The Mind That Doesn't Want to See
La mente que no quiere ver
A student describes feeling increasingly distracted and defensive during a guided meditation that pointed to the nature of distraction itself, prompting an exploration of how the mind protects its own patterns by disguising them as reality.
The Mind That Doesn't Want to See
A student describes feeling increasingly distracted and defensive during a guided meditation that pointed to the nature of distraction itself, prompting an exploration of how the mind protects its own patterns by disguising them as reality.
The theme of today's meditation was spot on for me. The more you pointed to the mind's tendency to distract, the more my mind became defensive. I was jumping all over the place. I kept trying to focus on feeling and sensing, but the more you pointed to distraction, the more my mind jumped there. I was really distracted, wavering between trying to sense, getting defensive, having my thoughts jump from one noise to another, thinking about what I need to do today, what I did yesterday. It was all over the place. This meditation was really distracting for me. I guess it pointed to all the crazy stuff my brain does that I actually have no control over. I can see how defensive it is.
When you said you were trying to focus, what were you trying to focus on?
Just trying to feel into my body. Listening to my surroundings, being aware of my breath, how I'm feeling in my body, trying to just be in the present rather than having my mind jump all over the place.
But you're saying that my pointing to distraction created that distraction.
I don't know. Maybe it did, for me.
Revealing what was already there
What I would suggest is that the distraction wasn't being created by my pointing to it. Rather, by highlighting it, you started to see it more. The defensiveness is almost like having a secret that is being revealed, because I was pointing to something very fundamental and very archetypal. By archetypal, I mean it is very universal. It has a very core narrative. The mechanism is this: the mind serves as our agent of distraction.
By "servant" I mean that we can interpret the situation as though we are victims of our mind. We can treat it as an enemy and tell ourselves we have no responsibility, no power. Or we can see the self-deception in that and face something we don't want to face. We are playing a game of our habits. We are choosing a kind of virtual reality made of our belief systems and our thinking. We live in this world we create in our minds, and then we want that to be reality, so we believe it is reality, and therefore it becomes our reality. And we don't want to see that. We don't want to be aware of this whole thing we're doing.
It's like when we're children playing some fantasy with our toys, and then a parent comes, takes the toys away, and says, "You have to go have a bath." You're happily in your fantasy, and now you're taken out of it. You're going to have a tantrum. You're going to be in pain, because there's a sense of loss of that world you've become attached to, that imagination and creation. As a metaphor, this is similar to what's happening constantly, daily. We're constructing a kind of fantasy world to distract us from something.
It seems like more distraction, but you're just seeing what was always there
By focusing the meditation on pointing to the root of that mechanism, I would suggest the following interpretation for you to experiment with. There was reactivity in what happened for you. And the feeling that there was more and more distraction is actually you seeing how often you are already distracted. Pointing to it made it obvious as distraction, versus something you take to be your natural reality. So what you think is your natural reality now gets seen as, "Oh, but that's distraction, distraction, distraction." It seems like pointing created the distraction. But you step one layer deeper and you see: this is happening all the time.
This is very well known. It's often said that if you want to see how completely involved in mind you are, just go and sit by yourself in a room for a few hours. Try to just be okay sitting by yourself, and you'll find yourself in constant turmoil.
What could have happened for you is that this pointing to distraction started revealing that you're attached to it being reality. By calling it distraction, it's like revealing the mechanism: I want this distraction, but I don't want to experience it as distraction. I want to experience it as reality.
The pattern of "I will be okay when"
Let me speak from the mechanism of self-deception. Say I'm trying to solve a conflict with my brother. I can be so involved in that, and it will feel like I'm doing the right thing, being responsible. There's an honorableness to it. But actually, if I see that I'm projecting into that conflict a strategy (if I solve this, I will be okay), and if I notice that when I drop that strategy, I come to feeling what I really feel, which is, for example, that I feel hurt and betrayed, that I'm trying to barricade against something, then I arrive at the anguish. Something is not okay. Now the project of "solving the situation" is going to be seen as a distraction, whereas the moment before, it was experienced as reality. It was experienced as "this is what's important." You don't notice it as a distraction.
That's what I'm suggesting might have happened for you. We don't want to see it. Our illusion, our paradigm of what is reality, breaks. This is why one of the words for this work is "waking up." You are literally dreaming while awake. In sleep you have dreams, and then you wake up and realize that the reality of the dream world is not the same as waking reality. Many things don't apply anymore, and you have to be responsible for different things. In the same way, if while you are in wakeful consciousness you are dreaming a reality, then this work is waking up from that dream. And we don't want to do that. A lot of our attachments, our interests, our energy is invested in preserving that dream.
I'm not telling you this is what you're going through. I'm suggesting this as an interpretation for you to take and contemplate, to see if it resonates. But I do suggest you try to explore it: there's a part of you that doesn't want to see how invested you are in the distractions you're invested in. You won't experience them as, "Now I'm going to get distracted with this." You experience them as, "This is what's important. This is what I must do." And you will use all of your intellect, talent, and capacity to address the most important problems you believe you have.
I'm not saying you have no real responsibilities. But the mechanism I was pointing to in this meditation is very specific. It is: "I will be okay when..." Something is fundamentally not okay now, with myself, with my moment, with this current experience of reality, one hundred percent as it is. That is not okay, and it will be okay when. That is the thing I'm pointing to. It's very specific. It's not about some task for work or something you have to do for your son. I'm not saying those are distractions you shouldn't attend to. I'm talking about the deeper pattern: you are not okay, something is not okay, and it will be okay when.
Spiritual practice as a strategy
This is really subtle until you start to see it more and more. You can be fully responsible, do everything you have to do, work, take care of your son, be very active and efficient and doing the right thing, and not be coming from a place where once you do all that, you will be okay, because right now you're not okay.
This is why I asked you what your intention was in the meditation. You said you were trying to focus on feeling. Even that could be a strategy. You're trying to focus on feeling, and now I'm pointing to distraction, and it's taking away, possibly, a strategy: "If only I can sit and focus on my feeling, I will be okay." This is spiritual seeking as well. Once we discover there is this kind of consciousness work we can do, then if we do it well, we'll be okay. Right now we're not okay, but once we do the meditation, the spiritual work, the psychology work, then we will be okay. See how it comes in through the back door? It's the same strategy: something is not okay now, it will be okay then.
That's why I asked what your intention was. I had a sense that you felt I was pulling you away from the focusing work you were trying to do. What you are exploring is a valid practice. But if we are in a group where a meditation is being led and you're participating in the guided meditation, yet you want to do your own meditation while the guided one is happening and you feel a conflict, then there's a hidden, subtle strategy at work.
I'm just suggesting some things for you to look at. This sense that something's not okay, and the strategy of how to fix it, is an archetypal mechanism. By that I mean it is very profound, and it can take quite a bit of time to see how constant it is.