Intimate Kindness

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Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather, it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference. Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing. As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel — to be here is immense. To be created and come to birth is to be blessed. Some primal kindness chose us and brought us through the forest of dreaming until we could emerge into the clearance of individuality, with a path of life opening before us through the world.

John O Donohue

Remembering to stop today

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The first step we take in developing mental well-being, and employing mind training, is remembering that in every moment we can choose how to direct our inner life. Most of us live our lives in reactive mode – we respond to things as they happen without considering our response. We are on automatic pilot. Lacking a sense  of inner control, we typically respond by trying to control the world and others. So step one is simply setting the intention to be aware. It is remembering to stop so you give ourself a choice in how to react. It is remembering that we are in control of our emotional life….Our inner experience may be positive, it may be mundane, or it may be disturbing, but we are the only ones in control of it.

Karuna Cayton, The Misleading Mind

The essential rhythm

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Another short piece from poet Seamus Heaney,  whose funeral is taking place around this time in Dublin.

Getting started, keeping going, getting started again –

in art and in life,

it seems to me this is the essential rhythm .

Seamus Heaney

The Best moment

livenowIf someone were to ask us, “Has the best moment of your life arrived yet?” we may say that it will come very soon. But if we continue to live in the same way, it may never arrive. We have to transform this moment into the best moment, and we can do that by stopping – stopping running into the future, stopping worrying about the past, stopping accumulating so much…… Breathing in and out consciously helps you to become your best – calm, fresh, solid, clear and free, able to enjoy the present moment as the best moment of your life.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Your True Home

….whatever you do

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Big sporting day in Dublin for the local team….
Leisure and sleep, moments of inactivity and relaxation,  can all restore balance within ourselves and allow us touch into our deeper nature.  Even a few moments of conscious slowing down, finding some space from our tendency to rush, has a beneficial effect on our overall system. Taking time each day to develop an ongoing practice of mindfulness soothes the  nervous system and encourages calm:

Sunday Quote: Wherever you are….

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God is a circle whose center is everywhere

and circumference nowhere.

Voltaire

photo:  carved spiral design on passage tomb entrance at Newgrange, Co Meath, Ireland