the aboutness experience directly itself (note---this is very general and could also go in 'lists and more' proper):

[Some anonymous expressed credit here.]

[The first couple paragraphs might not make sense on first reading..]

There's this really general thing in that our experiences are often "about" other experiences or "things in the world." I often talk about meaning-laden and non-meaning-laden sensations, where meaning-laden might or might not be somewhat felt-sense-y (cf. Eugene Gendlin) or unsymbolized thinking (cf. Russel T Hurlburt), but those can be too reifying; it's a lot more than any of that and a lot more are nebulous and often diffuse than that, etc. etc. (cf. also "intentionality" and "intensionality" in the philosophical technical senses, for better and worse)

Here, I'm especially but not exclusively on focusing non-meaning-laden sensations (but again also too meaning and meaning-laden-ness and out-there-ness and so on; really it's still about the whole seamless package of everything all at once; anyway.)

So anyway, examples: take curiousity, where you have a whole complex experience that includes feeling curious and potentially lots of other stuff; or confusion, where you have a whole complex experience that includes feeling curious and potentially lots of other stuff; anxiety, anger, other feelings..

This also especially-especially includes experiences that are about things but you're not sure what the "referent" is or you're not sure what it's about, or it's like something that has telos, that's unfinished, that might or might not be currently moving forward you don't know how to finish it. So like a worry that you're missing something, a worry or concern that you're leaving something out, a vague feeling that you've been bad but you don't know why, a vague intuition, and so on. Anxiety might be a good example, here, too, where there's often an uncertainty component (not to reify anxiety as one particular "thing" with particular rules and features and parts..) Curiousity is a good example here, too; curiousity is maybe sort of the "positive version" of anxiety along some axis. Or you have a particular very strong / intense feeling but you're not sure why you're feeling it. Or you have doubts, concerns, felt stuckness, etc. Or you're worried that you're going to forget something; or you're worried that something won't turn out ok.

Experiences that have "aboutness" could also be said to have "elsewhere-ness / elsewhereness."

So, one way to engage with these experiences is to let yourself (or to find yourself) drawn into, or already within, like whatever contingent, karmic telos is associated with those things, e.g. thinking, figuring, figuring out, pondering, wondering, imagining, worrying, coming up with contingency plans, calculating, arguing, etc.

As a brief aside, even if those sorts of things (thinking, figuring...) are somewhat heady, there is nothing wrong with that kind of headiness / headyness / head-y-ness! Also none of those things are automatically heady; all those things can happen too in very-far-along-in-meditation-very-embodied-etc. sort of way. But, anyway, even the heady versions are ok, for redo-to-undo purposes or just straightforwardly.

In any case, there's another thing that one can do (besides being telically carried along) that's sometimes useful and that is sort of exploring directly the experience itself that comprises the "phenomenology" of that particular aboutness as such, the direct "phenomenology" of that particular elsewhereness as such. (This might not make sense on first reading. There are sort of examples below.)

Please don't try to be too sharp or precise or narrow about this---this is nebulous and there's no there, there, exactly. It might be a little bit different each time and always vague and in motion and etc. So I'm not saying be messy or haphazard but I'm also saying be careful to not be tight or over-reifying in conceiving or doing or looking or etc. Be careful not to leave things out "well this is aboutness-ness and this isn't"---nah, just like make sure there's aboutness somewhere around there somewhere. And don't worry too much about whether you're really experiencing the aboutness "as such," and etc.. Loose, not narrow, not pre-conceiving.

It's maybe just a little bit of emphasis on a particular aspect of experience that's seamless and nebulously blending with all other experience.

Anyway, you might ask how do you know you're worried, how do you know you're worried about forgetting something, how do you know you're jealous, or what's the experience of jealousy. That kind of or quite usefully can point in the right direction. But in any case past the questions there's just the experience itself.

It'll maybe obvious right away how to do this, or it's something you've always done (and surely it is something that most people do for some things very often). This is likely something you do sometimes even if you don't think about it this way. If it's not obvious, it becomes more obvious over time as one's sense of emptiness and luminosity generally grow over thousands of hours. Even if you know how to do this it won't always be available (either in terms of "levers" or "bandwidth"), and it's availability or not isn't any particular indicator of anything good or bad, in general. Again, this is sometimes useful but it's not always useful even if it is available.

And so you might find exploring this, a little, nebulously, vaguely, as such might be useful. Maybe immediately or after a few minutes or days, if you give it some patience and space while still keeping it company, hanging out, etc.

Some pithy, cryptic notes to myself for this section:

"emotional judo etc. when things settle and still the emotion/feeling/concern itself is data/signal, etc."

"judo: "over time one's concerns and doubts and experience of stuckness itself become highly psychoactive friends" -- always a hook to find something to do, re concern, uncertainty, meta-concern, etc. [also enjoyment, etc. become critical parts of practice]"

re judo, every still small voice, every suspicion, still small voice yet, every doubt, meta doubt meta meta doubt, and so on (don't worry meditation is infinite-regress-busting)

“this is also in scope” “and this” ... "and this"

less “figuring” and more “feeling” because, long-run, feeling becomes a “first-class” object-level and meta-level participant/ component/ basis of groundless/ rational/ reasonable/ “cognition.”

like there's e.g. no second-guessing even when there's second-guessing because nothing is left out. so like generally (not always) all "negative" states are simultaneously in some sense positive states

Another way to think about this is "there's always something [there] to work with"; "if you're not done there's never not nothing there" (but sometimes, often, if there's not much too do or you can still be tapped out for the day, you should go take a walk, or whatever!) see e.g. (daily limits).

Eventually, sometimes, the observation itself directly leads to change, non-forcing-ly, spontaneously (but it typically doesn't start that way, closer to the beginning one's journey---there has to be lots and lots of structural fluidity for this to often be a viable option, but more and more....)--- cf. some instructions, techniques, practices work for some people but not others; but also matching degrees of freedom in redo-to-undo or smthg. In any case, there's sort of a reversal: problem dissolving / solving by making it safe to not know, to be wrong, to be stuck, to have no way forward, and the knowledge of that as such, spontaneous attendance to that experience as such, is then how the system "knows" what to do next, bottom-up, non-algorithmic, non-rule-based, not predictable in advance.

In summary, "aboutness is indirect in its aboutness" but "aboutness it itself as such can be directly investigated," loosely as a source of data or as a signal to the rest of the system's endogenous and spontaneous and long-range problem-solving. (not to reify direct or investigate or problem-solving, etc.)

As the system becomes more structurally fluid, this becomes more likely a thing to be useful.

More draft notes:

"Add to indirection is direct, exp itself is data judo"

"Any experience that’s about something else, reaching for some thing else reacting to something else. That has elsewhereness. SOMETIMES not all the time can. Sometimes better to engage towards distal thing etc. but if things are stuck or etc. sometimes."

"About is itself [sic] ultimately becomes a direct source of data or is adjacent / proximal to such [or a system impetus indirecty as such [sic]]. "

*

* The term "judo" here is used in the sense of "directly use its own energy 'against' itself," but here in an aligned and collaborative way with itself. so, "skillful use of what appears as such", sort of. Tai chi push hands has a similar ethos, maybe. These ("judo," "tai chi") are used here a bit in shallow and stereotyped way.