In my opinion, the primary goal of meditation is to temporarily dissolve the perceived boundary between subjects in the background and objects in the foreground, and to suspend the sense that there is a self riding around in the head who is somehow separate from the rest of the body and the world. Why would somebody want to do this? Let me speak from my own experience. In a nutshell, I was getting lost in mental abstractions, and they were making it incredibly difficult for me to function socially and express myself naturally. I was trying to conceptualize and reason my way out of this cognitive dissonance, which would only provoke even more cognitive dissonance.

A general example of this tendency is the way I would meta-analyze a conversation while I was having it. I’d try to look at the conversation from my projection of the other person’s point of view, or from the projected point of view of numerous other third parties. For instance, if I was talking with someone, I may have tried to look at them from the point of view of a fundamentalist Christian, and then I wouldn’t stop thinking about how the person I was talking to was destined for eternal damnation. Or instead I might have tried to look at them from the point of view of a good friend, who I’d project wouldn’t have liked this person. This had the effect of taking me out of the conversation, empathetically, and shutting me down, emotionally. My mind was sabotaging itself.

Through meditation and self-inquiry (and, let me be honest, with the help of nicotine, cannabis, and a certain hallucinogenic substance), my cognition slowly became more embodied and, as I’ll suggest, more decentralized. In other words, my experience of things in the world became more “known” on their own as such. For example, my bodily sensations and perceptions seemed to take on their own forms of cognition, and that neurotic dictator, the one driving my cognitive dissonance, felt less potent, less likely to run things from his command seat in my head. These transformations eventually freed me up to adopt a more fluid sense of myself, one less confined to that single and rigid self-sense that had inhabited me before. I felt that I could adopt multiple selves, flexibly adapting to different circumstances as I encountered them.

Mindfulness, the kind of secular meditation often taught today in the West, is aimed at clarifying the sensory field and noticing moment-to-moment experience without the narrative filters that we are normally embedded in. In Buddhism and Vipassana in particular, meditation is about noticing that sensations have three predominant qualities: they are impermanent, they are impersonal (i.e., they are not part of nor do they belong to a self), and they do not give ultimate satisfaction.

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This article first appeared in issue 1 of The Side View Journal. Purchase your own copy here. 

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While this kind of mindfulness can by itself lead to awakening—however someone wants to define it—in my experience it is more effective when combined with self-inquiry. Self-inquiry comes mainly from the Vedanta tradition (although it is also found to some extent in Zen and other non-Theravada Buddhist traditions). There has been some discussion of combining the techniques (for example, Gary Weber talks about using asking inquires like “What am I?” while engaged in mindful movement practices, and Kenneth Folk would talk about a “three-speed transmission,” the first speed being mindfulness and the second speed being self-inquiry). However, in my experience, these practices have not yet been put together in a conceptually comprehensive way.

In the remainder of this essay, I discuss how self-inquiry, broadly conceived, can be integrated with mindfulness, and, at the end of the day, can be thought of as its own kind of mindfulness. While I believe that this system is unique in how it combines and conceptualizes well-worn elements, I would be remiss in not acknowledging that each individual element and even the integrating mechanics have been inspired by others. I owe a huge debt to teachers like Rob Burbea, Kenneth Folk, Culadasa (John Yates), Daniel Ingram, Michael Taft, Gary Weber, Shinzen Young, Loch Kelly, and Eckart Tolle (don’t laugh you no-nonsense secularists!).

One can define mindfulness as a two-part process of cultivating awareness and acceptance (or, more technically, awareness and meta-awareness, the latter being a form of acceptance because it requires dis-embedding from the object of experience). Awareness means becoming aware of more phenomena in perception. This can mean becoming more aware of sensations arising in the body by, for example, noticing the signature of stress and anxiety taking the form of a microtension somewhere, perhaps in the jaw or the shoulder. Acceptance, then, means letting the sensation be there, rather than trying to push it away or hold onto it.

By accepting sensations over time, the feelings of tension may start to dissolve on their own. This often happens repeatedly with increasingly subtler and deeper tensions (and as a consequence, with the increasingly subtler and deeper layers of maladaptive mental habits associated with these tensions). Relieving the top layers of tension thus opens space for other deeper tensions to arise, become conscious in awareness, and then dissolve back into themselves. Slowly and deliberately, people can work through years of suppressed trauma using this method.

