then faded back into the field.

I noticed that I felt most happy and serene when I kept my visual and audio awareness in the ‘field.’ I lost interest in focusing on anything. It was a fantastic experience and I can’t wait to do it again. Culadadasa’s method is to bring together samantha (concentration) with vipassana (open awareness) in the same practice session. This method works very well for me.

Culadasa calls his book a ‘map‘, and teaches progress in meditation through carefully defined stages, with skills to be mastered at each stage of this map. But I call to mind a piece of western wisdom by scientist Alfred Korzybski: the map is not the territory.

‘The map is not the territory metaphorically illustrates the differences between thought and reality. Our perception of the world is being generated by our brain and can be considered as a ‘map’ of reality written in neural patterns. Reality exists outside our mind but we can construct models of this ‘territory’ based on what we glimpse through our senses.’ (from Lesswrongwiki).

Therefore, while I’m certain that Culadasa’s book has a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that will inform and enhance my meditation practice, it’s not the ‘territory’, it’s not the actual experience of my practice. I intend to use Culadasa’s ‘map’ to inform and stengthen my practice, but I still know best what works for me. So his teachings function as a kind of Augented Reality program that enhances what I normally do. For instance, while Culadasa is pretty strict about attention to the sensation of the breath at the nostrils, I will continue to focus on the breath at the solar plexus, where it has been most productive for me. And I will continue to focus on the energy of the breath as it contacts the chakras up and down the length of my body. Culadasa says that you can apply his teachings to any practice you do.

I have my own path to walk in life and I’ve worked out my own way of meditation. I plan to use Culadasa’s staged method not so much as a map, following step by step, but as a kind of GPS (one reader suggested a ‘field guide’) that will answer the question ‘Where am I now?’ ‘ ‘What state am I in and how do I understand what I am experiencing?’ ‘How do I get from here to where I want to go?’ Using the guide as a GPS or field guide rather than a map makes it a bit more exciting, less like following a set of instructions to build a bookshelf, and more like an adventure of psychic exploration.