Year: 2013

Seeing through thoughts

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window dirt

Most of us are trained to believe that if we think something is good, it is good, and if we think something is bad, it is bad. But as we practice simply watching our thoughts come and go, such rigid distinctions begin to break down. If we continue to simply allow ourselves to be aware of the activity of our minds, we’ll very gradually come to recognize the transparent nature of the thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions we once considered solid and real. It’s as though layers of dust and dirt were slowly being wiped away from the surface of a mirror

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The process of working with difficulties

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As a practice, this process can be summarized. First of all there is the matter of view.  This means acknowledging……that the anxiety……however reasonable, is causing you suffering. There’s a tightness in your chest, an unsettledness in your belly, a tendency to go into red alert. Now the point is not to say “I shouldn’t worry” or  “It’s a natural concern” but just to acknowledge your feeling of anxiety. Then there’s the practice: you are actually experiencing anxiety as it is happening, as an embodied feeling, with no should or shouldn’t about it. The next aspect is to steady your awareness around that feeling and let go of interpreting it, dismissing or trying to fix it. Just be with that feeling. Then breathe into the feeling, widen and soften your awareness. Relax a little, give yourself time, ease the energies associated with that feeling. Then tune into the spaciousness, the empathy and the direct clarity of the awareness of that feeling and let the feeling do what it needs to do in order to be felt.

 Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth

When *** changes – then …..

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We are always getting ready to live,

but never living

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gentle holding

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It took a long time for the analytical world to look at the importance of the way a baby is held, and yet when you come to think of it, this is of primary importance. The question of holding brings up the whole issue of human reliability.  

Winnicott

By not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation, we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. if it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than to get to know them.  Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability to stay with them,  and staying with them depends on our capacity not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently, thoughts and feeling come and go in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

Sunday Quote: The key to a relaxed mind

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buttercup-field

Anyone who understands impermanence

ceases to be contentious.

The Dhammapada

The bridge

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File:Puente de hamaca.JPG

Breath is the bridge that connects life to consciousness, the bridge that unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo: chixoy