Meditation as mental model

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“The highest-expression of Models Thinking is when you start creating mental models. When it becomes a creative playground.”

“Can you give an example?”

“Let’s take meditation.

Thinking of it as a practice, it has the following components: 

One-pointed Attention: focusing your attention on one point.
Open-Focus: gradually expanding your awareness-field inwardly and outwardly.
Meta-Awareness: noticing when your attention (inevitably) wanders.
Self-Compassion: gently and non-judgmentally bringing it back to your focal-point.

Thinking of it as a model, the practice can be expanded in application.

Any activity can be thought of as meditation. 

The components of the meditation-practice are the properties of the meditation-model. In thinking of the activity as meditation, all the properties of the meditation-model are transferred to the activity. We might call this contextual-meditation.”

“How is this different from, say, thinking of something as art?”

“It’s the same fundamental principle. Thinking of something as something else. The difference lies in their specificity and instrumentality. 

Thinking of something as art operates on a representational level.
Thinking of something as meditation operates on a representational and practical level.
The former is fuzzy and non-specific; the latter is actionable and highly specific.”

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