An Impossible task

As we begin to meditate we are all too often confronted by how utterly unruly and distracted our minds are.

Even if your life depended on it, even if the lives of your loved ones depended on it, even if the fate of the entire cosmos depended on it, you wouldn’t be able to focus your attention solely on your breath for the next 60 seconds.

Isn’t that incredible? And ridiculous? And concerning? And shocking?

The simplest instruction to maintain the focus of your attention on your breath is actually impossible for you to do without a stream of thought intervening.

Even more shockingly, most of the time we are so identified with the stream of thought that we don’t even notice we are no longer resting with our breath. We have become entirely bewitched without even recognising it.

Training the skill of Mindfulness is training, amongst other things, the skill of attentional stability.

We are training our mind to reduce fragmentation, sustain focussed attention and, crucially, to notice when we’ve become distracted.

Only by consciously engaging with this skill can we begin to wrestle back our focus and attention from the myriad distractions we face each day, both internal and external.