Digital distractions
What I learned from staring at a carpet
“When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in”. — Eckhart Tolle 1
I was recently in a group conversation about the distractions of digital devices, and the question arose as to whether a meditation practice can help.
I took up meditation 32 years ago as an antidote to stress — but was frankly pretty useless at it for a long time.
Meditation involves mastering the mind.
And my mind did not want to be mastered.
It wanted to carry on doing whatever it wanted, however it wanted, whenever it wanted...
In my first guided meditation, the teacher put on some soft music and said:
“We learn to meditate with eyes open, so we can do so in many more everyday situations. Just gently rest your gaze somewhere in the distance without staring, and I'll speak a few words”.
I focused my gaze on the carpet on the other side of the room.
And I listened.
But not to her words.
To my own thoughts.
About carpets.
Here’s what went on in my mind over the next few minutes:
“I've never given much thought to carpets before. I mean, you don't, do you? Unless you’re thinking of buying one, I suppose.
This one looks good quality. Probably wool. But not just wool. There's bound to be some man-made fibre in the mix.
I wonder where the wool came from. Maybe Australia. They have lots of sheep.
And the man-made fibre would presumably have come from a petroleum-based feedstock, maybe from the Middle East.
I wonder how they put the wool and synthetic fibres together to make the finished carpet?
Is it one strand of wool followed by one of fibre and so on throughout the whole carpet?
Or are there patches that are mostly wool, and patches that are mostly synthetic?
And how do they get the strands of wool and fibres to end up being the same length — so the surface of the carpet is flat?
Do they cut them to the finished length before they’re put together to make the carpet?
Or do they use random lengths and create a carpet that's all higgledy-piggledy that then goes through a device like a giant lawnmower at the end of the production process?
At this point the meditation teacher switched off the music and asked: “So – what was your experience?”
My wife said: “Oh it was amazing. I felt so light and peaceful. Like I’d been transported to another dimension and I’d left my problems far behind”.
“Wow” I thought. “That sounds great.”
Then the teacher turned to me: “And what was your experience?”
“Very interesting” I said, a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t listened to a single word of her commentary.
But it had been very interesting, because I’d discovered something I hadn’t realised before.
I had absolutely no control over my mind.
I’d wasted the whole guided meditation session thinking pointless thoughts about carpets when I might have had a similar experience to my wife.
And I might have gained insights that would have helped me master my mind.
Which was the whole reason we’d gone to the meditation centre...
Over the following weeks and months, I discovered that learning to master the mind is a similar process to how small children learn to walk.
A child doesn’t start by taking an online course on walking, or by studying leg anatomy, or by downloading a perambulation app.
It learns by trying to walk - and falling over.
A lot.
And getting back up.
And falling over again.
Eventually it becomes good enough at not falling over and discovers it can now walk.
Similarly, by learning over time to be less and less distracted by other thoughts, we develop the ability to master our minds.
But usually only after a lot of metaphorical ‘falling down’ — our mind jumps elsewhere, we notice, and regain our focus.
This tendency of the mind to hop about all over the place is sometimes referred to as monkey mind.
And many of the technologies we use today — smartphone apps, social media platforms, streaming services — explicitly target the monkey mind by dangling digital bananas in front of us so our attention gets pulled where the technology designers want it.
So it can be monetised.
But we can turn the tables on these fiendish psychologically manipulative bananas and use them to our advantage.
For a while now, I've been practising that whenever my phone beeps, pings, or buzzes, instead of immediately doing its bidding I use the signal as a prompt to step back into silence for a moment or two before I then decide where I want to focus my attention next.
It’s much more productive than defaulting to the distraction of digitally derived dopamine hits.
It also helps ensure that I use my devices rather than them using me.
Digital devices can be useful servants.
But they make poor masters.
Eckhart Tolle — The Power of Now (1997) p19