August 2013 – Page 8 – Mindfulbalance

The normal way is not the way home

August 10, 2013August 9, 2013 Karl Duffy3 Comments

A short piece on change and the unknown, by the Irish poet and writer John O Donohue:

The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it through our protective barriers of domestication and control. The normal way never leads home.

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realise how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits.

The Question Holds the Lantern

pilgrims climbing Croach Patrick, July 28, 2013

Identity and the true self

August 10, 2013August 9, 2013 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Croagh Patrick, the saddle on the western flanks - geograph.org.uk - 605872.jpg

If you plan on being anything less

than your true self

You will probably be unhappy

all the days of your life

A. Maslow.

photo : Croach Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain.

Moving toward wholeness, not perfection

August 9, 2013August 9, 2013 Karl Duffy4 Comments

This part of Ireland has quite a lot of interesting early Christian remains, so last weekend I visited the ruins of the monastic settlement in Castledermot. It is a site which is left somewhat untended, so that the crosses and tombs have a certain craggy beauty in a natural setting. Rough stones, some seeming unfinished. And yet, unfinished or ongoing does not mean “not right”, much as we tend to prefer tidyness and a clear direction or order. We often think we have to be the finished product, or have everything resolved and clear, so that other people will give us the feedback that we are doing OK. Seeing this “lack of completion” reminded me of these words from Jung – which echo the idea from Pema Chodren posted last Friday. We never really arrive at “perfection” (even though the mind thinks in terms of it) but rather at a wholeness which is more like a continual “coming together and falling apart”. When we give up that notion of the idealized life we wish we had, we allow ourself to work with the life we actually have. Each moment may not be perfect, but it is, in some way, complete.

The realization of the self….leads to a fundamental conflict, to a real suspension between opposites …and to an approximate state of wholeness that lacks perfection. . . . The individual may strive after perfection . . . but must suffer from the opposite of his intentions for the sake of his completeness.

Jung, Christ, A Symbol of the Self,

photo of ancient Celtic cross Castledermot, Ireland, taken from dialogue ireland website.

Lost in our heads

August 9, 2013August 7, 2013 Karl Duffy2 Comments

Meanwhile, here we are, missing the fullness of the present moment, which is where the soul resides. It’s not like you have to go someplace else to get it. So the challenge here is, Can we live this moment fully? Over a lifetime, you may wind up in the situation where you are never actually where you find yourself. You’re always someplace else, lost, in your head, and therefore in a kind of dysfunctional or non-optimal state. Why dysfunctional? Because the only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You’re only here now; you’re only alive in this moment. The past is gone, and I don’t know what’s coming in the future. It’s obvious that if I want my life to be whole, to resonate with feeling and integrity and value and health, there’s only one way I can influence the future: by owning the present.

Jon Kabat Zinn

photo : frettie

Letting go of the ideal to work with the now

August 8, 2013August 8, 2013 Karl Duffy2 Comments

One thing that I am getting used to being back in Ireland is the changing nature of the weather, which varies from day-to-day and even a number of times during the day. Yesterday was a lovely warm, sunny, day, with a beautiful sky at sunset, while today the sky is hidden behind grey clouds with the prospect of rain later. I was talking with friends in Switzerland who are going through a period of very hot weather, and immediately my mind formed the idea of the “ideal” summer, with constancy and reliability in the weather. However, nice as that would be, one advantage of changing weather is that it allows us practice with letting go of ideals and “shoulds”, and moving with how things actually are. This is a good training in letting go of the “push-pull” dynamic of happiness which is ingrained in us. We seem to alternate between “pulling” – wanting some things that are going on in our lives (or in others’ lives or in an idealized version of our life) or “pushing away” – not wanting elements of what is happening to us at the moment. Real happiness comes from stepping out of that dynamic, from waking up to to the root cause.

Here are some thoughts from Ajahn Sucitto on how to work with the way the mind likes to form ideals – the weather, the ideal day, the ideal way our life should be – which can become judgmental and oppressive. He suggests the development of a working philosophy of “good enough”, and argues that this cannot achieved through thinking alone, but in a balance between the head, the heart and being grounded in the body, here and now. There is a kindness in approaching life this way, which is often lacking in the thinking mind.

Not feeling good enough is a true experience. Something’s wrong. But you don’t get good enough through following the idea or the ideal or those performance-driven drives that cause you to fragment. Good enough begins with being whole, with the heart, head and body senses all in the same place. So you enquire: is my body with me now? Is my heart unwilling? Resisting? Or settling into being here? How do I free myself from self-criticism and feeling inadequate? And to look at the topic in another light – where would that self-respect come from? That has to be a relational sense; which is a heart sense, not my thinking mind. The problem is that we mostly orient through the thinking faculty. And for this faculty absolutes and ideals are easy. You can think in terms of absolute right and wrong. You can conceive of the perfect person and the perfect society. What you can’t conceive of in any clear and definite way is what is good enough. The thinking mind can’t grasp that one. It’s only realizable through the heart faculty.

Ajahn Sucitto, Good Enough

photo ardfern