When the Mind Wanders: Rethinking Distraction in Meditation [Episode 52]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

We tend to relate to meditation practice as though periods of distraction mean we aren’t meditating. It’s sort of like there’s meditation, and then there’s distraction.

From one point of view, that’s true. If you look literally at what the meditation practice is, it’s the practice of being fully present, fully engaged in the meditation. It’s not letting your mind wander, not letting your attention follow your thoughts, not letting your attention go into trying to fix your feelings, just allowing all experience to happen and being here for all of it.

So from one point of view, that’s what the practice is. But the thing we have to understand about distraction, which happens for all of us in meditation, is this: you’re doing the practice, and then you realize, “Oh, I’ve just gotten distracted thinking about my to-do list, or planning an event, or whatever.” Yes, in that period of a couple of minutes, or however long it was, you were not meditating. That’s true.

How meditation practice works

But the thing you have to understand is that distraction is just a habit, and there’s a momentum to that habit. We all have a momentum within us of being absorbed in thought, of being absorbed in trying to manipulate our feelings. That momentum precedes your life. It’s deep in the human psyche, and it’s alive in each of us. We’ve been practicing it our whole lives—being involved in thoughts and feelings and sensations, and in the attempt to control all of it.

So just because that momentum reasserts itself again and again while you’re meditating doesn’t mean you did that. This is the important thing I want you to really consider.

Why the mind gets distracted

Distraction on its own—periods of momentary or temporary distraction in meditation—are, from one point of view, not something you did, and therefore not something you need to feel bad about, not something you want to judge, and not something you need to stop entirely in order to be a profound meditator.

Being a profound meditator, or doing profound meditation, has more to do with how wholeheartedly you’re practicing when you’re not distracted.

Is distraction a meditation failure

So imagine that you could relate to your meditation like this: invariably, there are going to be periods when your attention gets captured and you become distracted for a period of time. But every time you find yourself distracted, you instantly drop it and return to the meditation practice with intensity and wholeheartedness. Every time you notice you’ve been distracted, you drop it and continue practicing—without drama, without making a problem of it, without analyzing why you got distracted. You just drop it and continue practicing. You get distracted again, you notice it, you drop it, and you continue practicing.

How to return to meditation practice

What that means is that the distraction wasn’t you. The distraction was just something that happened. The moment you became aware of it, you—the chooser—gave yourself wholeheartedly to the practice from that moment. That’s the key to good meditation.

Now let’s imagine the opposite. You’re meditating, and now you’re writing that book or that report in your mind. You’re planning or working on some creative thing, which is not meditating. Then you notice that it’s happening, and you say, “Oh, I’m thinking through that plan,” but then you decide to stay with it for another moment because you’re having a good idea. It feels interesting, so you stay engaged for another half minute and then plan to go back to meditation.

Cultivating focus and commitment in meditation

Do you see the difference? Now you’re not wholeheartedly, one hundred percent, giving yourself to the meditation. You’re giving yourself to whatever you’re most interested in at the moment. That’s what really makes the difference.

There are two worlds here. In one world, any moment you’re not distracted—or the moment you become aware that you are—you return fully to the meditation. That’s a world of wholeheartedness, of complete commitment.

In the other world, you meditate for a bit, then you work on your to-do list for a bit, then you come back to meditation. That’s not profound meditation. It’s not going to lead to a profound result, even if you have periods of pleasant feelings during the meditation parts.

So just digest this, because for most of us it’s a real paradigm shift around distraction. It doesn’t matter how many times you get distracted, as long as you’re wholeheartedly committed to not being distracted and you make no room for conscious distraction. Unconscious distraction will still happen, but your conscious participation in the meditation is unbroken.

From one point of view, you meditated the whole time you were conscious—the whole time you were present and aware. There were periods of unconsciousness when you got distracted, but you meditated the whole time.

In our next segment, Craig responds to a listener's concern about having a wandering mind, and shares a simple, practical way to return to the practice—again and again, without self-judgment.

