Yogi: I’ve been practicing rising and falling for a long, long time and now I find it difficult to change from focusing to open awareness. I can be aware and suddenly get lost in a dull dream state repeatedly. Why?

Sayadaw: There’s some misunderstanding about open awareness. It is a state that you’ll get to, not something that you practice. To get to open awareness, you have to start by being aware of an object.

Open awareness is not something that you decide to do. You don’t decide that you’re going to open your awareness and you’re going to know all these objects. Your mind is starting to pick up one or two other objects.

The goal of the yogi is simply to keep the awareness continuous on whatever objects that you know and keep that going.

Because the awareness is not continuous and the mind doesn’t have the capacity and the insight that understand what is the knowing and watching mind, then you’re going to be like this, losing your awareness repeatedly from trying to be aware of everything.

Yogis should do their job – know your object and start with one object before you get there.