In addition to the mindfulness practices of awareness and acceptance, self-inquiry can help to bring objects to awareness more directly, thereby augmenting the first step in the mindfulness process. In particular, self-inquiry highlights the sensations associated with the feeling of being the observer, which are not normally recognized as sensations because they are instead perceived as constituents of the subject doing the perceiving. In his book The Evolving Self, the developmental psychologist Robert Kegan writes about this process of objectifying the subject as an advance in meaning-evolution (i.e., as an evolution in how our meanings for things relates to our changing self-identification with them):

Something cannot be internalized until we emerge from our embeddedness in it, for it is our embeddedness, our subjectivity, that leads us to project it onto the world in our constitution of reality. . . . We have begun to see not only how the subject-object balance can be spoken of as the deep structure in meaning-evolution, but also that there is something regular about the process of evolution itself. Growth always involves a process of differentiation, of emergence from embeddedness (Schachtel, 1959), thus creating out of the former subject a new object to be taken by the new subjectivity.

So, what is self-inquiry? It is normally associated with asking oneself Ramana Maharshi’s famous question, “Who am I?,” and then “seeing what comes up” or “seeing that nothing comes up.” In this essay, I give a broader definition that incorporates four alternative orientations, which on the surface seem contradictory but end with the same goal. They only seem contradictory because there are two fundamental things happening in a dialectical manner. One is the movement to directly notice the selfless nature of experience. The second is just the opposite, to deliberately notice the self-nature of experience. By approaching experience from multiple directions iteratively and relentlessly, the intuitive mind will notice what seems to be the most liberating options (image chopping down a large gnarled tree with an axe, hacking from multiple angles, always finding the most pliable one).

The first orientation is that of directly affirming selfless experience. This, for the Vipassana meditators out there, is basically noting practice, but it is targeted specifically at highlighting the selfless nature of experience. This orientation can be subdivided into affirmation of (a) the process-oriented nature of experience (in the second person), (b) the immediately immanent nature of experience (in the first person), and (c) the God’s eye view of nature (in the third person).

Affirming the process-oriented, second-person nature of experience looks as follows. Sitting with eyes open, one could state simply, “There is seeing” or, “There is the activity of seeing.” This affirmation may seem obvious, banal even. However, note that there is no seer implied, just the process (or activity) of seeing. Similar statements might include, “There is hearing” or more generally, “There is knowing.” This practice can be implemented in daily life, during instances such as, “There is walking,” “There is driving,” “There is contraction,” “There is emotional defensiveness,” and so on. The point of engaging in this exercise is to notice that the process of perceiving and acting is often happening on its own, without much special effort from a “doer.” Or, if the “doer” seems persistently in control, one could affirm something more meta, such as, “There is the perception of the doer controlling this activity.”

The second category of the first orientation is similar, but instead of affirming the process of perceiving or acting, one would affirm more simply the immanent suchness of the activity (the first person view). So, instead of saying, “There is seeing,” one would say, “There is the seen,” or even more simply, “Seen.” In my experience, this latter method is more direct, more groundless—and therefore potentially more liberating—but also more inaccessible when one is just starting out. It’s moving from the normal perception that “I am doing or perceiving something” and jumping straight to the perception of “something,” cutting out the “doing or perceiving” in between. This difference might seem pedantic, but it is phenomenologically important. For many people it may be more reasonable to start with the second person and then move onto the first person exercise.

The third category of the first orientation is also similar, but issues from the third person perspective (the third person view). Instead of stating, “There is seeing” or, “There is the seen,” the statement would be, “It is seeing.” This perspective can be incredibly powerful, but it can also feel alienating, almost like one is mocking oneself with ironic distance. But that’s kind of the point of meditation, right? to not take oneself so seriously? Have a laugh at yourself. At the same time, I’ll add a couple words of caution to this exercise. I would not recommend taking on this view all the time, lest one is tempted to engage in spiritual bypass (a form of disassociation into a permanent third-person “transcendent” perspective that avoids difficult interpersonal emotions and general life challenges), nor do I recommend applying it to others (e.g., I do not recommend stating, “It is talking” when in conversation with another person). Objectifying others in this way isn’t a sign of spiritual maturity, it’s a sign of sociopathy.