How to know if you are meditating

Constance in Los Angeles said, “I find my mind wanders a lot. I lose the focus of what you’re asking us to meditate on, so that makes me think I’m not able to get what the course is about, because I can’t even focus on what you’re guiding us to do.”

Constance brings up a good point. I was saying that the experience of your meditation, meaning how you’re feeling, isn’t a good measure of whether you’re actually doing the practice. But we also have a meta-awareness. We have a sense of whether we’re really practicing.

Awareness and attention in meditation

Constance is pointing out that she’s aware that part of the time she’s not really practicing, because her attention is wandering and she’s not there, diligently applying herself to the practice. She’s getting distracted and not sustaining the focus. That’s an important awareness to listen to. It’s an important self-awareness of your own practice.

So, Constance, I want to sponsor what’s known as meta-awareness, which means awareness of awareness, or metacognition. It’s your self-observation capacity, the part of you that’s monitoring the quality of your practice. It’s monitoring the “am I really doing it?” question.

In your case, what I want to encourage you to do is this: while you’re meditating, make a real effort to keep coming back to the practice. You’ve said that you get distracted, that you wander off, that you leave the practice and go somewhere else inwardly. So each time you notice that you’ve left the practice and you’re doing something else, really strongly note that. Wake yourself back up. Notice, “Oh, I’ve stopped practicing. What’s the practice? This is the practice.” Then come back to it with energy, almost like you’re running back to it inwardly.

How to return when the mind wanders

To give you an image, a metaphor to work with, imagine you’re on a meditation retreat in a formal setting. Everyone’s sitting on the floor on cushions. There’s focus and intensity, and everyone’s practicing together for thirty minutes at a time. Then you fall asleep on your cushion, start sleepwalking, and wander down the hall away from the meditation room. Suddenly you wake up and realize, “Oh my God, I fell asleep. I sleepwalked out of the meditation hall. I need to get back to the practice.”

So you turn around, run back down the hall, get back to your cushion, sit down, and say, “Okay, this time I’m going to stay awake and really do it.” You reassert yourself. You focus on the practice as long as you can. You stay with the instruction and really apply yourself.

Then, five minutes later, you find yourself wandering out into the garden, asleep again. You wake up and realize, “Oh no, I left the meditation. I wandered away, and they’re all still in there practicing. What am I doing?” But there’s no criticizing yourself. There’s no condemning yourself. You’re not saying, “I’m such a bad meditator.” There’s no self-judgment here. No self-judgment, only the urgency to get back to the practice.

So you run through the garden, back to the hall, tiptoe back to your cushion, sit down, and say, “Okay, this time I really have to stay with the instruction. What’s the instruction? Okay, now I’m doing it again.” And as long as you can stay focused, you do it.

Essentially, each time you wander away, you rush back with more intensity than before. That’s the point. Each time you return, you come back with more focus, more intensity, and more intention to stay with it.

And there’s no judgment. No “I’m bad.” No “I can’t meditate.” No “I’ll never get this.” No “this isn’t for me” or “I’m not advanced enough.” None of that. No room for it. Because all of that is just knowing. It’s just the mind trying to know something.

So there’s no getting to know anything. There’s just this: “I’ve left the practice. I’m running back to it with more intensity than before.” And then you see what that does for your practice.

In this final segment, Craig responds to a question from a listener about meditating when the world feels noisy or chaotic, and how to stay focused when outer conditions won’t cooperate.

(Listener Question): This was one of the most challenging meditations I’ve ever practiced. I was being pulled incessantly toward the noise of my surroundings—dog barking, nearby construction, traffic, sirens, etc. The more I tried to go to and feel the unknown, the louder the noises became. I became agitated and irritated, and I felt exhausted by the experience. Do you have any tips?

Craig: I’m sorry to hear you had such a frustrating and exhausting meditation.

For any of us here who have had that experience, or might have that experience, just know that it’s not the meditation most of us are hoping for, and it’s not necessarily a sign that you’re doing it wrong. It’s an organic part of the process of learning to do this incredibly challenging thing we’re inviting you to do, and sometimes it shows up just like that.

