Where to let go

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A big change in the Irish weather these last few days. Wet and very windy,  and consequently the leaves are finally giving up their clinging and letting go. It prompts me to reflect on whether a certain lightness in how I hold some things –  like how I turn my opinions into a solid identity  or how I try to fix  into a definite storyline as to how a meeting or a process should turn out,  how I like things fixed in a world that is always changing  –   can reduce some of the emotional charge which arises from time to time.

Every year, everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,

whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

How do we arrive at non-agitation through non-clinging? When the instructed person does not regard form with these words: “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.”

The form of his changes and alters, but with the change and alteration of form, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair do not arise.

The Buddha, S 22.8
photo keven law

The different sides of wonder

Vallee de Valserine

Everything has its wonders,

even darkness and silence,

and I learn, whatever state I may be in,

therein to be content.

Hellen Keller

With thanks again to Ellen for the photo

Sunday quote: The heart’s capacity

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Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life.

Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever.

Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is.

Sylvia Boorstein

photo mate2code

Quiet miracles

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Two extracts from John O’Donohue for this Saturday in Autumn, when we reflect on the fact that life moves on, and yet we can relate to it fully in any particular moment:

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark and become invisible.  Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty

John O’ Donohue, Beauty

May anxiety never linger about you.  May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention. Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.  May you experience each day as a sacred gift,  woven around the heart of wonder.

From For Presence (with thanks to Kathy Lewis for reminding me of these words)

Roots

tree roots wood

The rooting (of trees, of our selves) is as important and as necessary as the rising. We have the opportunity to sink roots into soul and rise up with branches in heaven…..Growth is meant to go in both directions, toward the fertile darkness and the glorious light, each of us having the opportunity to bridge earth and heaven — the underworld and the upperworld — through the trunks of our middleworld lives…. There’s no conflict between spirit-centered being and soulful doing, between transcendence and inscendence. Each supports and enhances the other. Like Rilke, we discover we can have both:

You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all;
The darkness of each endless fall,
The shimmering light of each ascent.

Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

Autumn work

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A brief moment of reflection and gratitude. The blog started its sixth year this week. We recently passed 300,000 visits and over 1500 people who follow each day. As I have said before,  I try to keep it simple –  looking for words or ideas that help mindfulness meditation practice  without me getting in the way too much,  and hoping that they  touch one or two readers in the same way as they help me. Thank you all so much for visiting.  As Autumn deepens, we reflect and move on:

Here in Ireland the Gaelic word for October is Deireadh Fomhair, which means the “last harvesting” of what was planted earlier in the year. The weather system has changed these past few days,  the leaves have started to fall in earnest, and it is clearer to see how Autumn signals a change in energy, a winding-down,  as all of nature – and that includes us – prepares for the different tempo and darker days  of winter. So we can use it as a season to find our balance  between our past and our future,  as our focus naturally turns more inward. We can use it as a time to look back on the work we have done this year, the way we have expended our energy. We can use it to take stock of what we are investing in and harvesting in our lives. Or we can use it to wind down and create space, recognizing the unwise busyness that only creates more anxiety in our minds, keeping us running a lot,  but sometimes just making us feel more empty.

Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity,

so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.

Sogyal Rinpoche

photo Jeff Borden