One of my first experiences of formal meditation was as part of a group advertised on ‘meet-up’, a short walk away from where I live, back in April 2012. The opening instruction of that first and only (for me) group meeting remains firmly imprinted in my mind as “shut down all thoughts !”
Well cue instant feelings of failure…This command wasn’t relatable or possible to my own mind, exacerbated by the sense that it somehow was for others. This reinforced my long-held notion that some people can meditate and others who can’t, holding myself in the latter. I had probably believed this for years which had put me off trying any kind of meditation properly. This wasn’t a mindfulness meditation group.
Since then I found the approach in which thinking, as one area of human mental activity for, is normalised from the start. The mind is viewed as another sense doorway. We would no sooner expect our mind to stop having thoughts as we would the ears to stop hearing or the eyes to stop seeing. Further to that it can be described as a ‘magical moment’ when we realise that the mind has been ‘lost’ in thought because of the equal number of times to being lost it is found.
Infinitely more approachable as a method?
Even with this generally accepted understanding of things I still hear questionable interpretations of the ‘training of the mind (body /heart)’ which takes place in this practice. Interpretations can take the form of suggesting that we’re seeking increasingly fine levels of concentration as though being ‘rightly mindful’ equals being concentrated, and that we ought to strive for increasingly prolonged periods of this. What’s the trajectory of this? Less and less distraction..? Ultimately never being distracted ?!
These interpretations feel very tight.
Is distraction always wrong? Maybe it’s right that it happens. Maybe when the mind wanders and when we come back, if we’re not so bothered we might actually feel quite balanced or refreshed, with a bit more energy and the attention sharper.
Why is this ?
Likely to be for millions of reasons. But what we mostly need to understand it that it was right, at that moment for us to be distracted.
There is often an intuitive brilliance to allowing minds to wander, because they do create. And so there can be a beauty to this mind wandering.
We also need to acknowledge the wisdom in distraction when we’re not sufficiently resourced to feel what we are faced with. So wisely bringing the attention to somewhere else can take the pressure off, ie, when feeling pain in the body, an area I have personally practiced with a lot. Distraction can be the wise response. So much of this practice can be discerning the difference between a wise and an unwise response.
With this, I suggest that distraction isn’t only inevitable but necessary, in meditation as in life.