At the Abbey: Counterfeit Stimulus

As I mentioned in last week’s Putting Green, I spent several days at Mepkin Abbey in silence and solitude. Now granted, I live in an “Upper 1% World,” so when I say it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, I am fully aware that comfort is an idol for me. I like my stuff, and I like the way I have it all arranged in my life.

I wanted to live like the monks, so I locked my cell phone in my car, and was not tempted to look at it once, not once. I did not miss TV or Instagram, or my sports feed, but I found the silence they left to be deafening. I love to be alone, I love to sit still, I love to read, but when this is all there is to do, my mind rebelled.

During those days at the Abbey, when these things were restricted, I found myself in quite a state of low-level agitation.

Here is what I have been able to understand now that I am at home: It was the stimulus I missed. The lack of any stimulus left me both bored and distracted. I was distracted because there were no distractions!!

Counterfeit Stimulus

All these things are just counterfeit stimuli. We are addicted to the pop, the buzz, the immediate gratification. Here I am, a man in deep relationship with Jesus, a man who routinely notices the sunrises and sunsets, who appreciates trees and birds and skies, and yet I found myself distracted by the lack of my counterfeit stimuli.

I missed the fullness of the moments all over those beautiful and peaceful grounds because I couldn’t stay fully present in the moment. My mind kept hopping around.

I asked the men at our various 721 meetings, “What percentage would you say you are in the moment – fully present – and not distracted by the future, the past, or the cacophony of thoughts and worries that ping-pong around in our heads?”

Their answer: 1%-3%.

Is that okay? Is that healthy? Would Jesus approve? When he said, “I have come to give you life, and life to the full,”¹ I do not think he meant a life full of counterfeit stimuli and distractions. Do you?

There I was, at this incredibly beautiful and peaceful Mepkin Abbey, and until I slowed down, slowed way down, I was agitated because my stimulus addiction was not being fed. I could not see the lavish all around me, for the lack of the pop.

Isn’t that exactly what Satan did with Adam and Eve? They were surrounded by the lush Garden of Eden. They could have any tree and any fruit they wanted, except one. But Satan got them to focus on the lack, not the lavish. And he did it to me for the first two days at the Abbey.

Is he doing that to you? Yes, he is. Will you push back? Will you seek to be more present in the moment? It is, after all, all we have. And it is rolling by so quickly. I do not want to be facing death, and thinking, “I missed the whole thing! I was never fully present in the moment!”

What is blocking your appreciation of being in the moment? What are your counterfeit stimuli? Please take a moment to write them down. Perhaps even discuss this with your spouse or best friend. If you don’t, they will remain entrenched, as will your addiction to them.

But if you identify them, and make a plan to push them back into the periphery, you stand a chance of experiencing the natural stimuli of God’s creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
⁵     It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
    like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens
    and makes its circuit to the other;
    nothing is deprived of its warmth. —Ps. 19:1-6

1. John 10:10