Sitting down · 3 of 24

The dial

Learn the one adjustment: busier when thoughts crowd in, simpler when they go.

Complexity is a dial, not a setting

This is the most distinctive thing Campbell teaches about meditation, and almost every secondary account of him drops it.

The mantra is not fixed. Its complexity is something you adjust, continuously, against how much thought traffic you are getting. His instruction is symmetrical and he gives it twice, once for sound and once for images: if intruding thoughts constantly stream into your awareness, give the mantra a more active form. As thoughts disappear and do not return, decrease the complexity.

So a busy mind gets more to chew on — a longer chant, a rotating football, a coat with buttons and seams to find. A quiet mind gets less: the repetition slows, smears, and softens into a background rather than an event.

And there is an exit condition, which he states the same way for each variant. If the sound slips away but no extraneous thoughts appear, let it go and drift in the quiet blankness of your consciousness. His aside on this: you will love it.

The dial is not on the screen. It is the mantra itself, and you are the one who moves it, with your eyes still shut. When you notice thinking has taken over, make it busier. When you notice there is nothing much left to push away, make it simpler. You will not be doing this constantly.

Campbell's own words

My Big TOE, Book 1, Chapter 23(opens in a new tab)

Before you start

Lighten up. Do not be intense or serious about this.
Sit somewhere comfortable and quiet where you will not be disturbed. A chair is fine. He does not specify anything beyond that.
Close your eyes.
Pick a time when you are not already churning. First thing on waking or last thing before sleep tend to work; straight after a big meal, or while you are angry about something, tend not to.
Nothing on the screen moves the dial — you change the mantra in your own head while you sit. Afterwards the app asks which way it wanted to go.

How long

Campbell’s own instruction is twenty minutes, twice a day. The shorter lengths early on are ours, not his — starting at twenty is how most people stop after a week.

Busier and simpler, during the sit

Campbell’s mantra is not a fixed thing you repeat for twenty minutes. Its size is a dial, and you move it during the sit against how much thinking is going on. His instruction is symmetrical: if intruding thoughts constantly stream into your awareness, give the mantra a more active form; as thoughts disappear and do not return, decrease the complexity. You do this in your head, without opening your eyes — there is nothing to press.

Busier: Your mind keeps wandering off. Give it more to hold, so there is less room for anything else. At the busiest: fill your mind with the longer chant: ah-lum-bar-dee-dum · ah-lum-baa-dee-dum. no need to make an actual sound. let it be busy.
Simpler: Nothing much is intruding any more. Let it thin out — there is no point crowding a mind that has already gone quiet.

Keep going down and you reach the end of it: If the sound slips away and no thoughts come in behind it, let it go. Drift in the quiet blankness of your consciousness. That is the whole aim — the mantra is scaffolding, and you take scaffolding down when the building stands up. Afterwards the app asks which way it wanted to go, which is the only place it is worth thinking about.

The screen stays awake and dims itself, so the phone can lie face down. On iPhone, switching apps stops the sound — a browser limitation rather than a setting — but it comes back when you return, and the timing is kept either way.