Day 11: The  Flavor of Experience

 Welcome to 40 Days of Mindfulness and Compassion Day 11!

 

Lecture

In her book How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman-Barrett claims that neuroscience has identified two qualities of a moment of experience. One is intensity: How strong is the experience? The other is valence: Is the moment of experience pleasant or unpleasant? Buddhist cognitive science says something similar. After initial contact with an object via the senses, there is an immediate and autonomic reaction to perception. We either are drawn toward the experience, want to push it away or are ambivalent to it. The term for this is vedana, which is often translated as “feeling tone.”

Again, this is automatic, pre-conscious and reactive. Neuroscientists and Buddhist both speak of moments of experience. These are occurring in intervals beyond the reach of our normal awareness. These initial reactions snowball into full-blown stories, emotions and reactive patterns.  But, so what? Why does this matter? It matters because what starts as a momentary “impulse” may develop into a powerful emotion or habitual reactive pattern, and these may cause us a lot of problems.

Emotions will be discussed more in-depth later, but for now, I will point out that emotions cause us to perceive the world and ourselves from their vantage point, and motivate us to act in ways that reinforce their validity, and they are often operating unconsciously. At least from my own experiences, I have been unaware of being under the grips of a strong emotion only after I have sent out an email that I later regretted, or had a spontaneous anger outburst or whatever else. The point is that they happen, they overtake us, they motivate us to act and they often cause suffering to others and ourselves.

An assumption here is that the more that we can become aware of these internal processes, the more we have choice and autonomy. However, it can be difficult or impossible for most of us to be aware of momentary experiences, but we can become aware of what I call the “flavor of experience.” I have also heard it described in various ways by meditators at workshops, such as “weather, climate and energy.” We can get a glimpse of this, perhaps, and in this glimpse we may become aware of the contour beneath our experience, which allows us to understand how we are really feeling under the surface. Again, the result of this hopefully is autonomy and choice.

I also sometimes call it the “push and pull” of the experience. This is what it feels like to me sometimes. When I was a child I used to play with magnets. The resistance and attraction that could be felt when playing with two magnets fascinated me. Maybe our experience is a bit like that. If I notice that I am pushing away in my experience, then I can be on guard for anger or fear. If I notice that I am reaching out in my experience, then I can be on guard for grasping or addictive types of reactions.

A key to many meditations, but particularly to this type of meditation is to be gentle in your approach.  To look for this “flavor” takes a very gentle kind of attention. It might be described, as kind of like periphery vision, and developing this can be very beneficial.

 

Meditation Tips

Meditation Tip #13: Be aware of the quality of the mind that “notices” when the practice is going “wrong.” 
When we notice that we have strayed or become distracted, we are instructed to gently come back. Be aware of the mind that notices. Is it compassionate and gentle? Is it harsh and self-critical? Somewhere in-between?

 

Meditation

 Mindfulness and the Flavor of Experience

 

 Self-Reflective Activity

 Try to pause periodically throughout the day during your daily activities. Just pause and breathe for a bit, then very gently look at your current experience. Ask yourself: “How is my experience right now? What is the flavor of my experience right now?” (You can substitute any word that makes sense to you for “flavor.”) Observe and gently note what is there.

 

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