Organizing distractions

Mary: My name is Mary. I have a hard time when I meditate and I just keep getting distracted and keep getting distracted. I get very into organizing those distractions: “Oh, that’s planning,” and “Oh, that was a worry,” and “Oh, that was a memory.” I get so caught up in labeling.

Ken: Organizing distractions. I’ve never thought of that.

Mary: I know I’m a Virgo, but I get really caught—

Ken: What different categories do you have?

Mary: I have a lot.

Ken: Do you organize those too ?

Mary: Sometimes yeah. Like my planning can be either—

Ken: Different types of planning?

Mary: And different types of fantasy, so at any rate, whatever, the point is, I can get so caught up organizing my distractions, like, “Oh, it’s a distraction.” At any rate, noticing distractions has become a distraction. Does that make any sense?

Ken: It makes a great deal. I think it’s fascinating.

Mary: Okay. So thoughts—

Ken: Noticing the distraction isn’t the distraction. It is what you do next. It sounds like organizing the distraction is the distraction. May I ask you a few questions? And I have no idea where this goes. [Pause] What are you trying to achieve by organizing the distractions?

Mary: I think somewhere in my head or in a teaching, I picked up on this idea that it’s good to notice that you’re distracted and label it and then let it go. That so appeals, I think, to that crazy organizer part of my brain, that I’ve picked that up and I’m just running with it.

Ken: Okay. That’s extremely helpful. Thank you.

The right instruction for you

Ken: In ancient times, one who is training in spiritual practice, you got very, very little information. You were given one instruction and your teacher usually knew you fairly well, and it was the right instruction for you. But we don’t live in those times anymore. In fact, we live in very, very different times and they’re quite extraordinary—where here in Los Angeles, and generally in this country, certainly in every major city—we have access to the wisdom and experience of all the great spiritual traditions, all at the same time. It’s unique in human history. That’s wonderful in one sense, it’s highly problematic in another, because we hear this instruction, and it’s a very good instruction, but for you, it’s poison. Parts of you that are used to organizing things just latches onto it. “Oh, I can do that,” and off you go, but It’s totally the wrong instruction for you. So I’m going to ask you another question. What’s the right instruction for you?

Mary: Well, I think there probably is—

Ken: And you know it.

Mary: Really?

Yeah. Okay. Well, I have two thoughts: the right instruction is there isn’t necessarily any right instruction, and—

Ken: Well, that is a cop out.

Mary: Okay, okay [laughter]. The right instruction is to relax now [laughter]. It’s really to just …

Ken: Can I give you a hint?

Mary: Focus on my breath and that’s it. That’s all that I need to do.

Ken: Remember this?

Mary: Right.

Ken: How much organizing am I doing?

Mary: Not much.

Ken: How would this be for you? Oh, you don’t like that. [Laughter]

Mary: Did you see it in my eyes?

Ken: I felt it over here—because all of that organizing couldn’t run if you could practice that way—could it? Just coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath, and leaving this big mess of unorganized distractions.

What’s your apartment like or your home? Very tidy?

Mary: No, it’s not actually.

Ken: Interesting. Because if it was very tidy, I was going to tell you to mess it up. Okay. So you get the idea. There you are breathing. Something comes up: “Oh, that’d be a really neat restaurant to go to” and automatically a fantasy food [makes chewing sounds]. Something like that?

Mary: Fantasy or planning.

Ken: Okay. So you know what your practice is? “Oh, that’d be a really neat restaurant to go—Oh, breath.” That’s very interesting what you say here, because the way that you try to cope with all of the stuff is to organize it. Whenever you’re distracted, you just think, “Okay, if I organize it, it is going to be better.” I gave an example of another way that people cope with distraction. And that is, when they’re distracted and they recognize that they go, “Oh, you stupid so and so, you’re never going to be able to meditate. This is really bad.” The you’ve got to concentrate harder trip. I know that one because I’ve done it a lot myself, and there may be a couple of other people here that do that. But that is another way.

Other people, they get distracted, and “Oh, that was so neat! I could really get into that.” But it’s the same kind of thing. What happens is, there we are resting, something comes up, and something always comes up—it could be anxiety, it could be anger, it could be desire, it could be anything. It catches us. That moment of recognition comes. All of us want to do something with the distraction, whether it’s organize it, use it to beat ourselves up and get into it or what have you. But the instruction is: come back to the experience of breathing, and that’s it, just coming back. The labeling practice is actually quite subtle and it’s very helpful for certain kinds of people. But all of these instructions, they work for some kinds of people and they don’t work for others. It is very important to find the ones that work for you. Well, this obviously doesn’t work for you very well for you because it allows you to just to spin, spin, spin, spin. So, “Okay, there we are…breath.” How aware are you of your body when you’re practicing?

Mary: I come in and out of awareness of it I think.

Stay in touch with your body

Ken: I think what may also be helpful to you then is, when you’re sitting, is to stay completely in touch with your body. So whenever you notice you are distracted, the first thing you come back to is your experience of your body. I find that that really cuts through a lot of the intellectual stuff that goes on. Just come back and feel the body breathing, and then you find actually, frequently that the rest is right there. Just come straight back to that. So that’s the other thing I’d suggest to you. Okay? Well, it’s nine o’clock, let’s sit for just a moment or two.

If anything that we’ve talked about this evening you found helpful, that you feel has generated a possibility of good in your life, then just feel that goodness and dedicate that goodness to the good of the world. You don’t have to figure out how that’s going to happen, but just form the intention that whatever goodness has come out of our time together this evening, you dedicate that goodness to the good of the world. We’ll just sit for a couple of minutes.