The freedom of letting some things go

February 22, 2012 by Karl Duffy 2 Comments

I may not hope from outward forms to win, The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.    Coleridge

For some people, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting.   These days  we are quite familiar with the latest diets and slimming fads  – and consequently put a lot of pressure on body conscious people – and they harmonize quite well with a culture preoccupied with image.  The idea of fasting, and the related notion of restraint or renunciation, however, seems somewhat alien. Because of this we lose a link to a deeper process than dieting, rooted in the unconscious. Fasting, like the silence and stillness of meditation, allow us let go of some of the normal practices of each day and we can see then what then arises in the mind. Ceasing some activities or changing routines which have become second nature can be a useful way of reminding  us to turn towards our inner life rather than distracting ourselves from it. We are challenged to declutter our busy life and see where our real priorities lie, to travel lighter.  So, “letting go”, in this sense, means not buying into automatic habits and patterns of mind, which limit us into kinds of contraction, and seeing what can be done differently. We become more fluid and can experiment with the space which this gives to act with greater creativity.

Sacrifice is an important concept for anyone interested in leading a religious life, but most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst

Be fully present
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What holds us back

February 22, 2012 by Karl Duffy 1 Comment

Just as a snake sheds its skin, so we should shed our past, over and over again.  The Buddha

Today is Ash Wednesday, traditionally the start of Lent – the season of preparation for Easter  The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lencten”,  referring to the lengthening of days in the Spring, thus placing the period in the context of growth and life. Lent became a time of reflection on freedom, seeing what the priorities in our life are and what needs to be let go of. As in other wisdom traditions,  it offers us a moment to enlarge our sense of things and go against the ways in which an unreflected life actually shrinks our heart. It reminds us to examine what is not essential, including the stories and habits which we have adopted over the years and which we come to see as fundamental to who we are.  It is an intensification of an insight that we see in our daily practice, namely,  that all things arise and pass away,  all things are impermanent.  So today, just as we begin to see Nature changing in the signs of Spring and new life, we try to internalize the understanding that we too are continually changing. This may mean that we need to let go of some elements of the past – which anyway is not happening any more except in the mind – in order for us to engage more fully with life in the present, in this moment.  It could be that we shed some aspects of what we hold as our solid self, and rather see  that we are more like a succession of selves.  Happiness in life comes not from holding onto the past but by living in the present with appreciation.

Detachment resembles the shedding of a number of coats of skin, until our senses are sharpened, or until “our inner vision becomes keen”. When we learn what to let go of, we also learn what is worth holding on to. Think of it in this way: it is simply not possible to share something precious or even to hold a lover’s hand, when we keep our fists clenched, holding tightly onto something. Detachment is not the inability to focus on things, material or other. It is the capacity to focus on all things, material and other, without attachment. It is primarily something spiritual; it is an attitude of life. And in this respect, detachment is ongoing, requiring continual refinement.

John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert

Make the most of life
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The one who knows

February 21, 2012 by Karl Duffy 1 Comment

Every time I reacted negatively, pushing things away, that action implied that there was something to fear. That this feeling or this thought was dangerous; that it was going to really hurt me, or invade me; that it was something that was really me and mine. As I began to welcome it all I realised that when you accept everything, only then can you sense that, after all, there is nothing to fear. None of it really belongs to a self or comes from a self. It cannot touch the mind which knows, cannot affect its nature. Whatever shape of vessel you pour the water into, with this same total accommodation, the water changes to the shape of the bottle. It doesn’t say: ‘I will not be poured into a square bottle, square bottles are not my scene. Round bottles only, please!’  When there is complete acceptance, there is just the sense of being the knowing, being that which is aware of all that comes through the mind.

Ajahn Amaro

Working with difficult moments
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Lost in thoughts

February 21, 2012 by Karl Duffy 2 Comments

Without a development or training of the mind, we find that much of our life is lost in thoughts and that we take these thoughts to be reality. How often do our thoughts condition reactions in the mind, as though the thought itself had substance? Yet the thought of a friend is not the friend; it is a thought. How many life scenarios have we created, directed and starred in and, for those moments, taken to be the experience itself? We also may get carried away by the intense nature of our emotions, swept up in a typhoon of the mind and body. To be lost in emotions is not to be mindful of their energy; and when there is a strong identification with them, there is no space in our mind for seeing clearly what is happening.

Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

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Why we should take ourselves lightly

February 20, 2012 by Karl Duffy 1 Comment

We often think that the way forward lies in us putting a lot of work  into our life, hoping to improve and fix what we do not like. And we can bring that attitude to meditation also, seeing it as something I am doing, and something I have got to do. However, just as one of the big problems in meditation is that we can take ourselves too seriously, we also need to realize that a big step towards contentment lies in letting some things go or not holding on too tightly to the succession of energies that appear in the mind, both positive “improving” ones as well as the ones that are arise from difficult events or people.  Now to say this sounds quite simple. But the tendency of the mind is to hold onto most things and make them into problems. We don’t have the faith or the trust or the willingness to just totally let go in the moment, to allow things pass through lightly, rather than amplifying them and making them into a story about our value or our life. Where meditation helps is in coming to see that the mind is continually generating stories and fears, and that holding one to every one can become quite tiring. Letting go our our inflated sense of the importance of our dramas can be liberating.  The image in this poem may help  -  as a way of dealing with thoughts in meditation, as a way of dealing with our preoccupation with “me” and “I”, as a way of dealing with our tendency to improve and fix and fret.

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished into the world.

Mary Oliver, One or Two Things

Working with difficult moments
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Staying with where our life is at this moment

February 20, 2012 by Karl Duffy 0 Comments

Consciously or unconsciously,

we avoid facing things as they are in themselves

and so we want God to open for us a door which is beyond…

(But) to find life’s purpose we must go through the door of ourselves.

Krishnamurti

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Standing still and withdrawing your consent to fear

February 19, 2012 by Karl Duffy 0 Comments

In our practice we cultivate awareness -  the capacity to hold even the events and thoughts and fears that bother us with kindness and non-judgment.  This means, as Christine Feldman tells us here, that we create enough of a gap between us and our fears that we no longer allow them to define our sense of self, or let them mean that we are doing something wrong:

It is a great relief to stop running from pain. In standing still and receiving life with all its adversity and sorrow, you have withdrawn your permission for suffering to define your life. You have also withdrawn your consent to living in fear. Something profound happens in your heart when you turn with kindness toward all the circumstances of pain which you have previously repressed, dismissed or fled from. There is a softening, an opening, a deepening capacity and willingness to understand sorrow and its cause. You come to understand that your willingness to be present with difficulties is the midwife to compassion.

Christine Feldman, Compassion

Working with difficult moments
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Sunday Quote: Stop running after

February 19, 2012 by Karl Duffy 0 Comments

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness

and just be happy

Guillaume Apollinaire.

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Working with difficulties – not looking for resolution

February 18, 2012 by Karl Duffy 0 Comments

Patience is a way to de-escalate aggression and its accompanying pain. This is to say that when we’re feeling aggressive — and I think this would go for any strong emotion — there’s a seductive quality that pulls us in the direction of wanting to get some resolution. We feel restless, agitated, ill at ease. It hurts so much to feel the aggression that we want it to be resolved. Right then we could change the way we look at this discomfort and practice patience.

Pema Chodron

Working with difficult moments
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Just show up

February 18, 2012 by Karl Duffy 0 Comments

I sometimes say that our monastery in Santa Fe should have a slogan hanging over the gate “Show up”. That’s all we have to do when we meditate – show up. We bring ourselves and all of our thoughts and feelings to the practice of being with whatever is, whether we are tired, angry, fearful, grieving or just plain resistant and unwilling. It really doesn’t matter what we’re feeling; we just come and sit down.

However unbearable any discomfort seems, ultimately everything we experience is temporary. And please make the wonderful effort to show up for your life, every moment, this moment – because it is perfect, just as it is.

Joan Halifax, Being with Dying

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