Apologies for the extremely long post. I am in a very helpless situation, my whole life is ruined and all of it can be traced down to me not being present moment as a solution. And idk how to shorten this any further, i would really appreciate it if someone can take the time to read it and answer all my questions.
Negative thoughts are easy to recognise and drop/let them pass by. but
I would like to know about the "neutral"seeming thoughts that occupy my brain all day. I could give a few examples. I was doing dishes, but I was thinking about a park that I might want to go to that day, what I would find there, why I should or shouldn't go, whom I should go with, etc. and my mind wasn't paying attention to anything in the kitchen while doing those dishes.
I was showering, and all I was thinking about was how to get "meditation" right, what kind of questions I should post to get the answers I am looking for, and analyzing what I had already read so far about it. but the whole shower went by as a blur. I didn't pay any mind to anything on my body or in the washroom. If I accidentally get cut somewhere without knowing, I wouldn't know for many, many days.
In this way, I keep replaying old conversations with people and re-experiencing those emotions, planning every future conversation, etc,etc. And I never, ever pay attention to what's actually in front of me in real life.
I could go from point A to point B and return. My roommate would ask if I had noticed whether the vegetable stall..which was on the way...was open today. Now, it's a standalone shop and somewhat isolated, so it's actually quite prominent to the eye. But no, I wouldn't have noticed it even while passing right by it because I was thinking about something in my head. Even if I actively try to pay attention to what's in real life by telling myself to focus on the real world, the thoughts stop flowing for 10 to 15 seconds, but I just don't "take in" the information. It's like listening to a foreign language that I don't know, but with images. I look at things, I look at that vegetable stall....but I won't "take in" the information about it. It's as if the information stopped right outside of me and never entered my brain... so this experience feels pretty terrible. It's like looking at a room filled with letters from a foreign language everywhere, just slightly prettier than what that sounds.
So, how to approach this? Am i getting this whole "being in the present" right.
To be honest, I don't know what to focus on in real life. There are so many things at once in my field of vision. Everything is mundane because I see it every day. Some things are displaced from their usual position, but that displacement doesn't really register in my brain unless it's drastic. So, I pretty much have nothing that catches my eye most of the time, and I end up overwhelmed by everything, not knowing what to focus on,so I just don't focus on (or absorb information from) anything.
what runs through your brain as someone who lives in the present while doing mundane, regular tasks that don't require active thinking? Like brushing your teeth or walking from your room to the kitchen...what do you observe? What makes you observe that specific thing? Is it a thought that prompts you to check whether the vegetable stall is open or not when you are near it? Like, what makes you remember to take in that information?
When doing a task you have already done a few times, or a few thousand times, what exactly do you feel present about in that moment? You might have brushed your teeth thousands of times before.......do you still focus on how the bristles are moving every time and how much pressure they are exerting? What exactly does being present look like during an activity you have grown used to? On a path you have already walked more than 100 times, what do you observe?
I could watch a pretty bird on the way to the grocery store and it just doesn't register in my brain most of the time that I did. so i wouldn't double down on it and observe it any further. but i wanna get there. i want my brain to catch things and focus on them instead of looking at it like a foreign language.
Also, I deal with severe sleep issues: anything can wake me up, and I can't fall back asleep. Every time I have meditated more on my tactile or auditory senses for a while, those senses became heightened, and I found it even more difficult to fall asleep. So, I wouldn't want to focus much on those. I want to stick to vision. At any given moment, there are a limited number of smells you can smell, tastes you can taste, things you can touch, temperatures, etc.; but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of things to focus on visually. How do you know which one to choose? How do you train your mind to actually pick something valuable instead of picking nothing at all? I am very spacey in real life, and nothing I see registers in my brain. I would really like some advice on this specifically.