Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

that? Ask yourself, "Who am I?" or, "What is this 'I'
that is claiming ownership?"
Awareness itself can help balance out the Selfing and
reduce its impact. Notice, too, that the self is
impermanent. Whatever you try to hold on to that has
to do with yourself eludes you. It can't be held
because it is constantly changing, decaying, and
being reconstructed again, always slightly differently,
depending on the circumstances of the moment. This
makes the sense of self what is called in chaos
theory a "strange attractor," a pattern which
embodies order, yet is also unpredictably disordered.
It never repeats itself. Whenever you look, it is slightly
different.
The elusive nature of a concrete, permanent,
unchanging self is quite a hopeful observation. It
means that you can stop taking yourself so damn
seriously and get out from under the pressures of
having the details of your personal life be central to
the operating of the universe. By recognizing and
letting go of Selfing impulses, we accord the universe
a little more room to make things happen. Since we
are folded into the universe and participate in its
unfolding, it will defer in the face of too much self-
centered, self-indulgent, self-critical, self-insecure,
self-anxious activity on our part, and arrange for the