2) If I manage to create a strong object-level want, I will boost my attention without needing to coerce myself
[...]
I was more curious about how the difference between a third-person and a first-person perspective affects my meditation.
This is what I’m talking about. Defaulting to the third person perspective and forgetting about the first person perspective causes a lot of trouble. It’s not just “here’s an unrelated hack for making it easier to do meditation”, it’s that it completely changes your meditation.
You notice that your third person “I should focus on the breath” is missing the point, and redirect to the first person perspective of “Sensations of breath are arising”, but in doing so you no longer even have a claim to the relevance of the breath. So now you have an experience of attending to sensation of breath for no reason, because of fairly handwavy third person reasons.
I’m pointing out that you can use meditation as practice for bringing more conscious awareness to your everyday life by bringing more conscious awareness to your practice of meditation itself. It’s a very different experience when you know in first person why what you’re attending to is the most interesting thing at the moment, and in third person knowing that you’re right to think this is what’s worth attending to.
That doesn’t mean you “give in” to first person perspectives and give up awareness of your third person perspective, just that you don’t give in to third person ideas either and give up or attempt to disconnect your first person perspective. It’s practicing being aware of both, and noticing when your behaviors don’t make sense according to your own perspectives.
Makes sense, I’ll see if I manage to get there in time.
Seems like your approach is cohering across perspectives while including more aspects into conscious awareness. Seems more likely to lead to integration/wholeness instead of dissociation/lost purposes.
edit: I’m also curious about your background/experience of meditation, if you are open to sharing.
This is what I’m talking about. Defaulting to the third person perspective and forgetting about the first person perspective causes a lot of trouble. It’s not just “here’s an unrelated hack for making it easier to do meditation”, it’s that it completely changes your meditation.
You notice that your third person “I should focus on the breath” is missing the point, and redirect to the first person perspective of “Sensations of breath are arising”, but in doing so you no longer even have a claim to the relevance of the breath. So now you have an experience of attending to sensation of breath for no reason, because of fairly handwavy third person reasons.
I’m pointing out that you can use meditation as practice for bringing more conscious awareness to your everyday life by bringing more conscious awareness to your practice of meditation itself. It’s a very different experience when you know in first person why what you’re attending to is the most interesting thing at the moment, and in third person knowing that you’re right to think this is what’s worth attending to.
That doesn’t mean you “give in” to first person perspectives and give up awareness of your third person perspective, just that you don’t give in to third person ideas either and give up or attempt to disconnect your first person perspective. It’s practicing being aware of both, and noticing when your behaviors don’t make sense according to your own perspectives.
Makes sense, I’ll see if I manage to get there in time.
Seems like your approach is cohering across perspectives while including more aspects into conscious awareness. Seems more likely to lead to integration/wholeness instead of dissociation/lost purposes.
edit: I’m also curious about your background/experience of meditation, if you are open to sharing.