How to have less of a distracted mind

As evidenced by the title of the first blog post I wrote six days ago about The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World, a book by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen -- "Why repeating a mantra during daily activities doesn't make much sense" -- I'm interested in the spiritual implications of the book, even though the authors pay zero attention to this.

They're concerned with how three modern innovations, the Internet, smart phones, and social media, are screwing up our ability to concentrate, though it isn't as if these innovations are forcing us to obey their whims.

For we are willing co-conspirators in the theft of our undivided attention, being driven to do this by foraging rules evolution has imprinted in our minds which have become turned into approaches guiding our foraging for information, rather than food.

The authors say that in addition to attention, an undistracted mind also requires good working memory and goal management. They present lots of research showing that excessive use of the Internet, smart phones, and social media causes us to shift our attention rapidly instead of keeping it focused on a single subject. 

Multi-tasking, which they say isn't really possible, for what we're doing is rapidly shifting attention between several tasks, like watching TV and texting a friend, not only messes up our attention but also working memory and our ability to choose the most important goals to work on.

This passage has implications for meditation in general and mindfulness in particular. 

One interesting aspect of this penchant for combining tasks is that we seem to have lost the ability to single task. Glance around a restaurant, look at people walking on a city street, pay attention to people waiting in line for a movie or the theatre, and you will see busily tapping fingers.

We act as though we are no longer interested in or able to stay idle and simply do nothing. We appear to care more about the people who are available through our devices that those who are right in front of our faces. And perhaps more critically, we appear to have lost the ability to simply be alone with our thoughts.

Since I started meditating every day in 1970, a habit I've continued for the past fifty-four years, obviously I wasn't influenced by the Internet, smart phones, and social media for much of the time, since those things hadn't been invented yet. 

So I'm well aware that it is difficult to either do one thing in meditation (concentration) or nothing in particular (open awareness) whether or not we're tempted to follow the allure of the Internet, smart phones, and social media. However, these things do seem to have a negative effect on our ability to be undistracted.

The information foraging theory that they favor, which I won't describe in any detail, says that external diminishing information resources, like having read all the stories you're interested in on a news web site, combine with internal factors such as boredom and anxiety to draw us away from a current focus of attention to something more appealing.  

There we are, meditating away, perhaps repeating a mantra, or being aware of our breathing, or simply being open to whatever is present within our consciousness. The book has a chapter called "Why Do We Interrupt Ourselves?"

Great question. What prevents us continuing to meditate in the way we set out to do at the time we sat down on a cushion or a chair? How is it that when I set out to count my exhales from 1 to 10, fairly often I'll get to 4 or 5 and then drift off into a thought that takes me away from my breath-counting?

The authors don't address these questions directly.

But having finished the book, I'll hazard a guess and say that our distracted mind in meditation, often called "monkey mind," follows the same rules as I outlined above: when we feel bored with the task we're doing and feel anxious that we're missing out on something better than doing that task, we're inclined to shift our attention.

Relaxing into complete acceptance of the present moment is probably the best way I've found to be undistracted in meditation. If I'm feeling peaceful, great, I just feel peaceful. If I'm feeling bored, great, I just feel bored. In other words, I try to follow a basic principle of mindfulness: nonjudgemental acceptance of what's happening here and now. 

This makes my meditation more interesting, because I'm not dividing what's in my mind between good thoughts and feelings and bad thoughts and feelings. Whatever is there is worth paying attention to. By not having a set goal for meditation, I'm less inclined to be bored with a single focus of my attention.

Which isn't to say that I don't try to be single-minded, usually on my breath, but sometimes on a mantra. Some days I can stay focused for pretty much the entire meditation period.

I'm just saying that by having minimal flexible goals -- I'm no longer seeking god-realization or enlightenment -- I'm better able to be content with small pleasures, like the slight tingling of the breath at the tip of my nostrils as I breathe in and out.

There's isn't a fear of missing out (FOMO) on something more and better if I'm content with whatever is happening right now. That reduces my desire to forage for information and stimulation somewhere else, since where I'm at is fine with me. Or at least, fairly fine with me.

Comments

[Chiro]

There is a lot of scope for practicioners of meditation in future tech to assist in the control of their mind:

Prof. David Christopher Lane:
THE FUTURE OF MEDITATION, How Technology Will Impact it
neuralsurfer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUWIwQBsPPA

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

"I'm no longer seeking god-realization or enlightenment -- I'm better able to be content with small pleasures, like the slight tingling of the breath at the tip of my nostrils as I breathe in and out."

[Please NOTE: What I'm posting here is for initiates only. New or old, this information is only for those familiar with the many tenants of the RSSB version of Sant Mat. Those not interested, nor. not following the RSSB version, MAY be impacted in unfavorable ways if you attempt said material and you, e.g. boosted initiate only info from the web, non-aurthorized RSSB sources, and the like.. -kwr]

Brain, I caught your video at one of your City Counsel meetings, and also one of you doing Tai Chi. Your pretty smart, and I now see why you were allowed to write RSSB literature.

