Ignoring My Way to Salvation
Filtering is the new fasting
Apparently it takes running into traffic for me to fully admit: I'm distracted.
Ash and the kids wait in the safety of our car on the side of the road while I attempt to play Frogger (dated reference?) with the cars. I'm the frog. The prize is my iPhone in the middle of the road.
I must have set my phone on top of the car when I was putting one of the kids in their car seat.
I don't remember, though. Because I was distracted.
Maybe I was lost in thought or… I'm not sure.
I was distracted.
It took a couple hours for me to realize I didn't have my phone. Thankfully, Ash has my location - I mean, my phone's location (they're usually the same thing) - on her phone.
She's irritated. We both know that more of me had been missing lately than just my phone.
She sees the blue dot in the middle of a road we drove on that morning.
Great. We know where my phone is.
But locating my attention might be harder.
We used to call this era The Information Age - an age that promised knowledge on demand, answers to every question. For a time, that promise felt like progress.
Back then, the problem was ignorance. The valuable resource was information. The skill worth mastering was how to find it.
But now, we live in a flipped reality:
The disease is no longer ignorance - it’s distraction.
The scarce resource is no longer information - it’s attention.
The essential skill is no longer acquisition - it’s ignoring.
We don’t suffer from a lack of information. We suffer from too much of it. Not a famine, but a flood.
We don’t need more access to knowledge. We need the capacity to filter it.
Protecting our attention, in this cultural moment, is no longer just a personal productivity hack - it's a form of integrity. (Sometimes, it even feels like survival.)
To live well now, you must know how to ignore wisely. To turn away from the firehose and drink from a deeper well.
In a world of too much, wisdom looks like knowing what to ignore.
Over 100 years ago, the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote:
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
He said that in 1904. Now, in 2024, researchers are calling this “critical ignoring” - and they’re saying it’s now up there with critical thinking as one of the most important skills of our time.
According to psychologists like Anastasia Kozyreva and Ralph Hertwig, critical ignoring is the ability to deliberately and strategically filter out irrelevant, manipulative, or overwhelming information.
Their recent research argues that the flood of misinformation, noise, and digital temptation is not something we can simply “be more mindful” about. We need tools, disciplines, and habits that help us resist the pull of the attention economy.
“Digital environments do not just require critical thinking,” they write, “they also require critical ignoring—the ability to notice, evaluate, and strategically disregard certain types of information.”
We used to admire those who knew the most. Now, we admire those who know how to stay grounded. Not those who can hold everything - but those who know what to release.
Ash probably wouldn't have been upset by my phone being in the middle of the street if this had been the first time.
But this wasn't the first time we had checked the location of my phone and found it to be in the middle of a road. It was the second time. In three months.
The previous time it was on US Highway 290. Three lane highway. 60 miles per hour. It didn't stand a chance.
Thankfully, I had Apple Care. $99 and I replaced the phone.
But apparently I didn't replace my distraction.
Because here we are again.
If my phone is broken again, the Apple employees may recognize me. I would be That Guy Who Runs Over His Phone.
I don't know if that's less embarassing than the truth: The Guy Who's Been Run Over By His Own Thoughts.
I need Apple Care for my soul.
Ash often calls me an astronaut. "Earth to Brandon," she says when my mind is drifting, orbiting through my thoughts.
And when I’m not lost in my head, I’m often off in a book or podcast. Binging information at 2x speed is an escape for me, my drug of choice. Audible and Spotify are my main dealers. If enlightenment could be reached at 2x speed, I’d be a guru by now.
Lately, I've also been drinking more alcohol. A couple of light beers in the evening can't be that bad.
But I've also started to take stimulants on days where I have a lot of work to get done. They're helping me be productive, to provide for my family.
Then why do I feel some shame around them? I know I'm using them. Using them to numb from being present, or escape being fully here.
I’m not just multitasking - I’m multi-escaping.
Contemplative spirituality is about practicing presence, because that's the only place that God ever is. So we could say that distraction is the "sin" of our modern world - the thing that separate us from presence.
This has always been the case. Even in Jesus' time. That's why he would regularly pull away from the crowds to find silence and solitude in the wilderness. Even at the peak of his fame, when the brand endorsement deals were probably rolling in.
The only difference is today the volume has been turned up. I wonder how Jesus would have coped with 47 unread Slack messages from the disciples and Twitter debates about whether his parables were 'problematic'.
The great spiritual traditions understood something we’re just beginning to rediscover: It’s not that God is far away - our minds are.
We must practice presence.
Without practice, our attention becomes reactive - constantly pinging outward.
With practice, it becomes responsive - able to return inward.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
“Do not worry about tomorrow.”
“The kingdom of God is within you.”
That’s why the saints and mystics were obsessed with silence, solitude, and prayer. They understood that attention is holy. And when you give it away to everything, you lose your connection to the one thing that matters: the living Presence, here and now.
Part of the danger is that the abundance of information doesn’t feel like distraction. It feels like staying informed. Like being responsible.
But underneath the constant noise is something concerning: We’re becoming disoriented. Unable to tell what matters and what doesn’t. Who we are and who we’re pretending to be. What’s essential and what’s just loud. (The line from Bo Burnham's Inside about social media comes to mind: "Here's a tip for straining pasta, here's a nine year old that died - a little bit of everything all of the time.")
This is why filtering, discerning, ignoring is a spiritual practice. It is not about tuning out the world. It’s about tuning in to what Spirit is doing in you, through you, right where you are.
And that requires practicing silence and stillness and a different kind of listening. Not everything out there is yours to know, carry, or respond to. But you’ll never know what is yours until you create space to listen.
“You have the answer to every question. It is the voice inside you. But you are too busy to hear it.” - Rumi
We don't find God by adding more to our lives. We find God by learning what to ignore - so we can finally hear what’s been speaking all along.
I grab my phone from the middle of the road and run back to the sidewalk.
It's cracked in a couple of places. Symbolic of my own being.
It still works though. This time I decide I won't get it fixed at the Apple Store. I'll start working on fixing something more important.
I get back in the car. That strange feeling of not having it by my side is relieved. But the new awareness of how uncentered I am is unnerving.
I tell Ash I'm not going to drink alcohol or take stimulants for at least the next month.
Then I delete the Audible app. Then Spotify. I need more silence.
But I download a meditation app.
Because apparently the only way I know how to be quiet… is with someone else narrating it.