Month: December 2012

Challenged to live more fully

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We seldom become all of who we are until forced to it. Some say that something in us rises to the occasion, that there is, as Hemingway called it, “grace under pressure” that comes forth in most of us when challenged. Others say this talk of grace is merely a way to rationalize hard times and painful experience, a way to put a good face on tragedy. Yet beneath all the talk of tragedy and grace, I have come to believe that we are destined to be opened by the living of our days, and whether we like it or not, whether we choose to participate or not, we will in time, everyone of us, wear the deeper part of who we are as new skin. Either by erosion from without or by shedding from within – and often both – we are forced to live more authentically. And once the crisis that opened us passes, the real choice then becomes: Will we continue such authentic living?

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Sunday Quote: Choosing courage in the face of fear

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Courage is like – it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts.

It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

MaryDaly

A more interior hearth

Karl Duffy3 Comments

When snow covers the ground,  as it has done here in the past week, we are forced to go at a slower  pace of life. This is not a bad thing,  as modern conveniences can insulate us from the natural rhythms of day and night and of the seasons. For nature, winter is a time of slowing down and resting, sometimes of harshness, and of bareness. For us too, the outside season can remind us to return to basics, to see what is truly important. We can also pass through period of interior  winters, moments of darkness and  feelings of isolation. Growth and warmth can seem far away and we can be tempted to despair. However, we may find growth even in these moments or  as David Whyte says here, such times can be reminders to let go of the activities that bring us to the superficial margins of our lives and return to the conversation that gives us real life:

When we feel bereft of one form of support we can easily forget that it is because we might be meant to put that particular form of comfort aside and look to a fiercer more internally grounded stage of our maturity, one that might emanate from a simpler but surer ground than the outer sky of mirrors and monetary instruments we might have constructed for ourselves in the so-called real world. It also might be surprising to think that there are just as many forms of courage and creativity associated with disappearance and doing without; just as many satisfying elements of aliveness associated with a winter as with spring. This central, core conversation to which we return in each succeeding winter is both nourishing and deeply disturbing, it seems heedless of any flimsy structures we may have erected, it seems fiery in that it burns familiar things away and yet provides another form of warmth emanating from a more nested, interior hearth. In my experience the first necessity of an individual in finding this fiery, core conversation is a radical form of simplification. To get to the core conversation we have to withdraw from the edges. Whatever expenses we have been making at the margins of our lives in terms of emotions, finances or time-based commitment must be brought back to the central conversation that makes the most sense.

David Whyte.

Underneath the ice

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Our habits and patterns can feel just as frozen as ice. But when spring comes, the ice melts. The quality of water has never really disappeared, even in the deepest depths of winter. It just changed form. The ice melts, and the essential fluid, living quality of water is there. Our essential good heart and open mind is like that. It is here even if we’re experiencing it as so solid we could land an airplane on it. When I’m emotionally in midwinter and nothing I do seems to melt my frozen heart and mind, it helps me to remember that no matter how hard the ice, the water hasn’t really gone anywhere. It’s always right here.

Pema Chodron

Sometimes, letting go is the best way

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A similar idea to yesterday afternoon’s posP1000373t on how to work with emotions and not give them too much solidity or identify with them.  Sometimes the best attitude we can have is one of patience, being able to sit with whatever arises knowing that it will pass and a new day, a new understanding will come:

Someone sits wakeful through the dark night, thinking of some way to find the day.

Though they do not know how to get there, still, in waiting for daylight, the day approaches.

Rumi

A different way of looking at things

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As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we’re always running away from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us to develop inner strength. And what’s especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think we’ve hit the bottom, when things are at their worst. Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace — disappointment in all its many forms — and let it open me?” This is the trick.

Pema Chodron