SR05 · Module
Detached Observation and Inner Sanctuary
Stepping back from turbulent thoughts and external clamour to observe impressions objectively, retiring into the mind's inner sanctuary (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV.3; Schopenhauer; Winnicott), and mastering internal distraction triggers (Nir Eyal).
Cues
Showing 13 of 13 cues
“I think when you multi-task so much, you don’t have time to think about anything deeply. You’re giving the world an advantage you shouldn’t do. Practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.”
“Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it.”
“Is the trigger serving me or am I serving the trigger?”
“The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”
“I am never lonely here ... I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
“When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and rob me of my soul ... I then require the desert, so as to grow good again.”
“Yes, solitude is greater than I anticipated. My sense of values is changing, and many things which before were in solution in my mind now seem to be crystallizing.”
“The soul of a [solitary] journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases ... For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone.”
“Attunement to self is best characterized by the image of free flow, the flowing into [awareness] of thoughts, desires, and emotions with no sense of censorship or management, together with a free-flowing access backwards towards their origins.”
“I begin to have intimations, now, of a return to some deep self that has been too absorbed and too battered to function for a long time.”
“This state of inner attunement is not always joyful or serene ... Sometimes it involves feeling with devastating intensity the conflicts, the rages, the intimations of mortality we have been trying to deny ... Yearnings, rages, jealousies, dependencies, and estrangements can be safely lived through when the persons upon whom we might wrongly (or dangerously, or foolishly) unleash them are absent.”
“The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all the shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.”
Traction versus distraction
The opposite of distraction is not focus, but traction: traction is any action done with intent that moves you toward what you planned, while distraction pulls you away from your planned intent, often prioritizing the urgent over the important.