In the second jhana, I don't have to do that anymore, and the breath stops being the obvious focus of attention - I can note all sorts of other things too, but can't help being aware of the breath at the same time.
That's IT! The flame for me was sort of like a "reference point" or an "anchor-point," while the mind gently and quietly did its own thing -- for me the highlighting feature was
effortless contemplation, by which I mean an open and accepting way of looking at not just the flame, but also other mental phenomena.
However, in MCTB Daniel talks about how in the 2nd jhana you're not
focused on anything specific, which threw me for a loop because I certainly was treating the flame,
specifically, as my anchor-point -- the "source" of the jhana, in a sense. Initially, I tried to avert my attention from the flame, thinking that focusing on that would pull me down to the 1st jhana -- but the result was all the trouble I talked about above, e.g. a mind that's
wanting to settle down on something specific but can't (because I wouldn't let it).
However (again!), I'm thinking maybe I've been mistaking access concentration as being 1st jhana -- that the gentle stability that I took to be the 2nd jhana couldn't exist without first having
really stabilized the mind/attained one-pointedness (which is what you're doing during access concentration).
I guess for me the question boils down to how much effort should I be expecting to put into the 1st jhana?
Like I said above, I can experience the dropping of almost all effort and yet I need to consider the flame as being the "center" of the experience -- otherwise my mind goes crazy, looking to stabilize itself on something. If not focusing on anything specific is a
defining feature of the 2nd jhana, then I probably don't have it, and only have a really, really deep 1st jhana.
Anyway -- I know I'm way over-thinking this stuff, but I'm pretty obsessive by nature and my intellect has a great hunger to conceptually understand altered states of consciousness...