I Don't Mind...

...But I do!

As much as I "mind"--that is, think, process, filter and sift everything that seems to come in or go out of this organism, I might as well be mind, if you define it as a critical and/or analytical tearing-apart of the whole.

All well and good. Such activity keeps me intelligently hungry and curious, and prevents me from naively swallowing poisonous concepts passing for wisdom in the tabloid-like stories of the world (Here, drink this! It gots electrolytes!). It adds a certain dryness to the sense of humor, a touch of alert discrimination when gazing through the looking-glass of the moment. In "negative" territory, it emerges as cynicism...a defensive response learned long ago, being selectively disarmed to this day. :)

I was initially exposed to the "art of no-mind" through dabbling in various martial-art systems; shortly thereafter, I read about the Zen concept of "beginner's mind" (Shoshin). Both descriptions point toward a more open approach to living (and fighting, if necessary), involving a lack of preconception and the willingness to view each moment with fresh eyes, as if for the first time. Of course, my younger, steel-trap head caught the gist of the idea right away. However, the deeper implications of such an attitude are still unfolding now--and will fortunately continue to do so, I suspect, for all aspects of Maria living in spacetime.

If I sketched out a descriptive graph of my shifting perspective, it would show a recent huge spike, a drastic jump in energy, and massively increased quake activity in this region of understanding. It sounds dramatic in my story, doesn't it? It is. While the giant Can Opener of Life was busy tearing me open and tipping me over, I didn't argue much, this time. I simply went with it, and watched the contents of my carefully parsed knowledge go the way of all things. Over the ridge and into a rainbow mist went the adventurous child. Bye!

Well. Now that's emptiness, and a whole bunch of mixed metaphors. :) 

Don't get me wrong--intellectually, I know there are layers within layers of psyche to be uncovered and explored. As long as I want information, I will find it. The no-mind situation is more a refusal to hold on to conclusions past their life-span, more than anything else; they come, and they go. They arise, but don't seem to stick. They are like a string that, as many times as I tie it around itself, always pulls tight, knot-free. How can this be? I don't know.

("I don't know" used to be a rather fearful state of mind, now it's almost joyful...woohoo! I don't know!!)

Amazingly, I haven't lost my mental edge, emotional intelligence or physical balance. I think the difference lies in the fact that I don't get stuck in these things. I don't identify with them as much. I feel myself, but I don't feel myself to be any state. Today, for instance, I was driving, watching the countryside pass through me, listening to thoughts leap into existence. I was thinking about attachment to sick babies, ex-lovers, helpless animals, and the like; for a minute I relived various kinds of suffering associated with having a big heart, easily attached. Then I laughed. Here I am, in a universe so Teflon-like that I can grasp absolutely nothing as it whizzes through my experience faster than light--and, at the same time, so flypaper-sticky that I can't pry myself out of my own context--and everything is my own context!

Tell me, who gets attached to what? I don't know! One must be unattached to attach, and vice versa. I find myself as a universe containing the universe that obeys steel-trap physics...in this space, Maria can stomp all over ideas and memories that seem to have lost their hair-trigger springs. Nothing happens...nothing scary, anyway.

Catch me if you can!