It use to be something infrequent and even startling. It could happen at the bathroom sink, behind the steering wheel of my car, or sitting on my bed. But it mostly happened next to my bed when I sat on my large pillow. Now it is more frequent and even reliable. I pause and notice my breath for a moment and in a flash I am focused on a representation of the breath.
Somehow my mind simply relaxes and the representation of the breath replaces the actual sensation of the breath.
With little or no effort, I find myself no longer in a sensory experience but in a slightly different and adjusted realm. The experience of breath is no longer in my nostrils but somewhere indistinguishable, nearly undefined. My whole body seems to become aware of breath, but it is a body without sensory stimulus to focus on. There is only the representation of breath.
Somehow my mind has opened up to an experience beyond simple sensory perception. The shift is both subtle and dramatic. The breath experience is no longer an isolated, tactile awareness of air flowing across nasal membrane. It is now more an awareness that the sensory experience is being known. I no longer know the breath but a representation of the breath. I know the breath as being known.
My focus is in the realm of my mind, not in the realm of breathing. The more I relax into an awareness of what it is like to breathe, the more the representation of breath comes into focus.
A release has taken place. I am no longer in possession of the sensation of breath but have surrendered my grip on that sensory experience. The sensory experience has dissolved and been replaced by a representation of what breath once was like.
I no longer have a hold on the sensory experience, the sense stimulus. In releasing my sensory experience, I allow the breath representation to become the focus, the object of my awareness.
The representation has no clear location but is expansive. It has no simple location like the end of my nose, such as the sensation of breath might have. It seems almost boundless and everywhere.
What had been limited by the feeling of moving air has been replaced by a representation that feels more like a vast void. This is no empty void but a void that holds whatever might arise. Anything and all things seem likely, even waiting to arise.
Thoughts and concepts seem almost alien in this arena of representation. However, thoughts and concepts might be allowed to enter if that becomes my intention. I might deliberately allow that to happen in times I am driving or sitting across from a friend. It might happen when I am trying to resolve a problem.
At that time, I know my concentration has deepened and my clarity of focus has increased because I have made the subtle shift from being aware of the sensation of breathing. I have allowed my mind to relax, to be released into the representation of breath.