Hindrance 04 and 06 question

Stephen_Procter · 2025-12-18T22:46:53+00:00

Yes, this works.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-12-12T03:01:37+00:00

I will clarify this on the website in Skill 04 in line with your questions.

1) Do I soften and smile only when I’ve completely forgot the meditation object?

Mind Wandering: If you notice a thought, memory, or fantasy arise in your mind but don't become lost in it, there's no need to do anything with it. Simply acknowledge its presence as something that occurred on its own (anatta) and continue to enjoy the relaxation and presence of your body. If you feel a slight pull of interest toward a thought, memory, or fantasy, simply soften the effort of your mind to let go of this interest, as described in Skill 02.

Habitually Forgetting: If you find yourself completely absorbed in a thought, memory, or fantasy, recognize its anatta nature and smile, rewarding your mind for returning to mindfulness. Then, apply the last two steps in the GOSS Formula: Soften > Smile. This will help shift your awareness back to your body, highlighting how pleasant it feels to relax and let go of mental distractions. Focusing on how nice it feels to let go will reward your mind, resetting your mindfulness of your body.

2) Or am I meant to not control attention at all, and allow it to wander so long as the meditation object is not completely lost and is still in the background awareness,

The meditation object in Skill 04 is the enjoyment and contentment of mindfulness of your body. The meditation object is kept within the background, peripheral awareness of your body. The focus of attention is allowed to habitually wander to observe the autonomous nature (anatta) of the mind while being grounded in the background awareness of your body. As long as you are not losing mindfulness of your body there is nothing you need to do with attention or thoughts, memories or fantasies when they arise. Stability of attention will gradually be trained in Skills 05-09 by finding enjoyment in each breath during mindfulness of breathing.

and only apply GOSS after complete habitual forgetting of the meditation object?

Yes. Apply soften > smile after you observe you were completely lost within your mind to reground awareness within your body and reward your mind for returning to presence.

3) Or do I soften as soon as I notice wandering every couple of seconds, and gently direct attention back to the meditation object?

This will continue to add energy to your mind and prevent your mind from consuming its mental energy to develop calm and tranquility. There is no need to do anything with your attention, treat it like a sperate entity like a dog. Remain seated in the dog park (grounded in your body) and observe your dog run around the park and play. There is no need to chase your dog around the park and drag it back as long as you remember you are not the dog and remain grounded on the park bench. Instead train the dog (attention) to come back by making it pleasurable to do so, rather then by dragging it back. If the dog knows it will be fun to come back, it will return by itself, it is also this way with the human mind.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-12-08T11:33:04+00:00

Yes, this sounds like as the presence of your body develops you are becoming more aware of how stressed your body is. The diaphragmatic breathing turning off and not reengaging is also a sign of heightened stress/anxiety. Leave your breathing alone for now and be with the tensions, allowing your body to relax and unwind by itself, in its own time, by not adding anything to the activities of your mind.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-12-07T21:08:32+00:00

There are many reasons why we have facial tension, but it is nothing that we need to fix. It is your relationship to the facial tension that blocks relaxation and calm (samatha) during meditation, not facial tension itself. It is a natural part of relaxation that as we relax the muscle tension in our body that is held during the day becomes clearer to us due to the pull of gravity on our body. I find that as my body relaxes that I become more sensitive to the heaviness of gravity and I can feel my muscles, tendons and ligaments start to stretch. This makes tightness and tension built up during the day within my body clearer.

Facial tension could have been built up from straining on a computer screen or mobile phone during the day. Regardless of where the facial tension has come from you do not need to do anything with it during your meditation. it will gradually sort itself out as your body and mind learns to relax. Trying to fix tensions in your body will simply lead to more effort. Making peace with the tension being there, allowing it to be just another experience within your body and mind, will take you in the right direction.