And as for your Tai Chi, also there you're not bad.

Here, I wanted to talk a little about the RSSB method. As if done in accordance with ALL the tenants will produce various initial effects. The method of my Master Baba Ji (Baba Grinder Singh Ji), if done correctly will take our true self, our soul to it's origins; the Over Soul. But not at the first sitting. Nor, at the second. Perhaps not even after 1 lifetime. But, if initiates are hard working and haven't try to fool God. May get initial effects; Feeling of ants on the body, Tingling at various centers, Numbness in the limbs, Flashes of inner Light, and/or the Bell sound.

I write this to you because these initial effects are mostly unknown to the masses of the world. So, I once asked fellow disciples how I could improve -as I wasn't getting anything but more sleep. The Secretary, in my region at the time told me to just go on repeating my meditations. And to give the full two and a half hours. And work towards increasing the time.

Then a few months later, I think something happened. I had the same experience I had when practicing: The Art of Dreaming, by Carlos Castaneda. But it happened in less time. I could feel myself falling asleep.

Castaneda, said to catch this and right when I went into my dream state. To look at my hands.

But in contrast, RSSB said to BEWARE of falling into sleep. And to continue writing to the living Sat Guru, if certain philosophy didn't make sense, or for help on the method.

Radha Soami

[Ron E]

I’m with the authors on people always tapping away on their smart phones for information – whether it’s the multitudinous news feeds or looking to see what others are saying - not to mention 'influencers'! And they have a point where they say: - “We appear to care more about the people who are available through our devices that those who are right in front of our faces. And perhaps more critically, we appear to have lost the ability to simply be alone with our thoughts.”

I guess this activity of foraging for information could well be an extension of our foraging for food in the past. I think we do a lot of ‘foraging’ in many other ways. We are always searching for something, perhaps looking for that ultimate something that never arrives – unless we manage to mentally convince ourselves that we’ve found it.

Searching for the elusive something opens the door to religion, to some spiritual search, a cause, wealth and power or some project; there must be many ways of ‘foraging’ for something that will give our lives meaning. Naom Chomsky thought that sport was a drug that kept people from asking real questions of the government as did the French academic Marc Perelman, while Karl Marx singled out religion as being the opium of the masses. Now we have instant information technology.

We are normally in the unconscious habit of overlaying what appears to the senses with instantaneous thoughts and opinions, The obsession of constantly scrolling on phones, skipping from one topic to another is just another way to keep one in a constant state of, more than ever, being lost in thought, in a world of ideas and concepts. If so, this is a shame as the real world, the world of nature, skies and clouds, trees, insects and other real people may become just ‘something out there’, something that is not a part of a person’s life; so-much-so that the real world becomes unimportant or not relevant – leaving it open to being further exploited and decline.

[Chiro]

@Brian
It seems to me we are all in the same boat especially if we have had our minds supercharged by analytical and critical intellectualisation in our lives, especially if we have any past traumas that form what Jung called the makeup of our 'complex' and haunt us unceasingly like it or not. Especially if we are of emotional natures and react strongly to perceived threats to our ideal construct of society and what we want nation to be. If we are deeply to our core angered or pleased with politicians, if we strongly believe there is a way forward to a better future for nation or humanity and every watchful for signs of ups and downs in the course of events causing fear and anxiety and joy as the news pours in. I mean these are the distractions!

~Brain Damage~
Pink Floyd.
The lunatic is on the grass
The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games
And daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path
The lunatic is in the hall
The lunatics are in my hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more.

But this is now not just the morning paper, but instant flashes across the screens and YouTube etc updates. Joining clans of others online who feel the same way we do, who hate or love the same people we do, all of us running around like tortured chickens forgetting that others in their time felt the same about their political or social moments just as keenly and suffered as much, and yet their moments are long forgotten and now irrelevant and those people all long dead. And that is only the tip of the iceberg of what mind is involved with. friends, family, neighbours, painful or pleasant encounters with strangers, pets and their problems, business, pastimes, health issues. We live within a virtual catalogue of encounter, wrapping upon wrapping, a maze that will not give us rest.

Then there is the spiritual path, the crisis of the emptiness within youth encountering a road to freedom, and that road which promised everything just going on and on and on and on with little signposts leading to the promised destination and growing contradictions stealing the initial simplicity of the task. Meditation itself is an ever changing landscape of struggled experience. One day you find a way to succeed, "Ah, I will try that tomorrow and work on it" and you are happy you may have found a way forward yet the next time you sit everything has changed so much that way has no relevance to what you are facing. Worst of all is to look forward to meditation only to find the moment you sit your consciousness falls into a sort of coma in which all interest or even knowledge or desire for the path evaporates and you end up mechanically bungling along in the mud.

