Mindfulness

Buddha listed four "distortions of mind," "four basic ways we misconstrue our experience," according to the current Utne Reader. The fourth brought me up short: "The most detrimental distorted view sees a self in the body and mind." There is no real, enduring "me," and no findable essence in us or others. This is hard to grasp, and must take some deep reflection and guidance to actually grasp it, yet mindfulness of the opposite of this distortion, which is selflessness, makes perfect sense in all the world's religions. So the celebration of "the real me" that I keep rabbiting on about is off the mark, and the renunciation I've been so proud of means something different; it means "having a powerful wish to be free from" the four distortions.

I wondered if "mindfulness" meant also "paying attention." I always wonder at how people in this house remember every detail . . . like our stop at the Double Musky Inn in summer 2006, the last "outing" we had....I forgot...but I remember sitting at the bar and eating appetizers, but not what they were. The people in this house remember everything we ate that day! Perhaps the fact that I do not remember much of my life is connected to my not having been mindful throughout it.

I don't know where to put this, so I will put it here. Louise Hay's morning tape says we need to let the universe do its job; all we need to do is have positive, loving thoughts, forgive everyone, and be kind to ourselves mentally. When things here are as they are, I find it so hard to do all three, but in a murder mystery I just escaped into, Eve Dallas heroine, there is a sentence that I need to memorize for my positive, loving thoughts about the people in this house: "You do what's right, you do what matters, whatever it takes."

I think mindfulness is going to be as hard as everything else involved in the waiting heart's eventually emerging into a halfway decent butterfly. And I am frustrated that there is no humor in this post . . . blogs are, like, required to have humor. Oh well . . .