Stage5

Overcome subtle dullness

You have overcome gross distractions and strong dullness, but there is a tendency to slip into stable subtle dullness. This makes the breath sensations less vivid and causes peripheral awareness to fade. Unrecognized, subtle dullness can lead you to overestimate your abilities and move on to the next Stage prematurely, which leads to concentration with dullness. You will experience only a shallow facsimile of the later Stages, and your practice will come to a dead end. To overcome subtle dullness, you must sharpen your faculties of attention and awareness.

Goal
To overcome subtle dullness and increase the power of mindfulness.
Obstacles
Subtle dullness is difficult to recognize, creates an illusion of stable attention, and is seductively pleasant.
Skills
Cultivating even stronger and more continuous introspective awareness to detect and correct for subtle dullness. Learning a new body- scanning technique to help you increase the power of your mindfulness.
Mastery
You can sustain or even increase the power of your mindfulness during each meditation session.