WARNING: Easily Distracted
This summer, my main “spiritual project” has been to fully be the now moment at any given moment. Sounds like an easy task. But in reality, this was much, much harder than anticipated. After delving into some serious self-reflection, I realized that my blockage of the now moment came not from getting into the present moment, but rather staying within it. Why was it so hard to stay in the now moment? Too many distractions.
It seems as though there are a million different things that tempt us and sway us away from the now moment. In earlier times, our minds themselves were pretty effective at keeping us thinking somewhere else. But in the 21st century, we’ve even expanded our range of distractions to al list that can easily fill the rest of this week’s post. Movies, Music, TV, Internet, Social Media…all conveniently located at the tips of our fingers to distract us even quicker, even more efficiently. With every hit new song to the top viewed channel on YouTube, every little thing is constantly fighting for our focus. By giving up our highest intention to pay the lowest attention to some lackluster entertainment, we distract ourselves from the most important thing there is: now.
To fully understand what’s occurring in our minds, we find ourselves asking some very interesting questions, with some equally interesting responses. So, we ask and respond: why do we continuously choose to occupy our mind with distractions instead of living in the glorious and infinite present moment?
Boredom. We are taught to fear the blank spaces in our lives. Whether it be of time or of silence, peaceful nothingness has virtually become shunned in our society. More and more in this day and age, we seem to have a ‘default’ noisy mental state. We fill up every corner of our mind with something, just so we are not confronted with that uncomfortable feeling of pure oblivion. When we begin to feel that nothingness, we look for anything to fill that space, even if it isn’t real. We play movies in our minds, with the film reeling the stories of our past, or the dreams of our future. For better or for worse, we take this time to pass judgment and make expectation, either about the newest post on Facebook to the upcoming channel on Youtube. By constantly fixating on the images of yesterday and tomorrow, we find that we really don’t have time for anything else. And so, our minds have adapted to never being nothing.
Now, the question remains: why are we so afraid of nothingness?
In a nutshell, we are afraid of being mindless. As seen across the ages, we value our thought power so much we forget (or ignore) how misleading our thoughts can be. We are so attached to our thoughts that we often don’t even realize just how meaningless 99% of our thoughts are. In our unparalleled attachment to our minds, we far too often let our minds define Who We Are and What We Wish To Be. All too frequently, this leads to a false image of the self being created – one that is entirely based on your past physical history. Further, if your mind is unhappy with the false self it has created, then it will hope that in the future something happens that changes that definition. The ego in the mind craves every little detail (past or future) to remind itself of Who It Is – at the expense of your attention AND awareness.
Unfortunately, for the ego-bound mind, it cannot define itself Now. If all that exists is the present moment, then the ego itself has no basis of comparison to make its judgments or expectations. Without giving our minds the time to be subject to the ego’s whims, we have the space to experience ourselves in our truest form. Because, What could possibly be more important than Now?
The element of distraction certainly has seemed pretty elemental to our society – but it doesn’t have to be. By choosing to be mind-less, a deeper and higher voice can be heard. Just watch your thoughts for ONE DAY, and you will begin to understand what they are. Begin to see through the distractions, of past and future, and unwrap for yourself the greatest gift of all. The present.
(Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)
