Insight Meditation 33

Learning to observe awareness of touch sensation creates a grounding for mindfulness within daily life and also the ability to observe attraction or aversion as they arise towards what is felt. 

This sensitivity allows you to soften into your relationship towards what is felt, deconditioning any habitual pattern of attraction or aversion through mindful non-participation. 

The sense door of touch also has a significant role to play in MIDL for observing the mind through its reflections that arise as touch sensation within the body such as vedana and emotional responses. 

• Develop understanding of the relationship between the mind and touch sensation.
• Decondition habitual attraction & aversion towards touch sensation.
• Disentangle awareness from the six sense fields – touching & mind.

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• Length: 60 min, 1-2 times daily.
• Developing Insight: Become familiar with the experience of awareness of awareness of touching and how to soften the effort of habitual grasping towards it.

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Conditions: Meditation is practiced in a lying position on a yoga mat or the floor. It is helpful to bring an understanding that some sensations within the body arise from the touch of the world, others arise due to the touch of the mind.

Step 1: Sit in meditation, gently closing your eyes.

Step 2: Establish mindfulness of your body as you lay in meditation.

Step 3: Start to develop sensitivity to areas of touch such as the touch of the hands and body as it rests on the floor.

• Gradually relax through your body increasing your sensitivity to sensations within it.
• Start to move through and soften into different touch points throughout your body.

Step 4: Increase sensitivity to touch of your clothing, the touch of air on your skin.

Step 5: Increase your awareness of your whole body as a mass of sensations, as a body listening to the world through touch.

Step 6: At this point you can start to experiment by bringing first pleasant and then unpleasant memories to mind.

• Observe any changes of sensations that arise within your body, as a reflection of your mind and soften into them.
• Be curious about the difference between sensations that arise within your body from the touch of the world and sensations that arise within your body due to the touch of your mind.

Step 7: Disentangle your awareness from the sensory world by developing nirvikalpa samadhi (stillness) as in Meditation 43 for the rest of your meditation session, continuing to incline your mind towards letting go of sensory experiencing. 

You are ready to progress to Cultivation 12: Disentangling Awareness when:

You can clearly experience:

1. The autonomous nature of touch in regard to contact, pressure, the body field, and mind created images and perceptions.
2. You can observe awareness of awareness of touch, and you understand what it means to disentangle awareness from it.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer App: Guided Meditation.