What happens when you simply look?

Meditation can mean many things.

For one person, it is a way to become calmer.

For another, a discipline of attention.

For another, prayer, contemplation, concentration, mindfulness, or a practice inherited from a religious or contemplative tradition.

These practices may have different purposes, histories, and meanings.

Probing Consciousness is interested in another possibility as well:

Can meditation become a way of investigating experience directly?

Not believing.

Not imagining.

Not trying to manufacture a particular state.

Looking.

Begin Where You Are

You do not need to become peaceful before you can investigate.

Perhaps the mind is quiet.

Perhaps it is restless.

Perhaps thoughts are moving rapidly.

Perhaps there is boredom, discomfort, pleasure, anxiety, anticipation, or the desire for something to happen.

Whatever is present becomes part of the inquiry.

For a moment, notice.

A sound may appear.

A sensation may change.

A thought may arise.

Attention may move toward it.

Another thought may comment on what just happened.

There is no need to call any of this good or bad.

Simply ask:

What is actually happening?

Meditation as Practice

Meditative practices can have specific purposes.

Some cultivate concentration.

Some work with attention.

Some encourage compassion.

Some involve the body or breath.

Some are used for relaxation or emotional regulation.

Some belong within religious or contemplative traditions and carry meanings that cannot be reduced to technique.

Scientific research also investigates particular meditation practices and their possible relationships with attention, stress, emotion, cognition, well-being, and brain activity.

These are important areas of study.

But they are not the whole of what interests us here.

From Practice to Inquiry

Suppose, instead of asking meditation to produce something, we use it as an opportunity to examine what is already happening.

A thought appears.

Before it appeared, were you aware of what the next thought would be?

A sensation changes.

Where does one sensation end and another begin?

Attention moves.

What seems to influence where it goes?

An emotion appears.

What is present before the emotion is named or explained?

And when you say:

I am meditating.

What does the word I refer to?

The purpose of these questions is not to provide the correct answer.

The question itself becomes part of the meditation.

The Meditator

This opens another direction of inquiry.

We ordinarily speak as though there is someone doing the meditation.

There is meditation—

and there is me, the meditator.

But can this ordinary sense of self also become part of the investigation?

Thoughts can be noticed.

Sensations can be noticed.

Emotions can be noticed.

The body can be noticed.

Memories can appear.

Even the thought I am meditating can be noticed.

What, then, are we referring to when we speak of the meditator?

Is the meditator the body?

A collection of thoughts and memories?

The familiar sense of being a particular person?

The sense of being located somewhere from which experience is observed?

Or is the question itself more complicated than it first appears?

In this work, the lowercase word self refers to the ordinary personal and psychological sense of identity—the familiar “me” associated with body, memory, personality, thought, history, relationships and experience.

Some contemplative traditions, particularly Vedanta, use the word Self differently, pointing with the capitalized term not toward a more refined personal identity, but toward Consciousness itself.

This is a contemplative claim, not something meditation requires us to believe.

It gives us something to investigate.

Does careful examination of experience reveal anything that supports—or challenges—this distinction between self and Self?

Can the ordinary sense of self itself be observed?

And if it can, what—if anything—does that reveal?

There is no need to answer quickly.

Stay with the question.

Nothing Special Needs to Happen

Meditation is often surrounded by expectations.

Silence.

Peace.

Insight.

Transcendence.

Perhaps such experiences occur.

Perhaps they do not.

Whatever appears can itself become something to examine.

So rather than measuring meditation by whether something extraordinary happens, we can become interested in something much more ordinary:

this moment of experience.

Exactly as it is.

Nothing needs to be manufactured before the inquiry can begin.

Guided Inquiry

The guided inquiries offered here will explore attention, thought, sensation, identity, fear, silence, Consciousness, and the sense of self.

They are not presented as paths to a promised state.

They are experiments in looking.

Try them.

Question them.

Notice what actually happens.

If an observation seems clear, examine it again.

If a conclusion appears, ask what supports it.

If something here conflicts with your experience, do not accept it merely because it has been written here.

And whenever an inquiry seems to be giving you an answer, look again.

What is actually here?

Look. Just look. See what is there.