February 2012 – Page 7 – Mindfulbalance

Being patient and starting over

February 11, 2012February 11, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

I was thinking about the GPS in my car. It never gets annoyed at me. If I make a mistake, it says, “Recalculating.” And then it tells me to make the soonest left turn and go back. I thought to myself, you know, I should write a book and call it “Recalculating” because I think that that’s what we’re doing all the time. If something happens, it challenges us and the challenge is, OK, so do you want to get mad now? You could get mad, you could go home, you could make some phone calls, you could tell a few people you can’t believe what this person said or that person said. Indignation is tremendously seductive, you know, and to share with other people on the telephone and all that. So to not do it and to say, wait a minute, apropos of you said before, wise effort to say to yourself, wait a minute, this is not the right road. Literally, this is not the right road. There’s a fork in the road here. I could become indignant, I could flame up this flame of negativity or I could say, “Recalculating.” I’ll just go back here. And no matter how many times I don’t make that turn, it will continue to say, “Recalculating.” The tone of voice will stay the same.

Sylvia Boorstein.

Bring compassion to what happens

February 10, 2012February 9, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Meditation is an experiment we are making, bringing us out of our normal habits of intense self-judgment, comparing, and impatience. Mindfulness isn’t about what is happening; it is about how we are relating to what is happening — how much awareness, balance and compassion are bringing to this moment’s experience, whatever it is. For example, it is very likely you will find your attention wandering, not 45 minutes after you first begin, but probably within a few seconds. You get lost in a fantasy, or fall asleep. That is normal and not a sign of failure. What I emphasize is that the critical moment in your meditation is the moment you see you’ve been distracted; instead of falling into our usual habits of self-condemnation, that’s a time we can practice letting go while being kind to ourselves, and work with the renewing power of beginning again.

Sharon Salzberg, Meditation and Mindfulness for All of Us.

A value in being lost

February 9, 2012February 7, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There is immense value in “finding ourselves lost” because we can find something when we are lost, we can find our selves. Indeed, the deepest form of wandering requires that we be lost. Imagine yourself lost in your career or marriage, or in the middle of your life. You have goals, a place you want to be, but you don’t know how to reach that place. Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want, you just have a vague desire for a better place. Although it may not seem like it, you are on the threshold of a great opportunity. Begin to trust that place of not knowing. Surrender to it. You’re lost. There will be grief. A cherished outcome appears to be unobtainable or undefinable. In order to make the shift from being lost to being present, admit to yourself that your goal may never be reached. Though perhaps difficult, doing so will create entirely new possibilities for fulfillment.

Surrendering fully to being lost – and this is where the art comes in – you will discover that, in addition to not knowing how to get where you had wanted to go, you are no longer so sure of the ultimate rightness of that goal. By trusting your unknowing, your old standards of progress dissolve and you become eligible to be chosen by new, larger standards, those that come not from your mind or old story or other people, but from the depths of your soul. You become attentive to an utterly new guidance system.

Bill Plotkin, Being Lost but not lost in Life

The freedom of not comparing to an ideal self

February 9, 2012February 7, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We can always see ourselves in terms of what’s wrong with us as persons. There are always so many flaws and inadequacies. There is no perfect personality that I have ever noticed. Personality is all over the place. Some of it is all right and some of it is really wacky. There is no personality that you can take refuge in. You are never going to make yourself into a perfect personality. So when you judge yourself you find so many problems, inadequacies, flaws and weaknesses. Maybe you are comparing yourself to some ideal person, some unselfish and superlative personality. However, that which is aware of personality is not personal. These personality conditions arise and cease…. Your refuge is in this awareness rather than in trying to make yourself into an ideal man or woman – mature, responsible, capable, successful, “normal” and all the rest – these are ideals.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence

Early morning thoughts on travel

February 8, 2012February 7, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If a man travels faster than the speed of a camel he is in danger of losing his soul. Arab proverb

I travelled home to Ireland at the weekend and, as always, noticed how the different experiences – and the changes one sees in familiar places – touch and impress themselves upon the mind. Even short journeys such as these can make us more reflective, conscious of how our life is always changing and moving – a reflection on identity really. This is partly brought on by the fact that our identity in the place where we live may be partly due to our work, familiar routines and feedback from people who live there, and all these things may fall away the minute we step on a plane and journey to a place where we do not have those roles to play. It helps us to see how conditioned aspects of our self is, from this place now which is our home to that place which was once our home and from this time to the last time. And as the visit ended and I was squeezed into a seat on the plane after an early rising and rush to the airport with its impersonal rituals and rules, feeling pushed and shoved at a speed I did not want to go at, I reflected how “old-fashioned” means of travel – by boat, train or even on foot – allowed for greater processing of all the thoughts and stimuli that passes through the mind on a journey. It is this processing which allows all the experiences be integrated and understood.

It seems to me that something similar happens in our inner life. In these past days and weeks I have talked with people who are journeying in their lives, and who are finding that they are not able to keep all the parts of their development together, and this makes them feel somewhat disoriented, or confused. The wise Arab parable above challenges us to reflect : the soul can only move slowly, at the pace of a camel. However, often, due to the pace of life today and its demands, lives move too fast for the inner self to keep up, and one suddenly finds oneself in a landscape where one has lost ones bearings. Often the message is given that we must always be active, busy and that slowing down is a sign of laziness or lack of ambition. For some people this means that the gap between their inner pace and the activities of their outer lives, be it in work or at home, becomes too great and the result is a sense of unravelling or even of something akin to depression. It could be that their job lost its connection to the reason why it was chosen in the first place, or that changes in relationships meant that their inner resources were not being replenished. The act of keeping busy, often by doing the necessary things of work and family life, means that they have moved away from what is real and fulfilling, and they feel lost.

What can we do at moments like this, for we all face them in greater or lesser way as we journey through life? We can but hold open the space, to listen to what our inner life is saying, even though that may take time to clarify itself. In other words, we allow time for our true self find the voice it lost because things moved so fast. Taking time, slowing down, doing activities that ground us, routine tasks that do not require too much energy. Thus slowly we allow a new path to emerge, and see that the feeling of being lost is a necessary one, if we are to find what truly gives us life. Above all, we trust and do not make impossible demands on ourselves. For we are in transition, and have arrived yet; the soul knows what it is doing and will catch up, even if it takes its time.

Wait and let things settle

February 8, 2012February 7, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

While thinking about our difficulties is useful to a point, we tend to take it too far and become obsessive…. Creating some spaciousness and tranquility in our minds can be a large step towards solving a problem. Consider the “forest pool” metaphor so popular in Buddhism. After inclement weather, the pool is muddy, full of sediment and debris. We cannot clear it by trying to control the contents – that would make the pool worse. We can only wait for all the sediment to settle to the bottom, leaving the pool clear again. So in meditation, by concentrating on the breath or our body or on sounds we can hear in the present moment, we create a space for clarity. We often find that in this spaciousness, an answer to a problem will simply “pop up” to the surface. Sometimes it won’t, but our bodies will thank us for a break from all the worrying.