josh r s
a consciousness that just "receives" rather than one that goes out and feeds on things
I have a somewhat different way of saying this, tho I think we are saying the same idea (please let me know if not): forms (including thoughts such as feelings and concepts) are moving about, and there is no center or magnet that can pull those forms into "a hold" or into adhesion. There is awareness and ability to observe forms, while there is no centricity extending out (or pulling in) and adhering with the matter. Sensory and mental awareness localizes matter in degrees of wide-to-narrow. Without the centricity adhering to/pulling at matter, there is absence of tension. This lack of tension and conscious centricity may be preferred by the mental faculty over what it knew before (adhesing/pulling matter into itself). However, a central response to having experienced this centerlessness may also include fear, disturbance, or restlessness.
There can be a similarity here of
how a muscle relaxes (where this similarity undoubtedly forms from my increase in yoga practice): during a stretch there is a muscle spindle response from the muscle center commanding a contraction (reflex arc). The conscious mental faculty also receives news of this contraction and may consciously relax the stretch a bit, dissolving the contraction, gently sustaining a comfortable, gentle stretch with attentive, long slow deep breathing. Back and forth, the stretch is entered more through gentle contraction-releasing: stretch-reach, central firing of the muscle spindle-responding contraction-conscious slight back off and dissolving the contraction-relaxed open muscle. Repeat.
The self seeking PCE can also sense its own contraction around forms (including thoughts such as feelings and concepts), breathe, loosen and release the contraction around the forms, and let the tension of form-holding dissolve. The self then has some expansion/relaxation. If that central self does not take up forms again (it has no uptake of itself as an observer even or [central sense of] consciousness), this explodes self-processes into forms apperception.
[edit: in brackets]