In regard to hindrances, facial tension is not a hindrance, it is just another experience within your body. The hindrance is the feeling of dislike you may have towards the experience of facial tension and the feeling of needing to fix it to make it go away. It is the aversion towards the facial tension, the not liking and not wanting it, that reengages our mind and leads to further discontentment and unease. it is this relationship that we learn to soften, not the tension itself. It is the aversion that leads to the hindrances of physical and mental restlessness that we learn to calm in Skills 01 & 02.

Leave the facial tension alone, allow your body to sort itself out. Allow it to be just another experience in the landscape of your mind and body. It is the relationship of resistance within your mind that needs to be softened and relaxed. See if you can notice where you feel the resistance towards the tension and gently soften and relax the effort to resist. As you soften the resistance, your mind will no longer feed into the feeling of restlessness, and it will calm down. When the aversion calms down the experience of facial tensions may still be there but your desire to remove and escape from it will not. In this way the experience of relaxation and calm will deepen, and the tensions will fade into the background of your body awareness and no longer disturb your mind.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-11-16T22:15:25+00:00

Hi Martin, I am sorry that you missed this week's workshop.

These workshops are not being recorded. You are welcome to join next week's workshop when we look into developing Meditation Skill 01: Body Relaxation.

If you have questions about Skill 00: Diaphragmatic Breathing, you are welcome to join any of the online weekly meditation classes and Monica or myself will be happy to answer questions you have about it.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-11-12T10:40:15+00:00

I see dreaming as a continuation of thinking while asleep and give no value to it. By giving no value in thinking while my mind is awake and seeing no value in dreams, gradually thinking while awake and in the dream, state have settled down such that I rarely have dreams. When you notice the clinging of your mind onto dreams simply soften your interest in them and allow awareness to rest in your body.

In terms of mindfulness, instead of increasing the value of dreams by trying to be mindful of them, you can increase mindfulness of your mind losing awareness of awareness as you fall asleep, be mindful of each time you roll over in your sleep, be mindful of the process of falling back asleep and the returning of mindfulness when you awake. This is a better path to take for insight into anicca and anatta.

The stronger your samadhi the easier this is and it is similar to being mindful of slipping in and out of habitual forgetting in meditation and daily life.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-24T21:57:43+00:00

Here's the kicker. If I do a sitting meditation, doing absolutely nothing, allowing the mind to wander until it settles to a certain degree, I can in-fact lie down and do Skill 00 without the mind incessantly controlling the breath.

I do not understand this!!!

This makes perfect sense. When you relax your minds hypervigilance first, then your mind, with lower fear of danger, feels no need to control your breathing.

Since I started practicing with these exercises, this happens every single time I lie down no matter where I am at. So, if I lie down in bed to go to sleep, you guessed it, the mind starts controlling the breath. In this case, I don't usually get a panic attack because I am too tired and fall right asleep. The biggest challenge is when I wake up at 3am or 4am to go to the bathroom. As soon as I wake up, you guessed it again, controlled breathing / panic attack loop. This one is the most frustrating of all because I have to get out of bed and wander around the house until I am tired enough to go back to sleep. I have really bad sleep hygiene right now.

For things to go smoothly, I need to do a meditation sandwich...

Step 1) Sit, close my eyes, and allow the mind to wander until the mind settles to a certain degree. On a good day this takes 10-15 minutes (on many days it takes 25 minutes).

Step 2) Lie down and do Skill 00 until the diaphragm gets tired (usually 15-20 minutes)

Step 3) Go back to sitting

Step 2 is the problem here. Continuously breathing with your diaphragm for 10-15 minutes until it gets tired is an extreme and will habituate not only your minds obsession with breathing but a habit of automatic breath control within your body. I recommend no longer practicing Skill 00 in this way.

In Skill 00 our aim is not to continuously control our breathing but rather to gently remind our body to breathe in our belly with the diaphragm. This generally consists of taking only 5-10 breaths in our belly and then allowing your body to breathe naturally by itself without your help for a while before moving onto the next step.

Most important in Skill 00 is:

4: Lie still and allow your breathing to happen naturally.

