Thinking about your framing from TMI, perhaps I’m supposed to put my awareness but not my attention on the distracting thoughts. The reason it is tempting to do more than this is to “fully integrate the part of me that wants to not be doing this”—IE, put full awareness onto it to dialogue with it, and decide what I really want to do with the fullness of what I want right now.
In your experience, is it enough to have awareness on the stubbed toe, or is it necessary to put attention on it? You describe your attention going to the toe.
For the stubbed toe, attention is definitely required. However, the mind sense is very different from the other senses. If I understand correctly, if you have attention but not awareness on your thoughts, that is thinking. And I don’t know about you, but I personally have little mind awareness. (If I had more, I could notice that I was thinking thoughts before my mind wanders off while meditating, but I only ever notice after I’ve caught it.) The Mind Illuminated says that I’m going to develop more mind awareness in Stage 4, which I’m not at yet.
Anyhow, that was a tangent. The Mind Illuminated has a table of seven mental problems that might get in your way of meditating, and what to do about them. It sounds like yours is most similar to “procrastination and resistance to practicing”, for which you are supposed to “Frequently recall the benefits of practice [in your case, your work], constantly refresh and renew your motivation, and ‘just do it’. See Stage one.” So, no special meditative solutions here, just ordinary ones.
I think there’s some looseness in the Mind Illuminated ontology around this point, but I would say: thinking involves attention on an abstract concept. When attention and/or awareness are on a thought, that’s metacognitive attention and/or awareness. For example, if I’m trying to work on an intellectual task but start thinking about food, my attention has moved from the task to food. Specifically my attention might be on a specific possibility for dinner, or on a set of possibilities. If I have no metacognitive awareness, then I’m lost in the thought; my attention is not on the thought, it’s on the food.
Thinking about your framing from TMI, perhaps I’m supposed to put my awareness but not my attention on the distracting thoughts. The reason it is tempting to do more than this is to “fully integrate the part of me that wants to not be doing this”—IE, put full awareness onto it to dialogue with it, and decide what I really want to do with the fullness of what I want right now.
In your experience, is it enough to have awareness on the stubbed toe, or is it necessary to put attention on it? You describe your attention going to the toe.
For the stubbed toe, attention is definitely required. However, the mind sense is very different from the other senses. If I understand correctly, if you have attention but not awareness on your thoughts, that is thinking. And I don’t know about you, but I personally have little mind awareness. (If I had more, I could notice that I was thinking thoughts before my mind wanders off while meditating, but I only ever notice after I’ve caught it.) The Mind Illuminated says that I’m going to develop more mind awareness in Stage 4, which I’m not at yet.
Anyhow, that was a tangent. The Mind Illuminated has a table of seven mental problems that might get in your way of meditating, and what to do about them. It sounds like yours is most similar to “procrastination and resistance to practicing”, for which you are supposed to “Frequently recall the benefits of practice [in your case, your work], constantly refresh and renew your motivation, and ‘just do it’. See Stage one.” So, no special meditative solutions here, just ordinary ones.
Meta comment: are your upvotes worth 7 points?
Seems that way. I don’t know what the exact formula is, but it is based on karma.
Note: normal upvotes are 1-3 points depending on karma. Strong upvotes are more variable.
I think there’s some looseness in the Mind Illuminated ontology around this point, but I would say: thinking involves attention on an abstract concept. When attention and/or awareness are on a thought, that’s metacognitive attention and/or awareness. For example, if I’m trying to work on an intellectual task but start thinking about food, my attention has moved from the task to food. Specifically my attention might be on a specific possibility for dinner, or on a set of possibilities. If I have no metacognitive awareness, then I’m lost in the thought; my attention is not on the thought, it’s on the food.