Dealing with those Distractions: The Meditation Gym.

Dealing with those Distractions: The Meditation Gym.

There is a wonderful story from the life of that great mystic and master of meditation, St. Teresa of Avila, that deals with distractions in prayer beautifully.

Having been brought to a convent of sisters to teach them about the way of meditation she did so in great depth and with much skill. However, towards the end of her time with them she was asked by one of the sisters to describe how she herself meditated. Taking the last half hour that the sisters had gathered she began by saying she had gone to the chapel with them, genuflected before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and interiorly dedicated the time of prayer to Him. Then she sat in stillness, and almost immediately was distracted by a sunbeam illuminating the corner of the chapel that showed up a little dust. She began to think to herself that the sister in charge of the sweeping wasn’t doing a very good job…

But she remembered she was there to pray and returned to her meditation…

A few moments passed and then she noticed that the sister kneeling in front of her had three nails in the sole of one sandal, but four in the other…

Where could the other one have gone to, she wondered…

Was it a case of two few nails in one or too many in the other?...  

But she remembered she was there to pray and returned to her meditation…

A few moments passed, and then she noticed that the breathing of the sister beside her was in a different rhythm to her own and she began to listen to the music of her breath…

But she remembered she was there to pray and returned to her meditation…

St. Teresa continued to describe the ongoing oscillation from distraction to distraction that to her listeners seemed to comprise the whole of her meditation much to the dismay of the sisters who wanted to learn from this Master of Prayer.

At the end one of them was so amazed she blurted out, “But then you were just distracted for the whole of your meditation!”

“Ah,” said Teresa, smiling, “Yes, I was distracted but I returned each time and that makes all the difference.”

Perhaps one of the most common difficulties in prayer that is brought to me both as a teacher and as a confessor is the whole area of distractions during meditation.  

People can often torture themselves over this perceived difficulty, indeed, for some the encounter with the dross and ephemera that arises before the mind’s eye during meditation can be so off-putting and the struggle to defeat them become so exhausting that it can even be enough to put them off the practice of meditation completely… in a later post we will deal with the content of these thoughts and the wisdom of the fathers and mothers as to how to deal with the major ones that every meditator has to struggle with, but for today let’s look at the general problem of distractions and how we should deal with them in meditation…

You see, the problem often begins with dividing our assessment of our period of meditation into the time “I was distracted”, (which often seems like the majority of our time), and “the time I was meditating”, (which usually seems like the minority), when the real issue is that we are approaching it from the wrong perspective by using this as the framework of our division of the time in the first place. The problem then becomes further compounded when we add a layer of guilt and self-recrimination for the distractions in to the mix. This then arouses anxiety and further separates us from the relaxed stillness necessary to our prayer. These difficulties arise when we fail to realise that the distractions are a part, indeed a very necessary part, of the meditative process. I will repeat that: The distractions are part of the discipline of prayer.

Let me explain…

Suppose as part of your “New Year, New You” initiative, (that takes place every January first), you decided you wanted to build up your biceps, or triceps, or abs or whatever muscle group you feel needs some work. You go to the gym and with effort you lift a weight. (So far so good.) But then you NEVER put it down again. Do you build the muscle? No of course not, in fact you will probably wither it and end up with less movement and less muscle. It is in both the contraction and the release, the picking up of the weight and the putting it down again, that the strength of the muscle is built when the process is repeated over and over again. The same is true for the mind at prayer. Every time a distraction arises, and we notice we are distracted, we simply and gently return to the anchors of the breath and the Prayer Word that draws us back to our focused mindful awareness of the Divine Presence. The taking up of the time of prayer is the picking up of the weight. The distraction arising is the releasing of the weight. As long as we pick up the weight again as soon as we notice that we have put it down, we are only building the “muscle” of the attention, refining our mindful awareness a little more each time, so that over the days, weeks, months and years of practice we will find that the distractions become less and the periods between them become longer. Indeed, after a time the distractions will simply rise and fall but our own focus on the Presence will remain true beneath and beyond them.

This “discipline of distraction” is actually essential to the beginner in meditative prayer and is the whole of the art in its initial stages. It refines focus, builds attention in a gentle way, opens the present moment as the place of encounter with the Divine Presence, and deepens our humility and the awareness of our need for Divine Grace.

In coming back again, and again, and again, we are allowing the Holy Spirit to write the path of metanoia, the path of conversion, (literally re-turning to God) within our hearts. It is on and in this struggle (parrhesia) for mindful attention that the Desert Fathers and Mothers saw the foundations of the real meditative life being built, and it was the art that the monastic had to be grounded in before moving on to deeper forms of meditative prayer.

As the great master of prayer St. Francis DeSales wrote in his wonderful treatise The Introduction to the Devout Life,

“If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master’s presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole hour, (of meditation), but bring your heart back and place it in Our Lord’s presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.” 

 So then, the next time you go to sit... and the distractions arise... smile... once you have noticed them... and then immediately return to the breath and begin again...and again... and again... this is the discipline of meditation, this is the path of prayer... this is the way to build mindful attention of the Divine Presence... And as you leave your meditation, if anyone asks you what you were doing in there just say "Working out!"

Blessings :)