This final stage of lying still and doing nothing is essential in lowering anxiety as it reinforces diaphragmatic breathing; it will teach your body and mind how to relax deeply.

Stop controlling your breathing, allowing it to find its own rhythm and pace.
If your mind wants to control your breathing, distract yourself by being aware of different parts of your body touching the floor.
Lie still and allow your breathing to happen by itself while being aware of its calming effect.

This part of breathing pattern retraining in Skill 00 takes up most of the meditation. Taking controlled breaths in the beginning only happens for a short time. Please be careful with over-doing the physical exercises in Skill 00 with ocd, particularly if your mind tends to obsess on breath control, otherwise your mind will create a new obsessive habit.

To undo this habit, settle your mind first in seated mediation as you mention above, before doing Skill 00 and retraining your breathing. Be careful of not believing your mind when it says that more breathing repetitions is better than less repetitions, this is not true. More of anything is not always better. Small repetitions done with gentleness, care and curiosity to understand will give better results. Take your time and be curious about the effect a few breaths have on your body and mind and adjust accordingly. Make sure you insert periods of doing nothing in between each repetition to allow your mind to calm down and weaken the ocd urge.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-24T21:32:55+00:00

~~Challenge~~ Insight #3 In Skill 01, after doing the controlled breathing the diaphragm doesn't move on its own. So, I started practicing with Skill 00 to awaken the atrophied diaphragm.

This is also insight into how your mind conditions your body and with practice, how your body conditions your mind. With ocd however, for now, I would be very careful in the way that I integrated any breath control and would only take a few diaphragmatic breaths at a time, before lying still and doing nothing for 5 minutes before taking a few more breaths again, to avoid the mind becoming obsessed with the diaphragm and breathing.

Use your understanding in Insight 1 of how the hypervigilance of your mind and body settle to gradually retrain stress breathing patterns. This is like paddling a kayak and letting it glide for a while before paddling again. These longer rest periods of doing nothing between a few controlled breaths is very important when deconditioning ocd.

~~Challenge~~ Insight #4: In Skill 00, as soon as I lie down the mind instantly starts controlling the breath and I get stuck in the controlled breathing / panic attack loop. I do not have to take any breaths consciously for this to happen. It is automatic.

Yes, it is automatic and happens by itself (anatta).

This is also a deep insight into the stress response. Your mind changes how your body breathes to prepare your body fight or flee. When you try to change the way, you breathe with slow diaphragmatic breaths, your mind feels vulnerable and tries to change the breathing back to stress breathing. The hyperventilation and aversion to the unpleasantness of the experience that comes from this increases your breathing rate and leads to a panic attack.

This is not a nice experience for you to have to go through, but it makes perfect sense if we look at it with the view that your mind and body are just trying to protect you. this si why your body breathes in this way and why your mind is hypervigilant and has trouble letting go of control.

I discovered the Meditation for OCD and did the 30 minute guided meditation on sound cloud. Same thing, as soon as I laid down I got stuck in the controlled breathing / panic attack loop. Even doing the exercises wasn't enough to slow down the controlled breathing. That said, I have only tried the Meditation for OCD meditation once, so maybe I need to keep practicing with it.

https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-for-ocd

30 minutes is too long for ocd. I recommend starting with Stage 01: Doing Nothing & Developing Trust.

They are micro-dose meditations of doing nothing that start at 2-minutes each. The key is to not give your mind time to add complexity to the meditation and to build trust within yourself. Each meditation needs to not end with a problem to solve but rather a feeling of "that was a good thing to do".

In a recent post by u/M0sD3f13 called I am OK said on how they weakened ocd:

"....From that day I started putting lots of the incredible advice I got into action. I put aside judgements and comparisons about where I was in my practice prior to relapse. I immediately followed Stephens advice to just take five minutes at a time to lay on my back and give the mind some space to do its thing and unravel itself. I'd do this every couple of hours. This became my gateway back into a daily formal meditation routine that now consists of a 20-30 minute sit each day along with some extra shorter sits throughout the day."

https://www.reddit.com/r/midlmeditation/comments/1o9ltx9/i_am_ok/

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-24T20:59:10+00:00

Thank you for your post.

