When is a distraction not a distraction?

Do you meditate?

I was interested in it for several years before I began. There is so much evidence as to its manifold benefits — physical, psychological, even physical health. I knew it was good for me, and I am enough of a ‘get-that-gold-star’ kind of girl that I wanted in on that. So, after hearing about it for a few years, I started. When I began, I wasn’t exactly what you could call consistent or committed. Just about anything could ‘prevent’ me from meditating that day.

Somehow, though, the idea didn’t go away.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend lent me this book:  The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

Yes, I know. It was first published in 1997. (Can you believe that was 23 years ago already??) But me, I’m discovering it now. (Heh. “Now”.) Twenty-three years ago, I wasn’t ready for this book. It wouldn’t have fit with my internal paradigm.

But now? Now I am ready for this book. I’ve been meditating on and off for at least six years now. The first few, it was mostly ‘off’, and the past couple of years it’s been increasingly ‘on’. My daily meditation practice is now an essential part of my morning. I miss it when I skip a session, and I don’t skip often.

I’ve been working hard to learn to still my mind. At first, I could manage a few seconds of stillness. Now I can go much longer. (Like oh, maybe forty-five or ninety whole seconds at a stretch!!) That’s all right. That’s progress.

I’m not done the book yet, but I can tell you that every chapter has been inspiring. Some parts of it are not new ideas to me, but they’re well-expressed. Some aspects of it I have a little resistance to, and that’s okay. I’ll either get the point in time and make it part of my spiritual world, or I will have to respectfully agree to disagree on that point. I’m willing to wait and see.

The Best Thing I’ve learned so far: Meditation is really observation. Observation without thought.

Do you know what happens when you really grab that idea? Meditation becomes so much easier!

Picture this: You’ve set aside the time. You’ve entered your quiet space. You take a few deep breaths, you’re relaxing into it … and the cat walks in front of you, dragging her tail across your face. Or a dog barks madly somewhere. A car door slams and suddenly there’s loud conversation in the street. A fly buzzes around your head. Somebody drops something in the kitchen. Has that ever happened?

And you can get so exasperated! “C’mon, universe,” you say. “Can’t I get a little cooperation? This is all totally ruining my Zen!!!”

Except. Except. For me – and I think this is universal – the challenge of meditation is not really the distractions, but my busy, busy mind, chattering away. It’s relentless, my busy mind. Just when I think I have it calmed down, it pops up where I didn’t expect it, and on it goes again. My mind is a frickin’ game of Whack-a-Mole.

And if the task of meditation is to step out of the constant stream of the mind’s chatter and just observe without thinking … why, then the distractions become meditation aids!

Seriously! Your body is calm, you’re beginning to meditate, and – zoom! – off goes your mind. But then the cat walks across in front of you, dragging its tail across your face. Well, good! That gives you something to notice, doesn’t it? You don’t think about it, you don’t evaluate it, you just observe. Fluffy cat against my nose. You attend to the sound of the car door, the conversation in the street, you observe the fly buzz by.

All those things are not distractions from peaceful meditation, they’re distractions from the chatter, chatter, chatter of your relentless mind. Instead of attending to your mind, you can attend to the ‘distraction’. When is a distraction not a distraction? When you observe it rather than think about it.

This realization has effected a dramatic increase in the amount of mental silence in my meditation. Amazing!