Research has shown that focused attention (FA) meditation can combat stress, and that open monitoring (OM) can help with emotion regulation. A more advanced technique, known as “nondual” or “open awareness”, begins to dissolve the illusory distinctions between oneself and the rest of the world, and can even provide meditators with flashes of creative or spiritual insight.
Nondual awareness is a state of mind that helps people to think outside their boxes – the “boxes” being our established mental models of how the world works and our place in it.
We build these mental models through learning over the course of a lifetime. They are invaluable, but over time they can become increasingly rigid and unfit for purpose. Rather than helping, they perpetuate old habits and preclude fresh insights.
Our mental models are mostly binary. They encode a multitude of crude preferences, such as what foods we like or don’t like, the music we love and the music we loathe, who is part of our “tribe” and who is not… but also fundamental concepts about space, time and personal identity, such as here and elsewhere, past and future, self and other, success and failure.
Letting go
In nondual meditation, the meditator lets go of these concepts and focuses instead on the ever-present bedrock of awareness, which doesn’t depend on habitual preferences, goals and concepts.
In everyday consciousness, often the closest we get to nondual awareness is the sense of “flow” that we experience when we become so absorbed in a task or experience that we lose track of time. In the pleasure of the moment, we forget ourselves and all our familiar urges and hangups.
Some scientists believe that nondual meditation, by suspending the brain’s usual binary operations, provides an opportunity to “streamline” or “fine-tune” its models of the world.
This is the same mental optimisation that takes place while the brain is offline during sleep. And just like a good night’s sleep, nondual meditation can restore the mental flexibility that often sparks flashes of creative insight and problem-solving.
In nondual meditation, the meditator cultivates effortless openness and acceptance of the present moment: pure awareness. They don’t attempt to do or control anything. Instead they let go of all concepts, preferences and judgments.
With the story of selfhood no longer the focus of attention, compassion and curiosity can arise naturally during the course of this meditation.
So how exactly does it change the brain?
Predicting the world
A prominent theory about how the brain perceives and interacts with the world proposes that it is not a passive receiver of sensory data, like someone watching a TV show. Instead, it draws on past experience to predict the hidden causes of incoming sensations.
According to this theory, the brain is organised hierarchically. Predictions from the highest, abstract processing regions pass downwards through this hierarchy, whereas feedback from the senses in the form of “prediction errors” passes upwards.
Prediction errors are the discrepancies between what the brain predicted and information from the senses.
The job of the brain is to minimise these prediction errors throughout the hierarchy – and in the process to build up internal models of the world outside.
Bogged down
The problem is that as we accumulate experiences — over the course of each day and over a lifetime — these models become increasingly complex and inefficient. As they get bogged down in fine details, they become hidebound and inflexible.
One of the roles of sleep is to streamline the models while our senses are offline, restoring openness and flexibility. The brain may do this by “pruning” weak or redundant synapses (the electrical connections between nerves).
Neuroscientists have proposed that meditation works in a similar way. Rather than putting the brain to sleep, meditation uses tightly focused attention to temporarily take the upper, abstract levels of the hierarchy offline.
Like sleep, this provides the brain’s models with the downtime that they need in order to “reboot”.
Selfhood, space and time
In FA and OM meditations, the levels of the hierarchy taken offline are involved in things like mind-wandering and planning. But nondual meditation goes deeper, affecting the most abstract concepts that our models encode, such as selfhood, space and time.
It may dial down activity at the very core of the brain’s information-processing hierarchies in the hippocampus, which is part of the medial temporal lobe.
This temporary change of perspective can lead to flashes of inspiration or “aha!” moments of recognition. It’s like walking in the mountains when suddenly the mist clears to reveal a previously hidden path.
In this way, nondual meditation can start to loosen the grip of old, rigid habits and ways of thinking.
Neuroscientists have conducted far less research into nondual meditation than FA or OM meditation, but the telltale signature of this state of consciousness appears to be high-amplitude gamma waves at about 40 Hz, which reflect a highly alert, aware state of mind.
Activity: nondual awareness
Find somewhere you won’t be disturbed and sit quietly in a comfortable but upright, alert posture.
Keep your eyes open or close them, it’s up to you.
If you’re feeling particularly stressed, angry, upset or agitated right now, take a few minutes to practise the focused attention meditation we learned in Week One. Take a few minutes to focus on your body, on your breathing.
A good way to sum up this meditation is that you’re simply learning to drop out of the habit of thinking – the habit of trying to figure things out – of straining to get somewhere or achieve something.
Most of the time it’s almost as though we’re daydreaming. If we wake up, even for a moment, we’re able to be present and simply be. We are able to engage with others, able to see things and appreciate them – as if for the first time.
It’s important to remember that being doesn’t take any effort. It’s already there and already perfect. You just have to let go of thoughts in order to wake up from your daydream.
It’s a bit like a young dog running after a ball in the park. When it runs back to its owner, at first it won’t let go of the ball. To play the game it first has to learn to let go.
The mind is the same. It loves nothing more than running after things and gripping onto them. But sometimes it just needs to let go.
So, when you’re ready, start to notice when your mind is grabbing onto anything, whether it’s thoughts – or images – or emotions. Notice how the mind tightens or constricts around those things – then let go of them.