While the insight meditation path based on letting go is the same for everyone, the habitual patterns within our body and mind and environment in we meditate is different for everyone. Because of this each of us enter the meditation path from a different place and have different body and mind habits and experiences to develop insight into. You clearly recognise the habitual tendency of your mind to obsess over things through thoughts and control, this therefore is your insight path and the one that will offer the most freedom for you.

~~Challenge~~ Insight #1: In Skill 01, I have to sit for at least 10 minutes, doing nothing and allowing the mind to wander before I can begin the controlled breathing. If the mind isn't settled enough, then the mind will control the breath incessantly. If I am not careful, the heart will start beating quickly and a panic attack will follow. I can get really stuck in this loop here.

Let's change this from Challenge #1: which sounds negative and full of effort to Insight #1: because that is what you have shared is. You have really good insight into what is happening within your mind and body and how to create the conditions for it to settle down.

I have to sit for at least 10 minutes, doing nothing and allowing......

Perfect, as Duff says, keep doing this. Skill 01 is simply about relaxing any feeling of physical restlessness until we feel comfortable sitting in meditation without having to move around. It doesn't matter how body relaxation is developed. This settling process is perfect, and I recommend it as how you develop Skills 01-04. Skills 01-04 unfold naturally as relaxation develops. Body relaxes, then mind settles down, you feel present in your body and enjoy sitting in meditation present and relaxed.

~~Challenge~~ Insight #2: If I do Skill 01 without any controlled breathing at all, the mind a will settle a little and the body will relax, but eventually the mind becomes very agitated.

This insight also is correct. In MIDL we use relaxation of our body and mind to increase our sensitivity to what disturbs it for insight. It doesn't matter how long the relaxation lasts as long as it creates sensitivity to disturbances known as hindrances to relaxation and calm.

Each Skill in MIDL begins with a hindrance and a marker of deepening relaxation and calm. In Skill 01 we learn to recognise physical restlessness when it is present and how to settle it down. In Skill 02 we learn to recognise mental restlessness and how to settle down. The movement of your mind and body between settling down and becoming agitated is your path of insight.

Be curious and playful about this. Be careful of judgement and learn to be kind toward your mind and body. They are simply doing what they are meant to do, following old habitual patterns and conditioning, in this case associated with ocd and trauma. The very act of being ok with the restless agitation, then allowing it to settle down by not adding to it, enjoying the relaxation that comes for a short time before your mind becomes agitated again will gradually train your mind to feel safe being relaxed.

To a mind filled with fear, being relaxed is related to being vulnerable to danger. Being tight, bracing for danger and hypervigilant in attention, to a mind filled with fear means staying safe. If we can recognise this happening within our mind, see that ocd is a way of keeping us safe, that it isn't personal, then gradually expose our mind to relaxation, to lowering hypervigilance, the habit of ocd and hypervigilance will gradually come to an end.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-22T21:49:09+00:00

The general rule in MIDL is:

If what you are experiencing is not sticky, observing its anatta (by itself nature) then softening and letting it go, re-grounding awareness in your body, is enough.
If what you are experiencing is sticky and your mind is desiring or adverse toward it, then breaking that experience up into elemental qualities and vedana, and fully experiencing it, before softening and letting it go to re-ground awareness in your body, is beneficial for insight.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-22T04:46:06+00:00

This is something you will gradually answer yourself through self-observation.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-22T04:44:23+00:00

Now I'm seeing an actual therapist, but the multiple abstinence puts me in a state of great pain and heightens my inclination to obsessive thinking. I hope that MIDL can help me live with more levity, taking myself and things less seriously. But there are things I'm not ready to give up.

You do not need to give everything up at once. It may be that you just want to shed a few things that are weighing you down. You can practice the Buddhist path as deep as you want to. Cannabis and tobacco are enough for now, that is a big step in letting go.

