CST - Debugging Tool

How you can use the Central Story Model to unblock your meditation practice and get more results.

Hi friend,

When your meditation is not as pleasant as you’d like:

1. Identify which of the eleven axes of the Central Story Model you are currently stuck on, and

2. Unblock this axis using any of the following suggestions.

Contraction → Spaciousness

Symptoms of blockage:

• Tunnel vision

• Contracted attention

• Ignoring a part of the present moment

• Resisting a part of the present moment

• Excluding a part of the present moment

Solutions to unblock:

• Let go of ideas about what is worthy and unworthy of paying attention to

• Without moving your eyes, open up your peripheral vision

• Notice the space around what you’re paying attention to

• Notice the space around all things

• Keep zooming out of the present moment

• Cognitively step back from everything

• See the present moment as one limitless circle

Heaviness → Lightness

Symptoms of blockage:

• Physical and mental heaviness

• Psychological clinging

• Attentional stickiness

• Meditating feels like effort

• The present moment feels like a problem to solve

Solutions to unblock:

• Be present with the least effort possible

• Remind yourself, “body and mind are light”

• See your body less as matter and more as energy

• See your mind less as a grasping hand and more as free flowing air

Division → Unification

Symptoms of blockage:

• Sense of separation between me and environment

• Preferences

• Likes and dislikes

• Desire and aversion

• Craving toward comfortable sensations

• Aversion toward uncomfortable sensations

Solutions to unblock:

• Allow sense of separation to dissolve

• See how the outside world and your inside world are not separated

• See how you are 360 degrees open

• Remind yourself “freedom from preferences”

• Let go of tendency to pursue the pleasant

• Let go of tendency to run away from unpleasant

• Flatten your mind

• See how pleasant sensations, neutral sensations, and unpleasant sensations belong to the same body

Agitation → Peace

Symptoms of blockage:

• Compulsive thinking

• Body and mind are tense

• Breath is short, shallow, irregular, noisy

• You take your thoughts seriously — either drowning in them or fighting them

Solutions to unblock:

• Practice the Arms Swinging before meditating

• Smile gently with your lips and eyes

• Ensure to only breathe through your nose

• Allow your breath to slow down naturally, especially the out breath

• See thoughts as unimportant

• See thoughts as mirages

• Lose interest for thoughts

• Neither believe thoughts nor argue with them

• Mentally do less and less

• Mentally say “welcome thoughts” and experientally remember that you are the spacious awareness in which thoughts manifest and dissolve

Dissatisfaction → Fulfillment

Symptoms of blockage:

• Dissatisfaction with the ways things are going in your life

• Frustration because meditation is not going the way you’d like

• Wishing things to be otherwise

• Wishing the present moment to be otherwise

• Wishing your meditation to be otherwise

Solutions to unblock:

• Smile gently with lips and eyes

• Observe how the more desire, the more dissatisfaction

• Generate a pleasant feeling like fulfillment, gratitude, joy, kindness, safety, or tenderness

• Gently maintain your attention on a pleasant feeling — enjoying it, relaxing into it, giving it space, and allowing it grow

Fusion With Central Story → Defusion From Central Story

Symptoms of blockage:

• A sense that you are the body, feelings, thoughts, consciousness

• A sense that you need to change your experience to be happy

• The illusion that you can control your state of consciousness

• A sense that you are the meditator and that you need to control your state of consciousness to be happy

Solutions to unblock:

• See how the more you fuse with your Central Story, the more dissatisfaction, entanglement and rigidity

• See how the more you defuse from your Central Story, the more fulfillment, freedom and flow

• See how your Central Story / Central Sense is inconstant, unpredictable, and uncontrollable

• See the inconstant nature of your body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness

• See the unpredictable nature of your body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness

• See the uncontrollable nature of your body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness

• Ask yourself, “Who is meditating” and gently keep your attention on the source of consciousness

• Allow energy to flow freely at the center of your brain

Entanglement → Freedom

Symptoms of blockage:

• The sense that your attention is stuck

• The sense that your mind is wrapped up in something

• The sense that your mind is unable to get out of a particular pattern

• The sense that your mind is being controlled by something

Solutions to unblock:

• Pay less attention to what you think is keeping you stuck, and more attention to your attitude toward that thing

• Cognitively step back until you realize you are not that thing, or, inversely, cognitively move toward that object until all resistance dissolves

• See how that thing changes according to conditions

• See that thing as inconstant, unreliable, and uncontrollable

• Surrender

Ridigity → Flow

Symptoms of blockage:

• Perceiving things as stable entities

• Perceiving things as separate entities

• Energetic blockages in the body

Solutions to unblock:

• Ask yourself, “Is [this] static or changing?”

• Ask yourself, “Is [this] separate or not separate?”

• Notice the energy flow in your body — the tingling, pulsations, vibrations, waves of energy

• Pay attention to the energy flow in your body in a way that allows it to increase

• Allow all tensions to dissolve in your body so that the energy can flow freely

• See that the whole universe is in a state of flow

Resistance → Acceptance

Symptoms of blockage:

• You resist a part of the present moment

• You struggle against everything unpleasant

• You believe things should be different

• You wish things were otherwise

• You imagine that life owes you special treatment

Solutions to unblock:

• Ask yourself if your resistance has been helping you

• See how the more you struggle with unpleasant feelings and thoughts, the worse they become

• Let things be the way they are

• Remind yourself, “Aware of [things] as they are, not how I’d like them to be”

• Stay connected to the present moment in the simplest way possible

• Stay connected to the present moment with the least effort possible

• See your mind’s tendency to control as immature, childish, ridiculous

Rumination → Silence

Symptoms of blockage:

• You think in circles

• You give too much attention to the meditation instructions as words in your head, and too little to the experience these words are pointing at

Solutions to unblock:

• See thoughts as unimportant

• See thoughts as uninteresting

• See thoughts as empty

• See thoughts as mirages, illusions

• Mentally say “welcome thoughts” and be the space of awareness in which thoughts freely arise and freely dissolve

Imagination → Presence

Symptoms of blockage:

• Day dreaming

• Too much attention to mental content and too little attention to the senses — what you see, hear, and feel in your body

Solutions to unblock:

• If sleepy, get more sleep at night, exercise and take a cold shower before meditating

• If you’re really struggling, name three things you see, three things you hear, and three sensations you feel. Maintain your attention on all of these at the same time. Then open your awareness to the fullness of the present moment.

• See that imagination and presence are not at war with each other but are on a continuum

• Pay a bit less attention to what you imagine and more to what you see, hear, and feel