Month: May 2015

Kindness with ourselves today

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Lake Piano.jpg

In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.  That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy…  all these are undoubtedly great virtues…  But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself – that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then?

Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, Chapter V, “Psychotherapy or the Clergy,” 519-520

photo ras67

Noticing the ordinary

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Munich - Two boys playing in a park - 7328.jpg

Never forget that every mind is shaped by the most ordinary experiences.

To say that something is ordinary is to say that it is of the kind that has made the biggest contribution to the formation of your most basic ideas

Paul Valéry, French poet and philosopher, 1871 – 1945

photo jorge royan

Sunday Qute: Space

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Centaurus A halo.jpg

Develop a mind that is vast like space

where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear

without conflict,  struggle, or harm

The Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya

photo ESA/Hubble

Holding on too tightly

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Fluffy Clouds (7574100516).jpg

Not that difficult to grasp in the weather here in Ireland this last week. Not so easy to grasp in our inner lives:

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. All around us the wind, the fire, the earth, and the water, are always taking on different qualities; they’re like magicians. We also change like the weather. We ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid.

And so we suffer.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

photo of clouds in Malahide,  Dublin,  by Miguel Mendez

How we choose to tell the story

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Stuck in the mud.jpg

We stick to the wrong thing quite often, not because it will come to fruition by further effort, but because we cannot let go of the way we have decided to tell the story and we become further enmeshed even by trying to make sense of what entraps us, when what is needed is a simple, clean breaking away. To remove our selves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and at times un-compromisingly is often the real and radically courageous break for freedom.

David Whyte, ‘Withdrawal’ From Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

photo waffen5

Hidden depths

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Abraham bends down before the Three Angels.jpg

In almost every tradition there are tales of gods appearing in the guise of ordinary visitors. In the Hebrew Scriptures,  Abraham looked up and saw three men standing near. He welcomed them, not knowing they were angels. Here Mary Oliver tells of a similar story from Ancient Greece. The key is paying attention, which allows us see the riches in everyday occurrences. In this way some people show “hospitality to angels without knowing it”

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story –
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive –
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed them –
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down –
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

from Mary Oliver, Mockingbirds