Writing some thoughts down here.
The 3 kinds of consciousness.
1. The opposite of unconscious, i.e. wakefulness.
2. The opposite of subconsciousness, i.e. intellect and deliberate thought.
3. The opposite of nondual awareness, i.e. individual ego and self awareness.
@Tfmonkey I'd like to revise #2. This comes from "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates.
The conscious in this sense is really the mediator between several background subminds: one each for sight, hearing, taste, feeling, and smell, one for the intellectual-emotive mind (it's so connected it's one thing), and one for the narrative mind, which provides "binding moments" that make associations between the stimuli of two or more of the other minds. Each of these subminds has its own subminds too.
@Tfmonkey Consciousness is the mediating point between the subminds. Each submind acts as a committee member within the space of consciousness, constantly voting on what objects in background awareness are interesting enough to be examined by focused attention.
It's that attention we tend to call "consciousness" and "self," but it's not. Awareness is as much a part of consciousness and "I" an not directing it...it's a series of unconscious subminds that directs it.
@Tfmonkey (Samatha) meditation is the practice of getting subminds to stop going in five different directions and get them to all vote on one object to keep in attention. Eventually the meditator switches to Satipatthana meditation to try to penetrate the real nature of things in moments of Vipassana (insight).
One of these insights is that the self was just a mental-emotional object that has been fed a lot of energy...but it's caused nothing but stress. So it's abandoned.
