Being Present

There are two main ways that distractions take hold of us, or we take hold of distractions, in our lives and our meditation practices.

In our daily lives, we find that we seek distractions, especially when we are tired, hungry, aroused, frustrated, and experiencing strong emotions. We use distractions to take us away from where we are now, what is happening, what we are experiencing. Boredom has us reaching for an internet game, surfing the news, or finding a chat. Loneliness has us searching FB and Twitter (forgive my unwillingness to jump on the name-changing bandwagon) for people we can relate to. Anger has us telling everyone who will listen, what we are angry about, rather than talking with the person we are angry with.

Distractions in daily life are also the result of loss of attention and focus. We start cleaning the drawers in our bedroom dresser and the next thing we know we have emptied our closets on the floor, and then are in the entryway sorting shoes. The dresser drawers are still in disarray as we left the sorting midstream. The more challenged and aroused we are, the more difficult it is to pay attention, stay focused, and concentrate on participating in or completing what is in front of us.

These same processes occur in our meditations. They typically arise out of two things – a weak attention and concentration (mindfulness) muscle and avoiding discomfort. 

The essence of meditation and mindfulness practices is precisely to strengthen our “being present” muscle. At the core of practice, we are training our minds in attention and concentration. Logically, this means that our minds are not very adept at staying in a focused state naturally and training the mind is necessary. Making peace with the fact that we all start from a place of rampant distraction and that practice is about reducing distraction and increasing attention and concentration leads to a more comfortable meditation.

Accepting that distraction is where we all start can go far in quieting the rampant self-critical voice that sends us away from our practice out of a sense of failure or shame. 

Expect distraction. Accept distraction. Begin again. 

As our practice grows, attention and concentration increase and awareness is cultivated. With the progression that develops with practice, we become aware that distractions serve another purpose other than signifying an underdeveloped mindfulness muscle. We discover it is a path of avoidance. Our awareness begins to notice habitual patterns that we exercise to avoid discomfort.  

We settle into practice and it isn’t long before we are caught up in distraction. Our minds generate proliferating thoughts, focus on external stimuli, and wander into daydreaming. It is pretty common with habitual avoidance patterns to not know why attention moved to distraction. We might not know we are experiencing discomfort, or dis-ease of some kind until we find our attention has wandered. We simply find ourselves deep into distractions – thinking about what’s next on the agenda, replaying a conversation, cursing the sound of the lawnmower outside, or daydreaming about the next vacation. Distraction has served the purpose of pulling us away from our discomfort, even when we don’t know we are uncomfortable. When we weren’t looking our mind did this, “I don’t like how this feels. I don’t like being here. I’m going to go away from this. What else can I pay attention to?” Distract!! All in a split second and out of conscious awareness. 

The good news is that cultivating a mindfulness meditation practice cultivates awareness of avoidance habits. We follow more closely what is occurring moment-to-moment. We feel our discomfort. We notice the resistance and wish to avoid. We pinpoint the moment we want to leave the experience with distracting habits – storytelling, daydreaming, sleepiness, restlessness, replaying last night’s TV show, etc. In the moment of awareness, we have a choice to do something different – rather than follow the avoidance habit we can invite curiosity, stay with experience, exploring the myriad of sensations present in discomfort. We have shifted from habitual avoidance to curiosity and strengthening our mindfulness muscle. 

We come to be engaged in distractions in two ways, whether in our meditation practices or our lives. First, we have a weak attention and concentration muscle. We find it hard to keep our attention on what is in front of us (unless it is something we love!). Not because we don’t want to pay attention, but because our minds are not as well trained in paying attention as they could be. Second, we seek distraction intentionally – whether we are aware of it or not. We use distraction to leave uncomfortable feelings and experiences. This intentional seeking of distractions is habitual and appears similarly in our practice and our lives. Exercising our mindfulness muscle (attention muscle) we become more and more present in our lives, living moment to moment.