Mindfulness, as I mentioned in an earlier cafe rap, involves the use of a bit of the forbidden E-word, effort. If you find yourself stuck in an unattractive mindset or a bringdown set of afflictive emotions, you've IMO often got to expend a little effort to get yourself back on track.
Some don't think much of the idea of mindfulness. To them, pretty much all raised on the TM dogma, the whole idea is kinda Off The Program, because they think (never actually having tried it, of course) that mindfulness is not "natural." The idea presented to all of us as students of Maharishi was that lowering oneself to monitoring one's thoughts, emotions and actions should never be necessary. According to the theory, you just get yourself enlightened, and then all of your thoughts, emmotions and actions are *automatically* in tune with the laws of nature. They are all at that point -- by definition -- right thought, right emotion, and right action; there is no need to self-monitor, because everything is automatically perfect. Many folks believe in this theory so strongly that they choose to live according to this "never self-monitor" creed long before they realize enlightenment. :-) Spiritual traditions that practice mindfulness are not as down with this theory. They're not convinced that thoughts, emotions and actions are automatically rendered "right" even in enlightenment, much less along the pathway to it. They prefer to "err on the side of compassion," and self-monitor, to see if maybe they're fucking up a little from time to time. There are many aspects to mindfulness, and many ways to practice it, once you've caught yourself fucking up. Some of these ways involve more effort than others. One of my faves, and one of the least effortful, is what I call re-mindfulness. Want to shake yourself out of a stale mindset, or an emotion you find draining? Just remind yourself of a shinier mindset, and happier emotions. Instead of getting all medieval on the sucky mindset's or the afflictive emotion's ass and trying to force it away, you just remind yourself of something more pleasant. How much energy does that take? This technique actually takes advantage of Maharishi's "natural tendency of the mind," because if he's correct you will actually *prefer* the shinier mindset and the happier emotion. Compared to the "force the sucky mindset out" approach, it's kinda like the difference between trying to pry a dead rodent out of your dog's jaws by force, or just showing him a dog treat. [ As a total aside -- nay, possibly even a veritable non-sequitur -- this reminds me of one of the best one-liners I've ever heard about OB -- Obsessive Buddhism. Some practitioners are more...uh...intellectual than others, and can spend years debating such thorny and practical questions as "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" As one guy on alt.buddha.short.fat.guy once summed up the cosmic significance of such an argument, "Given a choice between having a dog biscuit and a Buddha-nature, is there any question which the dog would choose?" ] Anyway, what I do when I've caught myself focusing on the less-than-shiny is to remind myself of something more shiny. Just as a hypothetical example, if one has become tempted to focus on ugliness, one could choose to continue to indulge in that focus, or one could consciously decide to spend some time instead focusing on beauty. I think I'll give this technique a try in today's cafe raps.
