2013 – Page 104 – Mindfulbalance

Not waiting for life to begin

February 16, 2013February 10, 2013 Karl Duffy6 Comments

Dance in the body you have.

Agnes de Mille

Body and mind

February 15, 2013February 13, 2013 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We tend to think of the mind as being in the body. Actually we’ve got it wrong: the body is rather in the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. This doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say for certain is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happen within our mind. It’s all happening here. And when that here-ness is truly recognized and woken up to, the world’s externality, its separateness ceases. When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognize its true nature.

Ajahn Amaro, Inner Listening

Slowing down choices

February 15, 2013February 13, 2013 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

Bhante H Gunaratana

Showing up with others

February 14, 2013February 14, 2013 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If we don’t show up for our own life, we tend to ask other people to fill in the bits we won’t show up for. That makes it hard on them. So love begins with really showing up. And practice helps. It’s a way of not dodging the difficult, painful bits. It’s also not dodging the beauty and the marvel of life, the wonder and our capacity to connect to others. Love starts there. But we make a few really basic errors. We sometimes have the idea that a relationship is like a machine, one we can fix if we put the right oil on it or replace a few sprockets. We also can think that a relationship is a matter of calculating the sums of good and bad, what we’re getting and not getting. If we start looking at other people as a gift, it helps us out of these traps. You notice with a child that you show up without wanting a lot in return. It’s not an exchange: give this, get that. It can be like that in all our relationships, with lovers, teachers, friends, what have you. It’s not a trade. Love means bearing people’s differences without trying to change them—not just bearing, but valuing and appreciating and loving people’s uniqueness. That’s a path all by itself. What if the fact that you’re different from me is a gateway rather than an obstacle?

John Tarrant, Not Knowing Is the Most Intimate

Living through things together

February 14, 2013February 12, 2013 Karl Duffy3 Comments

Frequently, the reflex to solve, rescue, and fix removes us from the tenderness at hand. For often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held. I am learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to fix those we love.

Mark Nepo

Ash Wednesday

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013 Karl Duffy3 Comments

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian season of Lent, a period of simplification and fasting. Just as this morning’s saying simplified practice down to its very basic, this whole season encourages us to reflect on all the different inputs which come into the Body-Mind, not just those in the form of food:

The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible… Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

Alian de Botton

Most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst

About this Blog

Mindfulbalance supports the slow, patient practice of mindfulness meditation, as a way to find balance and meaning in life, reduce stress and develop health and wellbeing. It contains reflections to encourage the practice of meditation as well as occasional posts from psychology, spirituality and the wisdom traditions. The daily posts are prompted by Rilke's advice: "Write about what your everyday life offers you, your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind, and your belief in some kind of beauty". Written in County Laois, Ireland