Escape from the Skull Size Kingdom

Dear Friend,

I hope you are well, in good health, a decent mood, enjoying the autumn vibe.

I recently came back from the annual Weekend Autumn Yoga Retreat, was a smaller group than usual which was nice and cozy. As always, I enjoyed every second of it, sharing different aspects of yoga and the depth of the practice that I love so much. Thank you to all of you that joined, it was lovely to spend a full weekend with you!

The first time I ever meditated, I was asked to do a very simple thing which is to keep my attention on the coming and going of my natural breath. To my astonishment I couldn’t maintain it for more than a few seconds, very often not even one second. Facing this reality was quite shocking, I always knew concentration was an issue for me, I had trouble with it during school and university, but I never realized how scattered my attention was. Later on I discovered that this condition is universal to one degree or another, and even those who can easily concentrate in some conventional settings can barely hold attention on the breath when meditating.

This revelation that the mind is inherently distracted left me somewhat frustrated but moreover curious. It is one of the things that made meditation so appealing to me, I wanted to see if I can train my mind just like I can train my body. After more than a decade of numerous 10 day meditation retreats and regular daily practice I can safely say that the jury is still out on that. Some days the mind is sharp and focused and can stay on the breath with only very subtle thoughts in the background, and other days I get distracted just like I did when I meditated for the first time. And yet this is only the surface level, on a deeper one there has been a significant shift. I recently noticed that even when I am distracted there is a part of me that knows it in real-time and can snap out of it at any given moment. This is something that definitely was not available during the vast majority of my life.

Humans seem to have a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the present moment, we keep on trying to escape it continuously as most of us consider it consciously or unconsciously as boring or uninteresting, and boredom for most of us is perceived as an undesired condition, one that is to be avoided. And so, if we don’t have an external source to distract us, we manufacture some sort of stimulating thought content, and then, similarly to watching a film on screen, we identify with the moving images, dialogue and characters and get lost in the story. If the movie is good, we never even notice that it is simply a projector shooting light particles onto a white screen.

This tendency to distract ourselves have been deeply ingrained in most us through force of habit. Breaking this habit may seem to be unattainable at first glance, and I think many of us can’t even see what’s wrong with it or why it is even a worthy cause. Afterall, we mostly enjoy thinking, it can sometimes help us process our life or come up with ideas on how to go about it, and maybe it can even contribute in different ways to better our relationships.

From what I can tell, most people are unconvinced that being constantly in a distracted mode is a problem. and they might be right to some extent. Thinking is not some problem we need to fix, it is the natural expression of a lively mind, just like the heart pulsating or the eyes blinking. However, unlike other features of the human organism, the mind has different faculties that can be utilized in various ways for different purposes. When we develop the skill to direct attention at will and hold it, when we learn how to still the mind and stay attentive and immersed in the present moment, we can start to enjoy a much more fulfilling aspect of the mind’s potential. It doesn’t mean that we should attempt to avoid or diminish distractedness, it only means that we allow our attention diet is more rich, nourishing, and diverse.

I wrote about the benefits of occasionally letting the mind to roam freely HERE. You can read more about it if you’d like.

Some contemplative traditions set the bar quite high, calling for a progressive reach towards a state where distraction is no longer part of the human experience and a yogi is in a constant state of blissful absorption in the present moment. That may very well be possible for some, and on the flip side it could also be potentially devastating for the entire human race. Letting the mind roam freely can lead to tremendous creativity and innovation that has improved human life incrementally for many centuries (it also led to some significant harm no doubt..). For most of us, taking a more practical and realistic approach is to simply arrive at a place where we could divert awareness to the present moment when we choose to while at other times allowing the natural flow of thought be.

Spending hours every day being overly stimulated by social media or any other media is a new phenomena, it is a socio-psychological experiment on a mass level that we all seem to participate in voluntarily which so far appears to have not just extreme distractive effects but also major destructive ones.

