So one of the distinctions folks make within meditation (a special kind of introspection, we might say) to help people focus on the right things for insight is to distinguish between content and structure/process. That is, you’re often given the instruction to just be with whatever comes up, but this doesn’t mean to spend your time being trapped in it; instead the idea is to see something about what’s going on that’s elucidated by what came up.
To make this more concrete, say you sit down to meditate and you start thinking about how you felt awkward about something that you said to your friend earlier. Maybe that’s not the object of concentration, so maybe you should just drop it, but if you stay with it that could be fine too, especially if it’s intrusive and no matter how hard you try to focus on your breath or whatever you keep drifting back to thoughts of the awkward conversation. Whether or not what you are doing is skillful meditation will depend on if spend your time focused on the content of thought (e.g. “oh no why did I say that, I bet they hate me now, how was I so dumb, I always do this, what if I did something different instead, if only I had a different childhood I would be different, …”) or whether you spend your time noticing what’s going on (e.g. “okay, I feel awkward and keep thinking about it, what does it feel like to feel awkward? where do i feel it in my body? okay, now why do I relate to it the way I do? what comes up when I ask “why is this awkward”? am I sure this is true? …”). This seems to be something like the rumination/introspection distinction you mention.
Now of course today’s structure/process is tomorrow’s content, so this distinction is a relative one to how you relate to your own thoughts. Further, introspection/meditation is a place where it’s important to be epistemically humble because our brains often don’t know themselves very well and may feed us confused misinformation that we will later see as confused but right now can’t separate out from reality, so the conclusions we can draw from introspectively accumulated evidence are necessarily weaker due to the lower confidence we should have in the capta. Thus it makes sense to be cautious about our claims based on introspection, even as they are often extremely helpful for some purposes, like understanding ourselves better and becoming less confused about our relationship to the world.
It seems like keeping a part ‘outside’ the experience/feeling is a big part for you. Does that sound right? (Similar to the unblending Kaj talks about in his IFS post or clearing a space in Focusing)
Now of course today’s structure/process is tomorrow’s content
Do you mean here that as you progress, you will introspect on the nature of your previous introspections, rather than more ‘object-level’ thoughts and feelings?
Yeah, I do sometimes make an inside/outside distinction as a metaphor for talking about the subject/object distinction because things that are object can in a certain sense be said to be outside the self and thus available for manipulation and considering by the self and those things that are subject as inside and cannot as easily be manipulated and seen, just as it’s easier for me to see and manipulate the cup on my desk than to see and manipulate the stomach inside my body. Most progress with insight meditation consists of gradually (or suddenly!) moving what was subject/inside to object/outside, and a way to do that is by engaging with it in this way through a deliberative introspective process as part of meditation.
Do you mean here that as you progress, you will introspect on the nature of your previous introspections, rather than more ‘object-level’ thoughts and feelings?
Yes, and also more broadly that what was once skillful inspection of, say, observable behavior, can later become unskillful excess attention on behavior when you should now be paying more attention to the precursors of behavior because those are more readily accessible to you.
So one of the distinctions folks make within meditation (a special kind of introspection, we might say) to help people focus on the right things for insight is to distinguish between content and structure/process. That is, you’re often given the instruction to just be with whatever comes up, but this doesn’t mean to spend your time being trapped in it; instead the idea is to see something about what’s going on that’s elucidated by what came up.
To make this more concrete, say you sit down to meditate and you start thinking about how you felt awkward about something that you said to your friend earlier. Maybe that’s not the object of concentration, so maybe you should just drop it, but if you stay with it that could be fine too, especially if it’s intrusive and no matter how hard you try to focus on your breath or whatever you keep drifting back to thoughts of the awkward conversation. Whether or not what you are doing is skillful meditation will depend on if spend your time focused on the content of thought (e.g. “oh no why did I say that, I bet they hate me now, how was I so dumb, I always do this, what if I did something different instead, if only I had a different childhood I would be different, …”) or whether you spend your time noticing what’s going on (e.g. “okay, I feel awkward and keep thinking about it, what does it feel like to feel awkward? where do i feel it in my body? okay, now why do I relate to it the way I do? what comes up when I ask “why is this awkward”? am I sure this is true? …”). This seems to be something like the rumination/introspection distinction you mention.
Now of course today’s structure/process is tomorrow’s content, so this distinction is a relative one to how you relate to your own thoughts. Further, introspection/meditation is a place where it’s important to be epistemically humble because our brains often don’t know themselves very well and may feed us confused misinformation that we will later see as confused but right now can’t separate out from reality, so the conclusions we can draw from introspectively accumulated evidence are necessarily weaker due to the lower confidence we should have in the capta. Thus it makes sense to be cautious about our claims based on introspection, even as they are often extremely helpful for some purposes, like understanding ourselves better and becoming less confused about our relationship to the world.
It seems like keeping a part ‘outside’ the experience/feeling is a big part for you. Does that sound right? (Similar to the unblending Kaj talks about in his IFS post or clearing a space in Focusing)
Do you mean here that as you progress, you will introspect on the nature of your previous introspections, rather than more ‘object-level’ thoughts and feelings?
Yeah, I do sometimes make an inside/outside distinction as a metaphor for talking about the subject/object distinction because things that are object can in a certain sense be said to be outside the self and thus available for manipulation and considering by the self and those things that are subject as inside and cannot as easily be manipulated and seen, just as it’s easier for me to see and manipulate the cup on my desk than to see and manipulate the stomach inside my body. Most progress with insight meditation consists of gradually (or suddenly!) moving what was subject/inside to object/outside, and a way to do that is by engaging with it in this way through a deliberative introspective process as part of meditation.
Yes, and also more broadly that what was once skillful inspection of, say, observable behavior, can later become unskillful excess attention on behavior when you should now be paying more attention to the precursors of behavior because those are more readily accessible to you.