What is meditation and are we dulling the mind through what is considered formal meditation?
It sounds like a result of the process of suppressing the mind. You don't want to do that. Just accept everything as it is.

My approach is more to do with the reversal of the roles of the thinking mind and awareness in ordinary life. Normally the thinking mind is in control and awareness takes a back seat, but through persistence it's become the opposite. This feels more like the thinking mind is just having a rest, rather than it being dulled. I can switch it on whenever I want and it works probably better than it used to.

There really is no need for meditation because you can just use life as the grinding stone for the self. It's something you can do all the time and is no different to your ordinary life plus perhaps the idea of throwing yourself into circumstances that would be beneficial to your refinement. All you have to do is stay in that unborn mind state as much as possible. It just eats through everything of its own accord, just as it should do in meditation.