Swimming in Distraction
How many thoughts do you think that you have each day? And of those thoughts, how many do you listen to? I never fully noticed how distracted I was by my thoughts and feelings until I compared the activity in my head to when I was painting. As soon as I would sit down to paint, it would be as if someone had just turned the volume down on the cacophony of thoughts that were there. The velocity with which they came slowed down, the volume was toned down and I wasn’t paying any attention to them. They were there but they were muted in the background.
And then I would finish and put my brush down and I would notice a rush of sound and speed of thought come back into the forefront. I would, yet again be distracted by my own thinking. “Was this painting good enough? What if people think it is terrible? What if it doesn’t sell…..what does that say about me, my work, my business……What if I never sell anything again, then what will I do…what other work could I do?” The list of probing thoughts would be coming in one after the other, one question after the other, all left unanswered and all left me in a labyrinth of my own thinking. I was being led by one thought and then a new one would stem from it, and I would be following that one.
It will come as no surprise that this is incredibly tiring. What intrigued me was why were there less of these noisy, probing questioning thoughts when I painted? It was because I took myself out of the equation. I became a conduit and I was working through a creative channel that did not have me or mine at the forefront. I wasn’t there so to speak of in thought. I disappeared when I painted. And I seemingly returned as soon as I had finished. When you are consumed by a head full of thinking about yourself and what your life looks like and whether you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing or whether Aunt Franny was being rude to you earlier today and where will you be in 5 years time, then life is fraught with questions that seem urgent and seem to command an answer.
Yet, when you are not listening to every thought running through your head as though those thoughts were you then you get to be part of an Energy that is spinning planets and growing trees, where all is done in perfect precision, perfect timing and without questions continually distracting the process. As humans I think we will always be swimming in and out of thoughts passing through us but it helps a lot along the way if you know there are bigger things going on then the running commentary of the thinking that is accompanying you in your every day life. And that you are free to live from another space where you get to live by an Energy that is not just one long probing list of questions, criticisms and commentary and instead you get to merge and be part of a creative, expansive process.