Practicing Presence

Ever feel like your mind is trying to claw its way out of your skull? Like it just WILL NOT settle down and shut up? When all you really have to do is stop to smell the air, and appreciate the natural beauty of the wind rippling through the blades of—why is mom so shitty? Why is everyone so shitty? This world is going to HE—

   Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s your job. Maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s Dave from accounting. Maybe it’s a lyrical earworm. Maybe it’s politics. Maybe it’s religion. Maybe it’s your big giant mole. Maybe it’s all of the above. Or maybe… just maybe…

   IT’S YOU. 

   We only have so much cognitive bandwidth, and we become habituated to the thought patterns we most frequently carve into our neural pathways. You can’t stop and smell the roses, because you DON’T stop and smell the roses. At least not often enough. 

   There’s this completely ridiculous episode of SpongeBob where Squidward hopes to impress Squilliam Fancy Pants, so he devises this elaborate plan to turn the Krusty Krab into a fine-dining establishment. But of course, the head chef, SpongeBob, is an absolute ball of chaos. So Squidward tells SpongeBob to empty his mind of everything but fine-dining and breathing. And it works! SpongeBob had fine-dining in there, but it was overcrowded by all the other things SpongeBob previously let take precedence. 

   This is a beautifully silly, albeit reductive example of our problem. And people imagine they should be able to empty their mind… almost like SpongeBob! I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard, “I can’t meditate,” or “I suck at meditating,” because, “I can’t empty my mind,” or, “stop thinking thoughts.”

   Some of the most intentional seekers of tranquility make regular time to unplug, time for nature, a walk here and there, going hunting or fishing, collecting these little moments of presence, knowing it takes time to unwind. Yet most of them still experience the same issues we’re all dealing with, merely rounding off the sharper edges of mental perturbation. 

   We struggle because our minds are very, very good at doing exactly what we train them to do. It runs the loops you rehearse. It revisits the pathways you’ve carved. It scans for the familiar problems you keep handing it. 

   Of course, it will not suddenly sit down and behave just because you want it to! Attentional direction is a habit, and all of us have spent more time practicing talking to ourselves than practicing experiencing.   

   Most people who seem calm, tranquil, or even “zen” are not gifted with quieter brains. They are simply delegating that bandwidth to better regions of mind. 

   They make small, repeated deposits into moments of presence until it becomes something their mind does naturally. You can walk without a phone. You can notice the air for a moment. But the reality is, we need a lot to combat the age of stimulation and information. The best likening of our problem is to that of the obesity epidemic. 

   We have too much to consume, and we no longer live in the kind of environments that allow us to get enough exercise naturally. So we workout, going out of our way to exercise. 

   Meditation is your ATTENTION’s workout. But isn’t reading kind of—NO. It’s not. Yes, you are exercising your attention… toward THINKING and the formation of words. 

   Rather than imagine you’re going to empty your mind (something that might only truly happen for a few seconds after months of daily practice) meditation is simply the exercise of training your attention on something of minimal stimulation, such as the breath, a visual fixed point, or a very simple sound, so that you can direct it away from these invasive thoughts AT WILL. 

   Every time you get distracted and have to return to your chosen focal point, that’s an exercise rep. Rep ‘em out, knowing you're growing that mental muscle in the only way that will allow you to regain control over your mind and find the peace that’s already there when you stop making so much noise for yourself. 

   Most of the issue is that we distract from our mental dis-ease with more stimulation, more NOISE to drown out the NOISE. It’s laughably ridiculous. 

   The news no one wants to hear is that, like physical exercise, it’s not going to get better until you actually go hungry. You want to feel good, carrying yourself around? You have to rep it out, as layer upon layer of psychological fat is painfully stripped away. 

   But it’s that or the disease of dis-ease. 

   WORTH IT.