In my quest for developing enhanced Awareness skills, I read a very eclectic range of books. Last week I tripped over a unique title in the library--Discovering Jewish Meditation by Nan Fink Gefen. Most meditation models are similar, but this one looked unique, so I checked the book out, and am browsing through it today while I wait for Technical Support to answer a question.

Gefen divides meditation into three categories: Focus Meditations, Awareness Meditations, and Emptiness Meditations. Obviously, we're interested in the awareness stuff.

I want to quote several paragraphs from the book because they illustrate the point I tried to make in my gun story below:

"Within our minds we have an "observer self." The observer self notices what is going on and names thoughts and feelings. This is the internal voice that says, "Oh, I am worrying about my father," or "Oh, I am obsessing about the pain in my belly," or "Oh, I feel joyous at the moment." The observer self does not analyze these observations. It only identifies them.

In our everyday lives the observer self is usually "asleep," and our thoughts jump from subject to subject without awareness. This is what happens during most of our waking hours. But in awareness meditation the observer self is called into action. At first it can hardly keep up with the powerful stream of thought. But like a body that is exercised over time, it becomes more adept, and we learn to notice the barely visible shifts of thought and mood without analyzing them.

One of the great benefits of awareness meditation is that the observer self becomes strengthened. As we become increasingly aware of our thoughts, we know ourselves better, and our mental processes become more familiar to us." [p. 44, Discovering Jewish Meditation by Nan Fink Gefen]

What's happening in our awareness exercises is that we're learning to identify those signals being sent by the enhanced awareness. After identifying, the trick will be to learn how to interpret them correctly!