obstacles to being mindful

In this episode of the Mindfulness series, I want to talk about some of the obstacles, or challenges, to being mindful. Some of these obstacles relate to external physical things, or the way our society is structured, and other obstacles are more to do with our mind and the way it tends to operate. Let's look first at some of those external challenges.

Thousands of years ago life would have been, in a way, rather simple. We would have lived in small communities, either as hunter gatherers or living off the land in a subsistence way, farming, perhaps, but in a very localised way. Our world would have been quite small. And we wouldn't have had any complex communication technology. Nowadays, of course, that's all changed. And most of us are very connected to the whole world, through the modern technology of communications. The internet provides us access to a whole global world of information. And the mobile phone means we can contact almost anyone at any time.

Such technological advances have brought many benefits, and yet, at the same time, they pose a challenge to us being mindful. Look around you in any public space, and you will probably see that a large proportion of the people around you are fiddling with their mobile phone. A few of those people are probably having significant communications using their phone. Most, though, are really just passing the time of day. Perhaps idly chatting on some social networking system – WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, there are loads to choose from – and most of the communications taking place over these social network sites or of no significance whatsoever. It's really just a way to pass the time of day, to alleviate boredom. But it also takes us away from our immediate surroundings.

So the mobile phone is the biggest single contributor to the lack of mindfulness in the present day. And of course, along with that, the internet and other broadcast media, like television, radio. These things all have a valid role to play in our society and in our life, but we've become addicted to them and we never know when to put down that phone, or when to switch off the computer. They take over our lives, and they stop us from being mindful.

I'll talk now about a few of the tendencies of our own mind which make it challenging or difficult to live in a mindful way. One aspect is the tendency of the mind to become habitual. We easily form a habit. The first time we do something, it's new, and it demands us to be mindful. We have to pay attention to what we're doing. However, if it's something that we do day after day, our mind very quickly memorises the process. And thereafter, we can live that process through habit. It might be drinking a cup of tea in the morning. It might be the commute to work – the first time you drive to work in a new place, you pay some attention to where you're going. But very soon you know the route, and you can drive to work without being mindful at all.

And there's a certain efficiency in living through habits. That's why we do it. It takes less energy. We can zone out. However, then we miss the benefits of being mindful. So guarding against habit is necessary if we really want to develop a mindful way of living. And that does take a tremendous discipline, to make a cup of tea mindfully. Because you can easily make a cup of tea without being mindful. You've done it a thousand times before. It's ingrained. However, if you make the effort to be mindful, you will see that there is a great beauty in making a cup of tea. It can be a rewarding experience, and that's even before you get to drink the tea. And the same applies to the drinking. You can drink a cup of tea mindfully, which means you actually really taste the tea with every sip. Or you can drink the tea in an absent-minded way, thinking about other things, not really noticing the taste at all. It's up to you. Do you live in a mindful way, or do you live from habit?

Related to this habit forming tendency of the mind is another difficulty that our mind creates for us. The mind likes to know things. It likes to create a sense of sort of security by knowing what is happening. Something seems very similar to what was there yesterday. So instead of really responding to what is in front of us, the mind starts to respond to its memory of that thing. It has created an image of it and come to some conclusions about it. And a bit like with the habit aspect of the mind, there's a certain efficiency in living with this feeling of everything being known. Not only do we not need to think about things again and come to new conclusions, but we can be, to a certain extent, relaxed, because we feel secure, we feel we know what's going to happen. We don't need to worry about anything. And with simple physical things, this can be okay. If I know from past experience that my teapot has a tendency to drip, then I can pour my tea in a way that doesn't make too much of a mess. It's useful. The difficulty comes because this way of interacting with the world makes the world seem a rather dead place. The present moment is just a repeat of what was there before.

And what's worse, we tend to take this mental approach with people. And people are not dead things. They are living and changing. So if I come face to face with someone I know – look, there's that word again, I know – I know this person. I have already formed conclusions as to whether I like them or not, as to the way they're going to react if I behave in certain ways. I already have a fixed image of that person in my mind. And if I relate them from that image, I am not really relating to them at all. I am no longer interacting with them in a mindful way. I might be physically standing in front of them, but I don't really see them anymore. I'm just drawing on my conclusions from yesterday, from months gone by. And they will feel it. Perhaps unconsciously, they will know that you're not really there. You're not really present with them. And you're not really open to who they are in this moment.

So this t tendency of the mind to form conclusions and take a world that is actually changing and fluid, and make it fixed, rigid, dead. This is another great challenge to living mindfully.

There are many other obstacles. There are some more psychological aspects of the mind that are worth mentioning. One is a tendency towards anxiety, and this varies from person to person. Some people are generally more anxious and some less. If you are an anxious person, it means the mind is often busy with fears, worries, always thinking what might go wrong, always fearing the worst. And this type of thinking, this pattern of thought, can be very preoccupying. Again, it's a sort of habit the mind has formed, just to worry about things. And of course, it doesn't usually help in any way, and it certainly stops us from being mindful.

Anxiety, an anxious tendency, is just one of the patterns that can take us away from being mindful, though. There are others. Some people are great daydreamers, rather going off into some fantasy world in the mind than paying attention to the present moment. That again, if it's a pattern that you find yourself often following, that again is an obstacle, a challenge. It stops us being mindful.

Some people have a tendency towards anger, a bitterness, as if the world is always wrong. There's a sort of self-righteousness in it. And again, this tendency is very preoccupying for the mind. It fills every moment of the day, whenever possible, with thoughts – angry thoughts, resentment, bitterness. This is a very negative way to live. And it also stops us from being mindful.

So these are a few of the external and internal obstacles or challenges to living in a mindful way. You can probably think of many others. Enough for now.