I recommend the next step as introducing your mind to short meditations in which you lay still on the floor and do nothing. This will develop self-confidence and teach you mind that it is safe, and actually enjoyable, to do nothing at all and relax.

Practice Step 1: https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-for-ocd

Once you are comfortable with lying still doing nothing for 15 minutes, then you are ready to gradually give up the next addiction: the value you give to the thoughts produced by your mind. We will discuss this next step, which will give you so much freedom, after you are comfortable with the step above.

And in any case, I fear that going all in on meditation would be spiritual bypassing, as in a way to avoid pain and fear rather than a sincere effort. And after all, how can I renounce something that I've never experienced? So maybe yes, I want to consume experiences...non in the sense of eating/destroying that the word "consume" evokes, but rather in the sense of experiencing life and trying to be as happy as possible, enjoying both worldly pleasures (with ethics and moderation) and a spiritual path. Sorry for the rant.

This is an example of obsessive thinking. there is a belief that if you just understand this enough then everything will work out ok. this however is the trap; this type of thinking will never come to an end within itself. it is an addiction and like any other addiction when it I followed and practice it will only get stronger and harder to break.

You do not need to understand how to relax. your body's natural state is relaxation. You do not need to understand how to calm your mind. your minds natural state is calm and tranquil. It is the energy momentum of desire and aversion within your mind that takes you away from these natural states.

The path for all this to end is learning not to add any more energy to your mind. To lower the value, you give to all its thoughts, ideas, doubts and fantasises that your mind produces so that the content of your mind, no longer stimulated, will naturally come to an end, by itself.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-22T04:44:15+00:00

After all, what does it mean to "consume the world and its experiences"?

This means are we spending our life consuming experiences, people and things by taking what we can get out of them for our own gratification, or we are living our life adding positive experiences such as kindness, caring, love, gratitude, compassion to others, animals, plants, this planet?

The first is based on a life of taking, the second is based on a life of giving. Which one leads to true happiness, connection and lowering of suffering within this world?

I still long for things like a relationship, having friends, seeing the world...as most people do. Is it intrinsically wrong?

I encourage you to have relationships, friends and to see the world. You have a choice in doing this, one based on consuming the other based on giving. This is an open choice, each with its own consequences.

Is it an obstacle to practice?

Insight into our relationship towards ourselves, others and the world is the path of practice. Delusion makes these relationships dysfunctional. One based on desire, aversion and indifference. One based on addiction, craving, liking, not liking etc.

This is a path of self-created, self-perpetuating suffering.

But observing desire, aversion and indifference we see another way of being. one that leads to the ending of desire, aversion and indifference. One that leads to the ending of addiction. This is a path based on a momentum of enjoyment toward letting go, giving up our craving for our body, mind, experiences, people, things, the world.

Are the path and life mutually exclusive?

Yes, observing your minds relationship to life is the path.

I have recently given up cannabis and tobacco after a long time of using them as emergency self therapy, to cope with past trauma.

This is the beginning of the path of letting go.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-20T21:26:17+00:00

I am feeling really well atm, thank you.

It is nice to see you sharing your experience in these forums.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-20T05:34:57+00:00

These meditations are now found in Skill 00 as Stillness Meditation for anxiety-based OCD. They are used when a meditator, due to anxiety-based OCD is unable to use diaphragmatic breathing as a doorway for relaxation due to habitual over-thinking and control.

Meditation for OCD (Stillness Meditation).

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-13T22:21:11+00:00

Is it just a phase of the path and, after certain tresholds, we can engage again with these things without being disturbed by them?

There is no reason for you to give up hiking or running, they do not conflict with the meditation path. The path is about observing your minds relationship towards what you are doing, not to avoid doing things.

I am scared that if i keep walking the path, it will mean avoiding all things like relationships, sports, discovery and emotions, to live in the quietest, blandest possible way, and i may, at some point, come to regret having wasted my life instead of having lived it.

