God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body like the hands of my beloved.
Mary Oliver, Sometimes.
Emerging and disappearing
Feelings are often born from a matrix of conditions beyond your control. Just like you can’t control the weather, or or your boss’s mood, you can’t control the feelings in your body. They are just passing through, like clouds in the sky. They, too, dissipate on their own. But if you take them too seriously and start internalizing them as part of your identity, then you will resuscitate them every time you think about the past. Remember that you are neither your feelings nor the story your mind tells about you to make sense of them. You are the vast silence that knows of their emergence and their disappearance.
Haemin Sunim, The Things You can see Only when you Slow Down
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An inner rhythm
We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any predetermined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program or plan for our lives. Rather, we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. This attention brings a new awareness of our own human and divine presence..if you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future
John O’Donohue, Anam Chara
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Two things
Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone: –
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in our own.
Adam Lindsay Gordon, Australian poet, 1833- 1870
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Looking for something to blame
Drive all blames into one.
This is advice on how to work with your fellow beings. Everyone is looking for someone to blame and therefore aggression and neurosis keep expanding. Instead, pause and look at what’s happening with you. When you hold on so tightly to your view of what they did, you get hooked. Your own self-righteousness causes you to get all worked up and to suffer. So work on cooling that reactivity rather than escalating it.
Pema Chodron, The Compassion Book Teachings for Awakening the Heart
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Good food
If we pay attention only to the negative things in us, especially the suffering of past hurts, we are wallowing in our sorrows and not getting any positive nourishment. We can practice appropriate attention, watering the wholesome qualities in us by touching the positive things that are always available inside and around us. That is good food for our mind. Naturally, when compassion comes up, arrogance goes down. We can selectively water the good seeds and refrain from watering the negative seeds. This doesn’t mean we ignore our suffering; it just means that we allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to get attention and nourishment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
