Ryan Kay

First by attentional field I am referring to something I visualize as a mesh field with interconnected nodes, the field extending infinitely in all directions, occupying the same 3D space as the world around me. When stimuli enter my awareness they crumple a local part of the field, bending it out of shape, causing an unpleasant sensation, and then as the stimulus passes eventually that part of the field uncrumples itself. It’s almost impossible to witness this field if you haven’t had the experience of your sense of self as a dot located roughly around the back of your head/neck, disappearing via untensing, and for the first time in your life instead of feeling like you’re playing a game in first person as the character, you’re like a camera watching your surroundings unfold. You witness stuff but there is no mental bandwidth devoted to maintaining that there is a PERSON doing the experiencing, you’re just experiencing. It is truly a mindfuck and it’s what some people I’ve heard refer to as stream entry (sorry I haven’t read almost any meditation books or know the proper terms for stuff) I do NOT mean the high level feeling of “being one with the universe” which a lot of people get on psychedelics or ecstatic peak experiences. What I’m referring to is a very precise thing, that you can repeatedly induce if it undoes itself and you feel like you have a sense of self again. There is no content/story to it, it’s so oddly specific it’s almost boring, like relaxing your left pinky except you never knew you had a left pinky or something. You get to this point by honing concentration ability via samatha practices. I’ve personally experienced two paths but I am sure there are more: 1) TMI-style, focus on your breath, one-pointed concentration such that my concentration is so sharp I can’t not have this experience 2) proceeding through the jhanas until I hit the immaterial jhanas, specifically at least 6th jhana — have found TWIM method to be easier, more pleasant, and faster than Brasington method. 6th jhana gets me to the same headspace I was in right after stream entry The reason why you can’t see the field before stream entry is because there is too much bandwidth/processing power being taken up by maintaining your sense of self at all times such that you can’t investigate the rest of experience with much clarity. It enables you to switch from feeling like attention/awareness is centralized (always passing through the central self) vs decentralized (things are happening all around me in space, I am not *doing* anything to make them happen)