Month: September 2013

Keeping distracted

Karl Duffy2 Comments

phones subway

The best-adjusted person in our society is the person who is not dead and not alive, just numb. When you are fully alive you are constantly saying “No” to many of the processes of society, the racism, the polluted environment, the nuclear threat,  the arms race, drinking unsafe water and eating carcinogenic foods. Thus it is in the interest of society to promote those things that take the edge off, keep us busy with our fixes, and keep us slightly numbed-out and zombie-like. In this way our modern consumer society itself functions like an addict.

Anne Wilson Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict

This Friday, stop looking somewhere else

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Stop Running

If you think that peace and happiness are somewhere else and you run after them, you will never arrive. It is only when you realize that peace and happiness are available here in the present moment that you will be able to relax. In daily life, there is much to do and so little time. You may feel pressured to run all the time. Just stop! Touch the ground of the present moment deeply, and you will touch real peace and joy.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Fitting in

Karl Duffy1 Comment

magazines1

A new home decoration show starts on the Irish television channel this evening. The popularity of shows like this at the moment – or ones which look at houses abroad or down the country – and which start when people are a bit down after the Summer holidays, can fuel the anxious, comparing mind.  Even how you decorate your home becomes a sign of how well you are doing, or another way to feel that you do not match up:

The need to be normal is the predominant anxiety disorder
in modern life.

Thomas Moore, Original Self

The myth of lives without challenges

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File:Rocky path on the Ben Nevis climb - geograph.org.uk - 856611.jpg

Pain is inevitable; lives come with pain. Suffering is not inevitable. If suffering is what happens when we struggle with our experience because of our inability to accept it, then suffering is an optional extra.

Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier than you Think

The common myth that is perpetuated in society is that the normal person is happy, balanced and integrated – otherwise there is something wrong with them; maybe they’re mentally unstable. We’re even alarmed by unhappy people. Everyone in the media is smiling and cheerful. The politicians are all smiling, cheerful. confident; funeral homes even make the corpses up to look smiling, cheerful and confident…… Unhappiness in Western culture is often treated as a sign of failure.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth

photo Stephen Sweeeney

Breaking problems down

Karl Duffy1 Comment

evening sun kildare

Gentle, slow, walking – best done  in nature – sends a signal to the brain and by slowing down the body we slow down the rushing mind.  It can put things in perspective and prevent us from living all the time in our heads:

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
 But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
 hills and a cloud.

Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things

Don’t rush past

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File:A Typical Sky.jpg

If you notice the wonderful smell of the rain, instead of just moving quickly past the experience without deeply appreciating it, you can prolong your contact with this wonderful sensation. Pause for a moment and really let yourself experience the smell of the rain. If you are struck by the blueness of the sky, linger for a moment and breathe mindfully, taking in the wonderful blue color. Don’t rush past these marvelous experiences, treating them as if they are unimportant. To treat them as unimportant is ultimately to treat yourself as unimportant. This is your life: enjoy it!

Thomas Bien

photo bryancalabro