My alarm goes off…it’s 4:15 am. It’s around the end of October.

Instantly my mind is off and running. Most people need a few moments to really “wake up” once they exit sleep, but that is not me. When I regain consciousness, my mind does the sprinting while my body attempts to catch up. My eyes are barely open and yet my mind has grabbed some idea or memory and is for whatever reason working it over so thoroughly as though it contained the cure for cancer.

Usually it’s not the happiest of ideas. Lately it’s been death and my eventual non-existence.

I shake the webs and dust out of my eyes and get to the bathroom. As I conduct my business, my mind continues its aggressive patterns of thought. It continues down this hallway of contemplation, really going into as much detail as possible about my eventual extinction and its harsh reality. My mind seems to not only try and move like Hussain Bolt but once the target is caught, it proceeds to toy with it endlessly and never let go, like a bear tearing apart a salmon while it’s still alive.

I get to the gym, blasting music in an effort to get my mind to focus. When the weight is in my hands or on my shoulders, I am there completely in the moment. It is because of the physical challenge that my attention is stuck for once, in what I am doing. Once the set is done my mind will race again, a bloodhound after its prey. I fight to turn my attention to something positive or inane so that I may rest my mind and body before the next set begins.

I distract myself with music or a podcast as I make my way through the morning and get to work, and then an all-day struggle begins. The struggle in question is twofold.

The first struggle is staying focused on the task at hand, especially because one of the hands has a knife in it. This isn’t an issue of self-harm mind you, at least not purposefully. Much like when you have been doing dishes for a long time, you might begin to be on autopilot when the water starts running. I’ve been a butcher since I was about twenty years old, so at 32 I’ve spent more than a third of my life with a knife in my hand. Every piece of meat is cut in its own way, with each having a process that I have memorized through hundreds of thousands of repetitions. Making sure my mind doesn’t wander during this process is an all-day affair, one that I don’t have to stress the severity of.

The second struggle that pairs with the first, is to keep my mind focused on the right things if and when they drift. When my focus starts to fall away from cutting the meat in front of me, then I must make sure that the focus and then maybe over focus, stays in a non-threatening area. When the body starts to do what it needs to do automatically, the mind starts to follow. For a few months now, my mind’s default setting has been torturing me with an examination on things that overstimulate my central nervous system to the point of continuous existential panic. Again I know it’s hard to describe accurately, because I realize that many people aren’t that attentive to their body and mind or how they work. Here I can’t stress enough how quickly my mind will leap from “oh I don’t need to focus on this task because I know it”, to “let’s focus on that thing that’s super unpleasant again since we have free time”. Here the saying “ an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” is fitting to say the least.

After the day of dodging and corralling my mind is over at work, I head home to enjoy what free time I have.

Once I arrive at home it’s a battle of fighting urges to check apps and then not getting consumed by them. Or succumbing to the fatigue of the day by watching TV while my mind intermittently rages at me to get moving and be productive, to get back to writing or reading. 

Even sleeping lately has not come easily. 

Despite the compounding exhaustion of early mornings and hard work, my body shows signs of sleepiness as my bedtime draws near, but my mind refuses to submit. There is a continuous fight for my attention, and when there is a gap in said attention the spiral of death thoughts come calling. No longer caring to fight anymore I slink off to my bed and play a comedy podcast in hopes that I can focus on what’s being said until the ability to fight unconsciousness is overtaken by the lassitude of a long day.

Mindfulness

I realize the challenge in attempting to accurately describe one’s own mind with its unique processes and characteristics, but so far I think I’ve accomplished my aim. The combination of probably undiagnosed ADHD, a lowered tolerance to caffeine-which is being used to self-medicate-, and an internal monologue that is increasingly high energy has made for a very chaotic and somewhat internally destructive past few months. That’s not to even touch on why one’s own thoughts focus on the negative or the uncontrollable but that’s a topic for another article.

As I’ve demonstrated here and in other posts, self-consciousness is not something I lack. I have stated(lesson three) and will continue to champion just how important I believe it is to be in tune with your physical and mental states and systems. It can be quite debilitating at times however, if you don’t know how to react to the information you’re receiving, or how to direct your introspection.

When all of this started in August, I sought out Sam Harris’s app Waking Up, in order to work on my ability to focus, as I’d heard meditation was good for that, in addition to a variety of other benefits. There are a variety of types of mediation on the app, but the one that Sam teaches is commonly referred to as mindfulness or “Sati” in Sanskrit.

A quick google search on mindfulness returns the definition of “a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. And after about 3,300 practice minutes logged into Waking Up, and another couple thousand minutes logged listening to theory and other parts of the app, I would concur.

What I didn’t realize was that in starting a meditation practice, I had lit a flame that would start the process of mental self-immolation.

Anyone trying to improve themselves will sympathize with the amount of effort it takes to put a new habit into place, let alone being consistent with it. I meditated daily for maybe a week or so, then would falter. Maybe I would miss a day or two and then come back to it.