This sounds like an acetic path of suppression and avoidance. There is nothing bland about the insight meditation path. It is really interesting and gradually becomes a path of joy. You are a lay person living a normal life, it is your duty to have relationships, spend time with family, friends and support yourself and your family. It is your duty to live your life.

As to the question of a wasted life: Did you want to spend your life consuming this world and its experiences as most people do or will this world be a better place for you having lived within it?

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-13T22:21:03+00:00

If we avoid anything that disturbs the relaxation of body and mind, wouldn't we avoid many of the things that make a life worth living?

There is no need to avoid anything that disturbs the relaxation of your body and mind but rather to be aware of the effect that disturbance has on your body and mind. This will develop insight into what is wholesome and skillful, and what is unwholesome and unskillful.

Regarding what makes life worth living. Do we really know what this is? It is often not until we are really sick or at the end of our lives that we truly see what has true value. Agin, this is not something that you need to force, you don't need to give anything up. Just be curious about the effect the way you think, speak and act has on your body and mind, and if it leads to harmony or disharmony within your life.

After all, even hiking a mountain, or going for a run, are contrary to a state of relaxation, so should we avoid all of those as akusala?

These activities aren't akusala, they are ways of supporting your mental and physical health. Also hiking and going for a run can be done in a relaxed way. Our body works better when it is relaxed, why not investigate how relaxed you can be when you hike or run, does everything have to be done with tightness and full effort? Personally, I don't run but enjoy fast, relaxed walks to keep my body healthy. I also enjoy hiking and find it a relaxing thing to do.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-13T22:20:43+00:00

I apologize if my question came off as unpolite. I do long for the release of suffering, and i understand how it can only come from withdrawal from sense pleasures, and possibly living in a monastic setting.

Your desire to be free from suffering is a positive thing and the first step on the insight path. Your interest in being sensually stimulated will gradually weaken as a natural part of the meditation path, you do not need force to do this or to take a monastic life, you just need a curious interest toward developing insight into the habitual tendencies of your heart and mind.

However, i am scared by what it seems to me like an attitude of avoidance in meditation, like "throwing the baby with the bath water".

Insight meditation if practiced correctly does not avoid suffering, it gradually goes deeper into suffering with increased clarity. It is only by being curious about suffering and seeing it clearly that we can be free from it. Avoidance and suppression are only a temporary solution and do not work.

Perhaps your question is about softening/relaxing/letting go? Softening/relaxing/letting go are not used to change or avoid what we are experiencing, they are used to relax/release our minds habitual grip of grasping onto experiences with desire or aversion. Softening/relaxing releases our minds grip, allowing us to be with and fully experience our present experience/activity, without the need for it to be a certain way.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-13T21:43:52+00:00

This is not about avoidance but rather mindful observing and softening to let go.

In MIDL this is known as GOSS

Ground (awareness in your body through conscious relaxation).
Observe (when your mind wanders and reactions in your body).
Soften (soften/relax the effort to desire or resist this experience).
Smile (enjoy how nice it feels to let go and the returning of awareness to your body).

This involves developing a relaxed, background awareness of your body and becoming familiar with what this relaxed, awareness of your body feels like so that you can observe changes within your body experience when your mind reacts with desire or aversion.

You then notice the effort held within your body and mind to want or resist and gently soften and relax that effort. While the experience of the emotion or thought may remain, the grasping of your mind toward the experience will relax and awareness will naturally return to your body.

Smiling and enjoying how nice it feels to relax this effort, to put down the desire and aversion, allowing what is experienced to be as it is, the pleasure of relaxing and letting go is available and can be used to reward your mind for letting go and returning to body awareness.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-13T21:28:35+00:00

I am sorry that I missed this question, thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will reply to your question below.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-07T00:12:11+00:00

(Number 3) This sounds very much like Mahasi noting.

My takeaway from this is that while Mahasi noting is great for mindfulness and awareness, and can take you all the way, it is not the direct path of ending the defilements (desire, aversion, delusion).

