It’s not quite a law yet, but distraction is certainly on its way to becoming a rule.
By keeping busy, flipping from one task to the next, and searching for things to do, we are keeping our bodies busy. When we keep our bodies busy, we keep our minds busy. When the body stops, the mind is left alone. When the mind is left alone, it’s going to start wandering. It’s going to go places that we may not like. Places that we’ve maybe felt for a few instances but then bury them and ignore them due to the pain and fear associated with them. Places like our own mortality, previous life choices, unhappiness with appearance, family relationships, finances, and our life purpose. This is why meditation, even though so simple, can be so scary to us.
Let’s say every month you clean your apartment. You clean it top to bottom, getting into all the nooks and crannies, except one. There is one couch that you leave alone. You leave it alone because last year when you moved it so you could sweep underneath, you saw a huge spider that may or may not have been alive. So now you just leave that couch as is. The whole apartment is spotless, but in your head you are always aware of this one couch.
This is how many people go about their lives. They clean up the easy parts of their life, but leave the dark and dirty places alone because at one time they caused a feeling of fear/pain.
So here’s what we do. We walk up to that couch, move it off to the side, smoosh that spider, swiffer all the dust up, and put the couch back. Spend 5 minutes on a problem that has been in the back of your head for years.
If you can tackle the parts of your life that seem the most scary to you, the need for distractions will disappear. You will no longer have to keep your mind busy to prevent it from going into the dark and scary areas of your life.
After all, for all you know that spider is already dead…
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