The self-immolation started because I wasn’t going through the entire process. In the app there is a twenty-eight day introduction course that also gives concise commentary episodes on things like the self, the process and paradox of progress in meditation, amongst other things. I’m not suggesting that once the introduction course is complete you’re a Buddha, but a lot of things about the process become very apparent. So what I had essentially done was taught myself to notice thoughts as they appear, and inspect them. However, without the knowledge and reinforced practice of letting the thoughts go so as not to identify with them, I actually increased my own mental suffering.

Identification with Thought

There are certain stages involved in the process of thought. For the purpose of explaining this landscape briefly, let’s just say there are three. The first stage is that the thought comes into your perception and then goes, like a dandelion in the wind. It may never be recognized as a thought but just as a passing notion.

The second stage is when the thought enters your mind’s attention, and you recognize and analyze it. So I walk into a room, see a spilled water bottle, and get upset. I realize that I’m feeling upset, realize that I have the thought of “how in the hell did this happen” and then move forward. I briefly identified with the thought and feeling, analyzed it and let it go, proceeding to action.

The third and most common aspect of thought-certainly true for myself- is the identification with thought. Most people believe they ARE their thoughts. This third stage where most people exist on a day to day basis, is where suffering can ravage our minds and attention. It’s the incessant barrage of thoughts, whether a full-blown rampaging internal monologue like my own, or just a slow-drip of thoughts appearing in consciousness that the individual is on constant task to deal with.

Unlike the previous stage, where a thought enters the mind,is inspected and then discarded as action springs forward, this third stage takes the thought and keeps it. An example would be that I have an idea for an errand I need to run but it won’t be until after work. So I take my phone out, instruct google to set a reminder, and then move on with my day. The situation that results in the identification with thought, is the one where instead of setting the reminder and moving forward, I just constantly think about what I have to do after work…all day. This obsessive thought identification is akin to Lenny petting the rabbit too aggressively in “Of Mice and Men”. Only here the thought is the rabbit, and not only are you Lenny,slowly petting the rabbit until it’s smothered and dies, but you are simultaneously also the rabbit, because you suffer the more you continue to identify with these thoughts and narratives.

Sam Harris had alluded to such things by saying “Having a brain is like having a maniac walk through the front door of your house, and follow you from room to room and who refuses to stop talking”. Now while I agree with that statement, I think, and I’d bet Sam would agree, the problem isn’t necessarily the brain, it’s the identification with thought. Still, you get the idea and actually that analogy was the seed of inspiration for this article.

Do yourself a quick favor. After reading this of course, close your eyes. Simply try to,uninterrupted, focus on your breath. Completely pay attention to the entire process, from the second the sensation of breathing in hits your nose or chest, all the way till it’s completely out of your body. Just try to do this, with complete focus, for one minute. 

I’m willing to bet a fair amount of money that one of two things happened. One option is that you got no more than a few breaths in before you got completely sidetracked and swept up in a stream of thought, and maybe realized that and tried continuously to get back to the breath. The second is that you started off well,focusing on the breath for maybe even a good ten in a row. Then at some point you started to realize that you were talking yourself through the focusing of the breath process, which is in and of itself, being lost in thought. To actually sit quietly, and not think about the process, but to actually just focus on the breath and the pure sensation appearing in consciousness, is nearly impossible for someone that doesn’t actively train their attention.

Thoughts are naturally mysterious. If one is to sit and focus on the breath, or just sit quietly in an attempt at introspection, this will become very apparent. I don’t create my thoughts, and neither do you. Some use this as a springboard into the argument for determinism and therefore the illusion of free will, but I’m not that guy. However it is still useful to be aware that thoughts do truly come out of nowhere. Some people like Carl Jung, have posited that thoughts come from our subconscious, and having zero training in psychology I could entertain that notion.

Yet still, try and inspect the process of thinking. Yes we can direct our attention at an object and we can use our ability of focus to create more mental energy in that path of desired contemplation. Nevertheless, thoughts come barreling into our conscious awareness no matter the time, place or function.

Since we are our minds, and not necessarily our thoughts, I believe it behooves us to learn to pay attention to the things we tell ourselves. The narratives we have playing on a loop all day in our mental background can be very toxic, as the voice we hear the most is our own. You wouldn’t tolerate a friend talking to you the way you talk to yourself, so why tolerate it just because it’s coming from inside your head?

The thoughts in our minds come and go like the winds that scrape across the surface of our planet. We owe it to ourselves to not hold onto these thoughts and feelings as if they were the key to our survival.

It is I who will continue to suffer if I don’t learn how to use my mind correctly, and you will suffer the same fate if you don’t attempt to do the same.

We are alone with our minds, for better or worse.

Make it better.

**This article is the second part in a miniseries on mindfulness**