There were several questions about the use of “Noticing, Acknowledging, Let it register and Accept it just as it is,” as a description of how to bring Sati - awareness - to each experience.

When the mind is settled, bringing attention and awareness to momentary experience is readily accomplished but when the mind is unsettled and caught up in either desire or aversion or both, it can take a deliberate effort to bring experience into awareness.

Often it helps to have a meme that can bring to mind that deliberate engagement. That’s the intended function of ‘Notice, Acknowledge, Register, Accept.’ It can also be engaged with reflection on a recently occurring event.  When the mind is settled, that prescription can naturally occur with momentary awareness.

Sometimes the impact of the experience can be intense and upsetting. Bringing awareness to physical sensation can help to endure the discomfort but sometimes it’s necessary to shift attention to a calming subject, such as loving kindness, to alleviate the distress.

The analogy of learning to swim was used to illustrate the process of learning to engage and trust awareness. It’s an experiential learning and as such, differs from didactic learning which is a cognitive process. It’s learning by doing and it opens up a new mode of experiencing reality that’s less mediated by thinking and more defined by experiencing. Awareness facilitates this experiential process.

The third of the four foundations of mindfulness is Mental States and is traditionally described as having four core mental states that can occur with clinging to self or without clinging to self. In the context of the learning to swim analogy - clinging before we learn to swim and after we learn to swim.

With clinging the four core mental states are:

• desire

• aversion

• delusion

• distraction

Without clinging they are:

• fullness

• spacious acceptance

• seeing clearly

• liberated