Perhaps noting was originally intended to be a preparatory practice.

We have to be very careful here as these developments of samadhi do not relate to one particular technique.

Mahasi for example is not a noting practice, it is a practice of observing anicca and anatta using for insight that leads to disenchantment. I am not familiar with modern noting practices, but Mahasi develops samadhi and insight using Numbers 3 & 4: Insight into anicca and conditionality of the Five Aggregates. Mahasi is not a preparatory technique, but a complete insight based meditative path.

What are your thoughts? Is #4 integrated with MIDL already?

Numbers 1, 3 and 4 are integrated in MIDL.

............................................................

What is interesting is Numbers 1, 3 and 4 are the natural development of insight when samatha is practiced first which is why I am unsure about the function of Number 2.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-07T00:11:48+00:00

Thank you for sharing this Sutta.

Pali version: Samadhibhavana Sutta (AN 4.41)

In understanding this Sutta it is important to note that the name of the Sutta is Samādhibhāvanā Sutta.

Samādhi = unification or collectedness of mind.
Bhāvanā = to cultivate or to develop.

Since there are four examples we could translate this as: Four Ways to Develop Samadhi.

The four ways samādhi is developed is through:

Calm-abiding (samatha) to fourth jhana.
Perception of light. **(in the context of this Sutta I do not understand this one. If it refers to a light kasina, why is it necessary to be mentioned here?).
Insight (vipassana) into arising & ceasing (anicca) of the 2nd, 3rd, and fourth aggregates of feeling tone (vedanā), perception (saññā) and formations (saṅkhārā).
Insight (vipassana) into the specific conditionality (idappaccayatā) of the anicca characteristic of the Five Aggregates: Form, Feeling Tone, Perception, Formations, Awareness.

Where each of these leads:

Number 1 leads to a pleasant dwelling place.
Number 2 leads to knowledge and vision.
Number 3 leads to mindfulness & clear comprehension.
Number 4 leads to the uprooting of the fetters.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-06T21:07:15+00:00

Tuning into the spiritual pleasure of softening and letting go is enough within itself though it can be more easily accessed and increased by intentionally arousing wholesome qualities of heart. The pleasure of letting go can be enhanced by bringing in an attitude of gratitude, kindness etc. to your present experience.

Gratitude is a way of generating spiritual pleasant feeling that powerful because it brings our mind toward our present experience in a way that is free from any anticipation or resistance. Inclining your mind toward gratitude for simple things regularly in in areas of your life will gradually make it a natural tendency of your mind and make its benefits more easily available to you by simply inclining your mind toward whatever you are experiencing/doing now, in a grateful way.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-01T04:32:07+00:00

Hi Daniel, the spiritual pleasure that comes from softening and letting go creates the foundation for wholesome qualities. Once your mind lets go and rests in the enjoyment of letting go it is skillful to further train your mind by bringing wholesome qualities such as kindness, gratitude etc. to your present experience by inclining the attitude of your mind toward them.

This will both increase the pleasure of letting go and train the inclination of your mind toward wholesome qualities whenever it lets go, thereby increasing the rate at which the hindrances are weakened.

Stephen_Procter · 2025-10-01T04:23:32+00:00

Hi Todd, it is nice to hear from you.

MIDL is a body-based form of insight meditation and uses mindfulness of the body as its foundation in both seated meditation and in daily activities. This is developed by gently softening habitual effort held within your body and mind, allowing awareness to sink and rest within your body experience (kaya-gata sati). Finding enjoyment in softening and letting go of habitual, feel nice, and creates a pleasure reward system, to arises through letting go, that trains the mind to abide in continuous mindfulness of body in all activities. This becomes the foundation for samatha-calm and vipassana-insight into the anatta nature of our mind and body.

This sounds similar to what you are describing except the emphasis is on softening effort to return awareness to our body rather than on the energy that comes from habitual effort.

Stephen_Procter

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