August 2013 – Page 7 – Mindfulbalance

The role of confusion

August 13, 2013August 13, 2013 Karl Duffy3 Comments

Dull and misty morning in Ireland today, obscuring the landscape and making things that were visible yesterday seem less clear. A good metaphor for how our inner life can seem at times.

Confusion is seen as a mistake, even a madness.

In truth, our potential for psychological growth reveals itself in moments of disruption.

The gift of confusion must be honored to clear a space in your life for something new to claim you.

Jerry Ruhl, Director, Jung Center, Houston

photo of fog in the Wicklow mountains by sarah777

Being slow to label

August 13, 2013August 12, 2013 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When we taste something, what is the ‘realness’ of it? We can say, ‘It tastes nice’ but this is what we think about it, not what the taste is. We can say, ‘It’s a grape’, but that’s a designation, a perception, isn’t it? What is the actual taste? We say, ‘It’s sweet’, but ‘sweet’ is a judgment, isn’t it? We come to understand that the reality of it is indefinable, and that for most of our life we are operating at the level of interpretations and classifications, of secondary experiences, rather than living the actuality of it. We never even know who we really are, because everything is constantly changing; the reference points are changing so although we feel we’re something, nothing quite fits. So as long as we identify with the world of change and appearance, this is all we shall ever feel ourselves to be, just an appearance that changes and wants to find a certain position.

Ajahn Sucitto, Gnosis and Non-Dualism

photo MatthiasKabel

Self-help, anxiety and the pressure to get better

August 12, 2013August 12, 2013 Karl Duffy1 Comment

I was in Dublin yesterday and took advantage by visiting the Hodges Figgis bookshop on Dawson Street, which I had not seen for a good number of months. I looked around the psychology section and then sought out books on meditation, which I found spread across religion, and the ever-growing sections of “popular psychology”, “Mind, Spirit and Body” and “Self-Help”. One or two things struck me as I browsed. There is a real risk of making terms like “mindfulness” completely meaningless as the state of mindfulness (which seems to increasingly simply mean an easy to develop calm state or present-moment attention) is applied to all types of areas without a similar focus on the daily practice of mindfulness needed to slowly discover its benefits, or on the underlying vision of society and ethics which give it life. A second problem is that it becomes part of an overall dissatisfaction with ourselves which is very prevalent today and leads us to find books which will help us create a better version of ourself. There are even more reasons now to be unhappy with myself – I am not only not rich enough, or not successful enough but I am also not mindful enough to get either. The danger with this is that it sometimes only increases our dissatisfaction with who we actually are, and the sometimes, less exciting place, our lives are. Sometimes these versions of ourselves and the ideal how-we-would like-to-be can come from the way Western society places an emphasis on achievement and can take us away from the person we actually are. We set up a juxtaposition between the “I” am now and the “I” I should be and believe that this is a good thing. However, in many cases this type of self-help and even spiritual practice can eventually increase our self of inadequacy. We have just shifted the method but we remain within the dynamic of winning and losing unless we begin to tackle the underlying cause and effect. Instead of always moving on, our practice can ask us at times to stay with what we have. It is there that we work out the unique person we are meant to be. It reminded me of Rabbi Zusya’s words, a short while before his death : “In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘Why where you not Moses?’ I shall be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’

Fixed views

August 12, 2013August 10, 2013 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Problems arise depending on how fixed our ideas are, or how “attached ” we are to a particular vision of what a “good life” means. Is it a certain lifestyle or income, and is our role to provide that for our family? If so, then if something gets in the way of our earning enough o achieve this lifestyle, we will suffer. If ones identity is attached or stuck to a particular role…then disappointment, depression, anger and shame will arise if we can’t live up to it. Remember, everything in life is changing, impermanent.

Karuna Cayton, The Misleading Mind

photo Artur Andrzej

A special calling…to be ourselves

August 11, 2013August 11, 2013 Karl Duffy4 Comments

In the Ireland of my youth the word “vocation” was quite frequently heard, something which is not so common today. It could refer to jobs which required self-sacrifice and dedication, such as nursing or relief work abroad. However, it most frequently meant that you felt called to serve God in ministry in the Church. As such it had a special, mysterious quality, almost as if taking you by surprise, from without. While the understanding of life in the context of a deeper purpose and meaning is quite beneficial psychologically, there was a danger of seeing vocation as something reserved for special people. In this quote, Parker Palmer, reminds us that becoming fully who we are, wherever we are at this moment, and not running away from it through regret or living in our thoughts, is the real way of finding purpose in life. It is not by looking elsewhere, but by accepting and inhabiting who and where we are.

What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been. How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own. How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity — the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation.

I first learned about vocation growing up in the church. But the idea of vocation I picked up in those circles created distortion until I grew strong enough to discard it. I mean the idea that vocation, or calling, comes from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet — someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach.

Today I understand vocation quite differently — not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

Parker Palmer, “Now I Become Myself,”

photo Old man, Ballyknow Quay, Galway, Ireland, by Greg O’Beirne