If you are lucky you have an IQ that allows you to practice Gyan; to set policies for mind control. If you are lucky like Prof. Lek Raj Puri's son Iswar Puri and have powerful imagination, you can harness that talent and use that imagination to control the mind in a way it enjoys, thus hastening your progress. If you love your spiritual teacher then you can work directly with Him through love to advance you. If you saw him as just a man, a nice pleasant chap, then for you is hollow and bare is the path of Bhakti He gave you. All who set out on the journey are different, but yet are travelling in the same hope of enlightenment. May we all reach that and never give up and never give in, for there is no other promising goal than liberation in existence, even if our efforts just turn out to be empty space after death it is worth the gamble

Yet we must go on "The night is dark and I am far from home lead kindly light." There is no proof of reincarnation, there is not one minute of film capturing anyone performing a siddhi, and the few that are are just scams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99xGgqe9r0M Everything we have to take on faith. There were a few in our generation who could see into its future and that is a sort of comfort. It is a comfort to hear 'My Sweet Lord,' or Joni's "I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road." It is a comfort that we belonged to the generation of light and we are not the only ones still struggling on that path.

Breathe
Pink Floyd
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don’t be afraid to care.
Leave but don’t leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.
Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down it’s time to dig another one.
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

Time
Pink Floyd
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun
But it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way
But you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

[Jim Sutherland]

@Chiro,…in your video, if that was Trump seen walking on water, his haters would say the only reason Orange Bad walked on water, was because he can’t swim.

[Spence Tepper]

"What prevents us continuing to meditate in the way we set out to do at the time we sat down on a cushion or a chair? How is it that when I set out to count my exhales from 1 to 10, fairly often I'll get to 4 or 5 and then drift off into a thought that takes me away from my breath-counting?

The authors don't address these questions directly."

The fact that you aren't aware, for a little while, of when your consciousness becomes disconnected from counting is actually a great observation. Most people are always following what mind places before them, from memory and cognition, but not pure awareness.

What if you could watch your mind as it disconnects and reconnects?

The conscious mind actually disconnects and reconnects several times every second. Even continuous attention is just an illusion. The brain blacks out several times every second, but with short term memory we are never aware of it, generally.

It is when you have an objective measure, like a mantra or counting, that you can use it to evaluate what is actually going on with consciousnss.

Some people do learn to count automatically, in the background. But their consciousness may not actually be continuously aware of it in real -time.

The first step is to become aware of the fact that your mind has veered off course of whatever you placed it on. Usually this happens when we realize we are thinking of something else. But there are plenty of situations where we have no clue because the mind returns to the prior subject faster than we can notice its natural lapse.

So it is when we actually find ourselves having become "distracted" to a different subject that we become aware that mind is always moving, and our conscious awareness follows, and does not lead. This is how people realize they have addictions of one kind or another.

The second step is not to claim "that's a failure". It isn't. It is actually a step to greater awareness and focus. So reinforce the level of awareness by tracking what you notice.

The next step is to journal your cycle time.

"I'm starting to meditate again today after a lapse of one week....: 7 day cycle time."

"I did Simran /Mantra / Focus starting at 5 am. Then at 5:20 I became aware that I wasn't.: 20 minutes cycle time until awareness...I don't actually know when my mind stopped it's focus. Only that I gained awareness at 5:20"

" I was able to get to 4 exhales before my mind drifted...I started at 6 am and it's now 6:25 and I realize I am not counting, so probably something like 20 minutes gap"

This kind of manual feedback will help reduce cycle time by behavioral reinforcement of your current level of awareness. You take a behavioral action...jotting it down, then returning to the activity, to reinforce the momentary awareness you had, when you realized your mind had moved.

All of life is reducing cycle time between moments of awareness that you are doing specifically exactly what you want, not what you are compelled to "want".

Reduce your cycle time: You will more reliably become aware of all 10 exhales even as your body and brain calm down. A heightened level of consciousness!

You don't have to do anything more but be purposeful in reinforcing your moments of returning awareness. Automatically, in time, cycle time will reduce, and you will have longer periods of continuous awareness, rather than depending upon short term memory to tell you what is going on (in the very near past).

That's vigilance. But don't expect it to take over your life. The brain functions as it does for a reason. It cycles for a reason: it has a lot of things to work on all the time. Your thinking is just a small part of it.

But when you need higher executive functioning to get you there, or to get out of your own thinking, meditation with mindful awareness can help.
'

[777]

Jim
That is the nicest joke I hear in 4 lives - He couldn't t swim - waww

[7]

Chiro
I was once charged to do the light show equipment
for them in Rotterdam Holland

I guess Charan heard that and thought = I need that Guy

Narcistic or not?

[Jim]

You might like the work of Jurgen Ziewe and his latest--WILD - The power of Hypnogogia

[777]

Yes Jim

Specially that everybody produced brain wave GAMMA half a second
when doing a task or thinking about that task
But most meditators had Gamma , not only longer
but ALL THE TIME

Fascinating Jim and TY

777

[Bob]

I work in hospice and I can assure you that at the end of your life you’re going to have just this one thing on your mind: What comes next and do I deserve it?

The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind…

[Bob]

Music tio make you think:
https://youtu.be/MMFj8uDubsE?si=b9fl2jL88Ub16OXj
~BD