The harm that may arise when we are in a distracted mode

Letting thoughts run free has absolutely no negative effect whatsoever, however identifying with their content puts us in a bind. We can easily get tangled with images, narratives, and concepts in a way that obscures our ability to know what is actually happening either within our own body and mind or with the world around us. It makes us repeatedly project our conditioned way of thinking onto everything and everyone. When we are not in direct contact with what’s happening in reality we are very likely to develop all sorts of negative patterns of relating and reacting to it. This is a vicious cycle - we project our illusive views on everything and then everything reacts to our projection with some feedback or another that leads to even more distortion and friction with reality, to disharmony.

Through proper practice we can arrive at a middle way, so that even when we allow ourselves to be lost in thought for a while there is a part of the mind, a sort of tone that colors everything in knowing that it’s only thought content that we are experiencing and not reality as is. This undercurrent of awareness keeps us from over identifying with our thoughts and allows the mind to roam freely with much less bondage and more ease and clarity.

The benefits of being undistracted

Being present is a term that is used often but is not as obvious as one may think. We may feel as though we are present, there may even seem to be no thoughts hijacking our attention, we can notice the breath in real-time, the body, sounds, and maybe even sights, smells or tastes, but when we start paying close attention to our mind we notice that we are actually in a narration mode. On one hand we really do notice all the above, but on the other hand we notice it by thinking about it in a descriptive way, with words and concepts. We may feel some pain in the knee and we say to ourselves “there is pain in my knee” or “my knee hurts”, however the term knee as well as the term pain or hurt are both concepts. In reality we feel all sorts of sensations, the experience is rich with flavors, and yet we in the process of cognition we reduce it to a simple word. Even the idea that the knee is my knee is a concept of possession that has nothing to do with reality, it is merely an idea that only exists in our imagination. We can easily not be fully present but only very partially so, although this state can by itself have its own benefits.

Being in a fully meditative state means that we have a direct connection with every experience we can be aware of, unmediated by language or any form of conceptualization. In many ancient yoga texts this state is described as a state of ananda (bliss). It is a deeply calm, peaceful, joyful state, in which all the tension of identification with thought pattern is gone, and the body and mind are at such ease that cannot be felt otherwise.

These moments of luminous tranquility and serene clarity leave their mark, they slowly build up as we deepen our practice and then become a base we can rest in at will. Having this ability makes life deeply fulfilling on many levels, it reduces much of the inner noise that disrupts our peace and prevents us from simply being, it allows us to be more open, loving, receptive, authentic, and wise. Often people who experience these state describe it as “coming home”, meaning that a discovery is made that this state is actually our natural one, and the distracted state is nothing but a reconfiguration mode.

Much research has been done in past decades about the effects of deep meditation, there have been some findings that brain waves change dramatically and that these states can lead to all sorts of positive outcomes such as better health, physically and mentally, as well as higher usage of various brain faculties. Of course, these studies are still in the early stages but evidence of the various benefits that meditation has is starting to pile up in a way that leaves very few reasons for doubt.

To summarize my point

Allowing the mind to roam freely can be very helpful and should not be suppressed whether by holding some belief that it is bad or wrong, or with a compulsive use of modern technology that blocks it by flooding our system with over stimulation. Both can have negative impact.

At the same time, practicing patiently the art of being undistracted and eventually fully absorbed in the present can have profound benefits and is something that I find very much worth dedicating time and energy to. It is a skill that requires effective long term practice to develop, just like training our body for a marathon only much more complex and multi-faceted. Good guidance can go a long way.

A good starting point is setting an internal reminder to notice our attention from time to time, to simply check in. Are we distracted at this moment? If so, is it by getting lost in our phone or other device or are we allowing the mind to roam freely and organically? This simple moment of noticing what’s going on within us can be very valuable, it is by itself a seed that we plant that can later sprout if we keep watering and nourishing its soil. This seed can eventually grow into a deeply rooted tree of being (bliss)fully absorbed in the present moment.

If you find yourself curious about these kinds of topics - join a workshop, a retreat, or any other event on offer.

Looking forward to sharing yoga with you in October & November.

Wishing everyone peace and happiness,

Oren

♡

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