Spiritual Beings in a Distracted World

What if this distraction runs deeper than we usually admit?

Some voices outside the Christian tradition have looked at the same human condition and named it with striking clarity. They observed how the mind’s constant activity can act like a veil, keeping us from the reality right in front of us.

J. Krishnamurti, who spent decades inviting people to see beyond their conditioning, put it this way: “One of the functions of thought is to be occupied all the time with something. Most of us want to have our minds continually occupied so that we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are.” He also said, “Thought is time… When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness he will see the division between the thinker and the thought… is an illusion.” In total silence, he suggested, “the mind comes upon the eternal.”

Eckhart Tolle, writing from his own experience of awakening from years of inner suffering, observed: “To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.” He noted that “Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist,” and that “Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.” “You are the light of presence,” he wrote, “the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.”

These are not perfect or complete pictures. Yet there is a kind of brilliance in them — moments where people who stood outside (or even against) traditional faith still touched something true about the way we live distracted from our own being. Scripture does not dismiss such glimpses; it fulfills them with greater light.

The Bible tells us we were created for something far more present and eternal. “God created mankind in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). He formed the man from dust and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). We are not merely biological creatures running on thought. We are spiritual beings, made to live and move and have our being in God Himself (Acts 17:28).

The story of the fall in Genesis shows us how that original design became distorted. We began to live as if only the seen, the temporary, the immediate concerns of the body and the mind were real. The very gift of life in this world became the whole story we believed. That deception is still at work whenever we find ourselves carried away by the inner noise while the presence of the Lord remains right here, waiting to be noticed.

Jesus Himself addressed this kind of distraction with tender clarity. To Martha, who was “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made,” He said, “Martha, Martha… you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed — or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). Mary had simply chosen to sit at His feet, to be present with Him rather than lost in the swirl of doing.

Again and again Jesus invited people out of anxious thought and into trust: “Do not worry about tomorrow… But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:34, 33). He offered rest to those weary from the inner burden: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

The apostle Paul echoes the same call: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2). And he gives us the practical invitation at the heart of this reflection: fix our eyes not on what is seen and temporary, but on what is unseen and eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).