Let’s explore this experience a little bit. The way you described your attempt to practice, you said you were trying to go to and feel the unknown. You said the more you tried to go to and feel the unknown, the louder the noises became, and the more agitating and irritating it all was.

Distraction and meditation practice

Here’s a question. With all the background noise we might experience, how could we do this practice no matter what chaos is going on around us? This is important, because when we think about meditation, if we all paused and asked what the ideal environment for meditation would be, we’d probably imagine something like sitting next to a peaceful, quiet pond in the woods. The temperature is just right. It’s perfectly still. There’s no sound, no bugs flying around, no motor noise in the distance. Or we’re sitting in a temple and it’s perfectly quiet. Or we’re in our own meditation room with no noise and complete comfort.

To some degree, that’s true. A quiet, peaceful, temperate environment, good sleep, feeling well rested and well fed, a comfortable posture, no pain or agitation, and no emotional upheaval from a difficult week—all of that is desirable. I’m describing both the outer environment and the inner environment being just right.

That’s wonderful. You can have very deep, beautiful meditations when everything lines up like that, inner and outer. If we can make that happen, that’s a great thing.

Meditating in difficult conditions

But very often, that’s not the context in which we’re meditating. Sometimes we’re sitting in Santa Monica, and there’s all manner of noise and chaos going on around us.

I remember a retreat I was leading once at a retreat center. We were in the middle of an evening practice session, and the fire alarm system malfunctioned. For the next hour, the alarms kept going off. They would tell us they were fixing it, the alarms would stop, we’d go back into meditation, and ten minutes later they’d go off again. We had to evacuate the room a couple of times as a safety measure, even though they knew it wasn’t an actual fire. On and on it went.

We had to laugh and work with this totally chaotic night and still find a way to meditate. There was a particularly funny moment where part of the alarm system included an intercom that spoke words. It came on during meditation and said, “May I have your attention please.” It was about the fifth round of alarms, and I spontaneously shouted out, “No, you may not,” and we all laughed.

We were essentially practicing how not to give our attention to the chaos surrounding us. It was a comic moment, but also a profound one. We had to really learn: can I meditate even amidst all this external chaos, which is sometimes also internal chaos?

What if distraction isn’t a problem?

So what do we do with all that noise? It clearly seems like a distraction. As you’re saying, it pulls our attention. A siren goes off and the mind says, “I wonder if that person is okay. What’s going on?” A dog barks and the mind says, “I wish that dog would be quiet. Why doesn’t my neighbor do something about it?” On and on. It pulls us. It triggers us.

So how could we rest in the unknown even with a whole bunch of disturbing noises going on? That might be the real practice question for all of us right now.

It brings us to the essence of this practice. Are those noises somehow separate from the unknown we’re pointing to? Is this dimension of who we are separate from everything that arises in the world, or can we rest in the unknown even as everything arises?

Can we sit here not needing to know, more interested in what’s beyond the mind than in what arises in the mind, sitting amidst all the chaos of life, inner and outer, with no need to know anything and no compulsion to move toward or away from what’s happening?

Relaxing into the Chaos

Even if our attention gets distracted again and again by things happening outside us, beyond our control, on a fundamental level we don’t let that disturb us. Even the distraction itself isn’t made into a problem. We don’t conclude that it shouldn’t be here, and we don’t conclude that we should be better at concentrating.

We just keep being interested in the unknown. We keep renouncing the need to figure something out, to know something, to take a position, or to get somewhere other than where we are.

In my experience, it’s possible to give ourselves fully to this, regardless of what’s going on around us, even though it may be more challenging. I would guess that part of the reason you felt tied in knots and exhausted was that you had a conclusion that you should be having a different experience, and that you should not be bothered by the noises or distracted by them.

So each time you got distracted, you drew a conclusion: “I shouldn’t be getting distracted. I’m not doing the practice.” The exhaustion likely came from wrestling with yourself, rather than moving into a more easeful relationship with the chaos.

That ease might look like this: “I don’t care if the whole world is in chaos around me. I am meditating. I’m going to be at ease with it. Even if I’m distracted, I’m not going to make a problem of it or draw conclusions about it. I’m just going to sit here, innocent, free from ideas.”