The second orientation is that of affirming the self-nature (or the self-initiating nature) of experience. Trying to hold onto it as tightly as possible. Examples of this include stating, with strong intention, “I,” “me,” “mine,” “I am looking,” “I am seeing,” “This experience belongs to me,” “This is my experience,” or just simply stating one’s own name over and over. Here, one is calling attention to the normally implicit self-sense that is usually “doing” these activities, and then trying to notice the sensations that make up that sense. So, for example, one could state “I am looking,” and then notice what that feels like in the body. Often, the feeling is associated with sensations behind the eyes or in the jaw. By noticing them, one is objectifying these sensations, bringing them into the foreground, and therefore removing them from the implicit self-sense and into the sense of some phenomenon that is just happening on its own.

The point of these questions is again to dig up the normally implicit sense of self that is performing some task.

The third orientation is that of negating the self-stance. Instead of stating, for example, “I am looking,” one would state instead, “There is nobody looking,” and then observe how awareness and sensations in the body react. One might get a direct sense that there is just the seeing happening (or there is just the seen), without a sense of the observer. Alternatively, one might notice a strong sense of the observer defensively reacting to the assertion or is finding the exercise logically ridiculous. As with the affirmations, there are many permutations that a person can play with. The fun of this approach is that the options are basically endless and can be tailored by the individual.

The final category is that of questioning the self-stance. This corresponds to the classic question, “Who am I?,” and is what is normally thought of as self-inquiry proper. As before, there are many possible types of questions. Some that I have found useful include, “Where am I?,” “What is aware?,” “What is aware of looking, hearing, sensing, or feeling?,” “Who looks, sees, or feels?,” “To whom or what is this appearing to?,” “When am I?,” “Where is the awareness of feeling?,” and “Where is my mind?” The point of these questions is again to dig up the normally implicit sense of self that is performing some task, is in some location and time, and then noticing that it is comprised of sensations that can be objectified and therefore seen as not self. This can also be applied readily to emotions that inevitably come in during meditation or in daily life. For example, “Who is feeling anxious, sad, or angry?,” or, “Where is the awareness of this anxiety, sadness, or anger located?”

I don’t recommend sticking to a set formula for any of these practices, even if one strategy proved effective in the past. Cultivating and learning to trust one’s intuition plays a big role in this process. It is a good idea to start any practice with an initial settling-in period, a gentle mindfulness of what sensations or energies seem most prominent in experience. And then, using one’s intuition or interest to guide the practice from there, to find the affirmation, negation, or question that seems to have the most sticking power, and perhaps iterating among many of them. If an approach starts to seem bland, continue to switch it up until energetic movement and/or a perspectival shift takes place. Find the path of least resistance. More broadly, one may find that self-inquiry is too intellectual and stressful at the moment and prefer to relax into a straight mindfulness practice of body sensations or a more choiceless awareness approach. All of these practices can be deployed in most rote daily life activities. In fact, I often have the most success in my practice when, say, walking down the street.

With practice one starts to develop a feel for the process, a meta-cognitive intuition that highlights the correct technique at the appropriate time to slowly untangle the sense of a permanent and separate “observer.” Over time, this may lead to the self becoming more like a decentralized and fluid network of cognitive moments, more responsive and intelligent than if everything was being passed through a centralized and rigid self-node. And if this isn’t a seductive enough potential, consider the possibility that this may also allow you to embody your truer self. I don’t mean this is some metaphysical sense, but instead in a charismatic one. Like it did for me, it may allow you to fluidly enact your potentially still unknown or constricted multifaceted multitude of selves.

I’ll close with a final note of advice. Introspective techniques such as these so-called insight practices, while having great liberating potential, can also come with a downside. Daniel Ingram talks extensively in his book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha about the “Dark Night” that can come when your attentional abilities start to automatically deconstruct the very sense of who you are. This can be especially troublesome if you have a history of mental health issues or severe depression. Thus it is wise to accompany insight practices with metta (loving kindness) and concentration (Jhana) practices, and perhaps even more importantly, with strong and loving relationships. These can help to situate this journey within a container of “meta-okayness,” as Kenneth Folk puts it. At the end of the day, the safest route is to proceed with a qualified teacher, therapist, or trusted friend who can help you navigate potential pitfalls along the way.