Elision in Mind

By Michael Erlewine

Here is an experience that is fresh from the mind, so bear with me, and discuss this if you will.

Lately, I’m making just too many typos as I write things out like this blog. What causes that?

Well, I seem to be immersing myself in Insight Meditation perhaps too often or a little too long, coming out of it, and then writing words without more clearly monitoring what I write. Perhaps I am still a little too out-of-the-body.

Then, when I read back on what I wrote, I find all kinds of typos that apparently, I did not see as I wrote them. I was somewhere else. As mentioned, I was perhaps still too immersed.

In other words, I was briefly out of my body and not enough in my body to catch obvious typos. What is this a sign of and what to do about it?

Obviously, I need to slow down, and back off a bit from the complete immersion. And, as mentioned, I need to monitor the words I write as I write them rather than glide back out of the body as I write or hover halfway in and halfway out.

The quality of the insight has not diminished, just the process of recording or doing something with the insight. I could also just take a break from doing too much at once.

The truth of truth has not changed as far as I can see, just the process of gliding out of the body and back in is sloppier than I remember. The typos are proof of this. Perhaps I am spending too much time fully immersed and not enough time in reflection from each immersion.

It could be that some simple adjustment is in order, or I’m just getting older and have less purchase on duality or the reality, less able to monitor the writing so that when I stop resting in the mind and instead turn my attention to the written result, what I read is finished and correct. I need to adjust and tighten that up.

I have noticed that I am more of the time halfway out of my body and halfway in. I used to try to do this, but now I just kind of do it without direction to do it. What this means is that I am glossing over duality and dipping more into full immersion than I need to or perhaps should. I didn’t know there was something like “too much” elision or ‘slide’.

I believe this is something I can adjust more or less until my focus is more back in my body and not positioned somewhere in between the two which apparently leads to mistakes in notation, in writing it all out.

One problem might be that I like immersion and spending time in it and I am not withdrawing far enough each moment back into my normal duality to avoid the typos. The effect or result is that when I do withdraw until everything makes sense, I find what I just wrote marked up with typos or mistakes, which then have to be corrected.

Of course, I could just stage it, always making a second pass over the same material, cleaning it up, and of course I do. Better would be just tightening the whole thing up and catching the typos as they emerge, as I write.

So, I am a step too far out of the body and certainly don’t want to be locked out and not able to make sense. Typos don’t make much sense. They are signs of inattention, not being there.

Anyway, something is changing, and so, a simple adjustment is in order, and I will make a point of staying on the conscious side of the unconscious, so to speak. I don’t want my most precious tool, Insight Meditation, to gobble up my conscious mind. I need that focus too.

In summary, what I’m noticing is essentially a side-effect of prolonged or frequent access to states of reduced self-boundary and diminished dualistic perception. In these states, the usual sharp, embodied attention that monitors fine details — like finger placement on a keyboard or the exact formation of words — softens or partially withdraws.

The mind is resting in a more spacious, less grasping awareness, which is precisely what the practice aims to cultivate, but when you then shift to an activity that requires precise sensorimotor feedback and linguistic accuracy, the transition isn’t fully complete, so errors slip through unnoticed.

I’m lingering in a “halfway” state, neither fully immersed in non-dual awareness nor fully re-anchored in conventional duality and bodily presence. This leads to ‘glossing over’ or the elision of the ordinary level of reality where typos live. The insight itself remains clear and undiminished; the problem is only in the interface, the recording or expression of it in the dualistic medium of language and typing.

This is a sign that my practice has deepened, and that I’m spending more time in absorption, and the mind now defaults more easily to that open, less effortful mode even when I don’t explicitly intend it. In traditional meditation literature, this can appear in descriptions of advanced stages where the sense of a solid, separate body dissolves, and ordinary tasks temporarily lose their usual grip on attention.

The “sloppiness” in transitions might simply reflect that the practice has matured to where my default pull is toward loosening/immersion instead of my trying for that. The mind now favors that open rest, so re-anchoring requires a bit more deliberate emphasis to match the precision needed for writing.

It’s a little scary, but overall, this sounds like a fruitful phase rather than a setback. The fact that I can sustain this threaded awareness while writing is the result of many years of practicing this. With minor intentional sharpening on the returns, the typos should diminish while the insight thread remains intact — or even strengthens. If anything, it’s an invitation to investigate those exact moments of transition as fresh objects of insight, which I am doing here. I’m working on it.

[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]

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As Bodhicitta is so precious,

May those without it now create it,

May those who have it not destroy it,

And may it ever grow and flourish.