Why Concentration is Not Enough? - Attention & Awareness Dynamic Explained
We all have the experience of focusing on a task singularly and very intensely. From common meditation wisdom, you might think developing an exclusive state of intense concentration is what meditation is ultimately all about.
However, this is only a part of the picture. For all beginner meditators, mindfulness and awareness collapses instantly if you narrow down attention strongly and forcefully. 
This is one of the fundamental reasons why you still experience distractions and sleepiness while trying to be more mindful. Even after years of meditation.
Let me explain:
Paying attention to an object without greater peripheral awareness is how we normally live our lives. Even without mindfulness, we’re always paying attention to something.
But with mindfulness, we pay attention to the right things, and in a more skillful way.This is because being mindful actually means that you’re more fully conscious and alert than usual. 
As a result, our peripheral awareness is much stronger, and our attention is used with unprecedented precision and objectivity. 
Mindfulness is the skillful interaction of attention and awareness.  
Attention analyzes our experience, and awareness provides the overall context and background.      
When one or the other doesn’t do its job, or when there isn’t enough interaction between the two, then we respond to situations less effectively. We may overreact, make poor decisions, or misinterpret what’s really going on.
Awareness provides the context and the background of events and experiences. It is open,   inclusive, and holistic. It’s concerned with the relationships of objects to each other, and to the whole.
Why aren’t we naturally more mindful?
 Why does mindfulness have to be cultivated?
There are two main reasons.
1- Most of us have never really learned to use awareness effectively.
2- We don’t have enough conscious power to sustain mindfulness, especially at the times when we need it most.,
The result of this is something I like to call Awareness Deficit Disorder: chronic use of attention until awareness fully collapses.
For instance, do you experience the moving sensations on your left foot’s toe while watching Inception?
An advanced meditator can experience the body fully while also wholeheartedly engaging in the movie.Body awareness is only the first step. They can watch the movie intensely and also simultaneously examine their minds, habits and mental reactions.
As a beginner meditator, you are singularly focused on watching Inception, - which is a fantastic movie - trying to follow the sequences of events.But awareness is fully collapsed. You are not aware of the body sensations as much.
Final Advice:
The most deceptive beginner mistake while trying to balance attention and awareness is to quickly re-direct attention back and forth between the breath sensations and the body (or distractions of all forms).
This technique is called intentional attentional movement.It can be used effectively in adept stages of meditation.
However, at its currently applied form, it is not helping you to develop greater levels of awareness and mindfulness.
The Solution: You need to maintain the stability of attention first and while the attention rests on the breath, now you start to experience the entire body and mind with awareness. This is how you develop mindfulness.
You need to keep these two modalities of experience in metacognitive awareness.
Keep meditating with this in mind and you'll get to know your mind at deeper and deeper levels with diligent practice.
Much love,
Arda
 

The Path to Mastery: Energy Efficiency and Effortless Ease
If you want to get anywhere on the spiritual path , understanding energy efficieny and effortless ease are absolutely fundamental.
Let’s call this dysfuntion of physical and mental tension that pervades each moment as ‘The Spiritual Block’ – TSB.
There are highly unconscious aspects of TSB which is manifested as mental effort without awareness and physical tension.
In simple terms, this is why you feel chronic fatigue. Especially the deep sort where no amount of ‘detox’ protocols or diet changes have any perceptible effect.
This is why you can’t look people in the eye. Your shoulders and body tense up and feel this anxiety that appears to have invaded your DNA.
This is why just the act of going to the fridge and getting a soda is such a tiring and ‘high effort-no reward’ activity filled with aversion, boredom and lack of motivation.
So how do we deal with it?
TSB is a form of complex suffering that certain forms of art has tried to address in order to optimize performance.
Martial arts is a very clear and masterful sport that incorporates deep spiritual systems in its core operating system.
You use the momentum of the opponent to conserve as much energy as possible while only utilizing muscles that needs to be contracted for the completion of the movement and completely relaxing all the other muscle groups that is not necessary for the task at hand. Which in turn conserves more  energy and increases efficiency.
When you look at any master at any field, you see that they have this inspiring energy efficiency. Not loose relaxation but the perfect levels of tension and relaxation dancing within.
Relaxed Alertness is a requirement to the path to mastery.
So here is a very tangible practice regimen to practice relaxed alertness.
1-      When you are doing any form of passive acitivity (watching TV, Youtube sitting down, laying down etc), make sure that your entire body, especially shoulders, arms and torso are completely relaxed and restful. Not even a little bit of tension should be allowed. Drop them down if you tighten  up.
2-      When you are doing any form of active movement-related activity (having converstion with someone, playing video games, typing on keyboard etc.) make sure that only the muscle groups that is required for the activity is used and all the other muscle groups are fully relaxed and restful.
 Not even a little bit of tension should be allowed. If you can drop it, then practice dropping it. In active movements, energy efficiency and tension becomes a deeper issue that requires careful investigation. Here is an example:
When you are typing on a keyboard, you don’t want to unnecessarily spend energy with shoulder tension, legs, stomach convulsing as you are thinking about a complex topic.
The only muscle group that needs to be used is fingers, hand and elbow. Even then, you should make sure you are not tightening the shoulders to hold the weight of your hands.
This is an example when even when you are using the required muscle groups, you need to utilize as much efficiency as possible.
Efficiency is defined as the least amount of effort and energy needed to complete any given task. When you see the ‘efficiency’ switch in your nervous system, integration of this efficiency to all life activities will get easier.
To see this switch, you need to practice much more physical relaxation. You need to see tension in each movement.  And you need to see that 'you' are generating it. Not the external circumstances and people.
If you think ‘Oh yeah! I’ve heard of this a million times. I’m doing it but it is not working so well’, just accept that you aren’t practicing any of this to the level that you need to experience any of the benefits that this practice offers.
You need to develop this continuous introspective awareness of tension and relaxation and that will lead to positive feedback loop.
Let the masters of their respective fields provide you with inspiration. Always attend to how such a high level they’ve mastered energy efficiency and relaxed alertness.
Meditation is actually the deepest form of mastery where you can bring this relaxed alertness axiom of mastery to all activities of life.
To all young people, ask yourself the question: Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could play Red Dead Redemption 2 like Mozart playing the piano?
To all adults, ask yourself this question: Wouldn't it be amazing to attend that social event your boss forces you to in a state of bliss and joy? Not dreading what you are going to say if you see this or that person.
Well, you can do that with spiritual training.
Do the process I’ve described for all passive and active states in daily life for as much as you can do, slowly your conscious power and awareness will heighten to extremely impressive levels. To such a level that your aura in life will tranform and people's perception of you will dramatically change.
Take this very seriously and practice it with resolve. 
Much love,
Arda