This was something I rushed past a little bit (hoping no one would call me on it). I didn’t want to take the words to distinguish between these things – let’s see if I can.

I think I’m talking about becoming absorbed in the thinking, and taking as solid the represented world depicted in the thinking, and then realizing I’m actually still just lying in my body, in my bed, and that’s all that’s going on – and all that needs to go on for the moment.

In that mindfulness I then can see the thoughts faintly arising and milling around and passing away, at a distance that is actually appropriate to my just-awoken state. The thoughts can come and go, but I find my habit of absorption in them beckons them closer and invites them to multiply and magnify and form an impenetrable cluster around me.

In other words, I lose mindfulness of my present situation, lost in thoughts. But since this becoming lost in thought actually arises as I awake, I get to see it happen.

So instead of leaping up and saying okay I gotta do this or that or the other, ruled by all these thoughts, instead of this – and because of meditation practice and the spaciousness that grows from it – now I have the gift of space to watch this thought storm happen, and play with letting it abate also.

This is what’s so different from the rest of the day. In the day, usually in meditation, I can come to mindfulness, out of thought, and usually I’ve been in thought when I start this coming to mindfulness. And in meditation I can lose this and then return to mindfulness as awareness brings me back – back to the breath again and again.

But in the morning waking up it happens in the opposite sequence. I start without thought, and get to watch it come – or at least notice how it’s taken over in the last few seconds. I start with mindfulness (or perhaps just awareness, calling me, now awoken, to take stock in mindfulness of my present, empty situation), and I catch myself daubing layer upon layer of thickness of thought on the projection screen.

I even notice my eyes are focused upward in my head as I visualize these “solid” thoughts. In the dark, with my eyes closed, I lower my gaze and feel simple body awareness fill the present again.

So the thoughts are my experience yes, and I “should” be experiencing them in the simple way we know from meditation. And from shamatha meditation we know that being lost in thoughts, holding them as concrete things, is not the same as experiencing awareness of thoughts, without attachment.

So it’s difficult for me to describe that difference, but others must have done it brilliantly a thousand times, and it’s what we first discover when we meditate and begin to find the space between things. But that difference – however poorly I can describe it – is the thing that I’m saying becomes so clear to me as I wake up.

I know also that it’s a relative path to the absolute, so in some ways what I’m calling body awareness is delusional also – but it’s the map I’m using for the moment to steer by.

One quick question for you .. you say:

“As I wake in the mornings I find it relatively simple to notice the thoughts beginning to form a picture of my circumstances “out there”. I catch myself getting absorbed in arising “realities” that I need to remember and deal with during my working day.

In the dark with my eyes closed I can pull myself back into my own experience itself, and most mornings I play with watching this concretization occur, pulling back from the going out.”

Just wondering what you are pointing to exactly … you seem to counterpose ‘my own experience itself’ … with ‘the thoughts [which] begin to form a picture of my circumstances out there’.

Where do ‘thoughts’ sit in ‘your experience’? Am I wrong in thinking there is a distinction being pointed to here? If not … how do these things relate to each other, in your understanding?

take care, and very best wishes to you in the dharma,

Chodpa