If you catch yourself trying to figure anything out, trying to analyse what we’re trying to do, just stop. That’s the opposite of open monitoring. You don’t have to do or understand anything.
If thoughts arise, treat them like boats floating by on a river. It’s perfectly normal, perfectly ok that there are boats on the river. We’re not trying to stop them.
Thoughts are neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. So just let them go.
In this meditation we are just sitting. We don’t need to do anything or change anything.
We are not bothered about the past, not probing the future.
This is timeless awareness. It has a quality of spaciousness. It has no boundaries.
If you notice yourself trying to figure out timelessness, speculating about awareness, wondering about boundaries, stop. That’s not what this is about.
Let these thoughts go. You can’t practise open awareness if you’re trying to figure anything out. That’s getting caught up in thinking. Simply let these thoughts go.
If you’re feeling sleepy, sit up straight, perhaps open your eyes for a while.
The open, aware mind is bright and clear. Awake. It has a luminosity that is its true nature.
Notice its stillness. The everyday mind is usually in state of turmoil. There’s a hubbub of thoughts, feelings, distractions. But underneath all of this there is a profound stillness.
The chaos and disorder and busy-ness are just tiny waves on the surface of an infinitely deep ocean of stillness.
When you reach the point where your mind is perfectly still, unmoving, notice that there’s a sense of completeness or perfection.
If you let go of thoughts, you discover that there is nothing that needs to be fixed or changed.
You discover that you are not your thoughts.
If you have reached a state of stillness, you might try posing yourself a question, but without trying to find any answer. It is enough just to ask the question – it’s a way to focus your attention on what it’s like to be you, right now.
What is awareness? How does it feel?
Who am I?
If you find yourself speculating, trying to figure things out, once again, relax and let those thoughts go.
This post was written with James Drever of Careful Digital for the final week of his 3-week Intentional Technology course
Further reading
Laukkonen, R. E., & Slagter, H. A. (2021) From many to (n)one: meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews; 128: 199-217. (How different kinds of meditation – like sleep – allow the brain to reconfigure or streamline its predictive models of the world.)
Lutz, A. et al (2004) Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. PNAS; 101(46): 16369-16373. (This study found that experienced meditators had more gamma-frequency brainwaves, both during ordinary consciousness and a form of nondual meditation. Gamma waves reflect highly focused awareness.)
Fucci, E. et al (2018) Differential effects of non-dual and focused attention meditations on the formation of automatic perceptual habits in expert practitioners. Neuropsychologia; 119: 92-100. (A study investigates how nondual meditation might alter the brain’s predictive processes and change established ways of perceiving the world.)
Godman, G. Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Compass, 1988) (For those interested in the spiritual dimension of nondual meditation, this is a fascinating collection of conversations between David Godman and the renowned Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi.)
Taft, M. Nonduality – defining the undefinable. The “Deconstructing Yourself” blog. (Meditation teacher and podcaster Michael Taft introduces the concept of nonduality.)
Plastic Brain 
Mr. Kingsland – First I want to say that your book, Siddhartha’s Brain, is literally on my top shelf of books about meditation and Buddhism. It was one of a very short list of books about meditation that I recommended to a dear friend who recently developed an interest in meditation and its benefits.
Regarding this latest essay, I would like to say, thank you for elucidating the particulars of a method that has only recently come to my attention via Adyashanti’s short book, The Way of Liberation, which is available, gratis, online. He calls Open Awareness mediation “True Meditation” in that guide. I’ve only recently become aware of Adyashanti, whose focus I gather has much to do with non-duality. As I understand it, his background is in the Zen and the Advaita Vedanta schools.
To the best of my knowledge, Open Awareness mediation was first described, quite concisely, by Tilopa, an Indian Buddhist who died in 1069. His mediation instructions are called Tilopa’s Six Nails, and they are translated as follows: Don’t Recall; Don’t Imagine; Don’t Think; Don’t Examine; Don’t Control; Rest. You may already be familiar with both of these teachers, but perhaps your readers are not.
Finally, I would like to say, lucky you, to have had the opportunity to interview Ajahn Amaro and visit the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery. I have never visited (I live in the U.S.), but in seeking to explore a type of mediation that I might find more fruitful, I have recently begun to follow Ajahn Sucitto, who is also at Amaravati (I believe), when he isn’t traveling the globe teaching! In particular, I have found his focus upon embodied meditation – in his writings, talks, podcasts, etc., very helpful and inspiring.
Again, thank you for your illuminating essay on Open Awareness meditation. It’s a beautiful compliment to what I’m reading by Adyashanti and am gleaning from Sucitto’s focus on embodiment and chitta, as well.
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Thank you for your kind words, it’s good to know the book is proving useful.
Yes indeed, I’m very lucky to have had the chance to interview Ajahn Amaro at Amaravati. I’ve read a few of Ajahn Sucitto’s books but not met him. I’d also recommend talks about pure or nondual awareness by Luang Por Sumedho, who is now a permanent resident at Amaravati and celebrated his 90th birthday this year! It’s wonderful that all their talks and books are freely available on the monastery’s website for those who aren’t fortunate enough to live nearby.
Thanks for recommending Adyashanti’s book about open awareness – I’ve just downloaded it and will take it on holiday with me. I’ve found this kind of meditation can bring a profound sense of peace.
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