Month: April 2017

Self-forgiveness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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There’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy.

Pema Chödrön

When we practice meditation, we practice a double movement: there is a movement of return to the breath, a movement of recollection of presence, of samadhi — and there is a movement of mindfulness, of allowing everything to be just as it is. Last Sunday, I realized that the movement of return can also be a movement of allowing, of self-forgiveness. All the prodigal sons and daughters of our thoughts and dreams and gnarly little complexes are welcome to come to the feast of this present moment.

Tracy Cochran, Be a Lighthouse

photo scem.info

Our only teacher

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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Each Moment

life as it is

the only teacher.

Zen Center of San Diego, Practice Principles

photo tobosha

Learning to be open

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I sit before flowers
hoping they will train me in the art
of opening up

Shane Koyczan,  22 May 1976, Canadian poet and writer

photo katrina wiese

Sunday Quote: Quiet

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File:Lazy Autumn Afternoon (15635450996).jpg

A quote for the beginning of the most important week in the Christian calendar:

The quieter you become

The more you can hear

Ram Dass

photo USFWS Mountain Prairie

Being kind to ourselves – even the difficult bits

Karl Duffy6 Comments

File:Shadow Person.jpg

Face the shadow side of yourself, but do not identify with it. It represents only part of who you are.  So there is a difference between relating to the denied parts of yourself (bringing light to them), and totally “acting them out” (which is to leave them in their unconscious and dark state). This is why it is so foundational to know yourself, and to learn to be honest about your real motivations.

The hero in us wants to attack, fix, or deny the existence of our dark side. We can also be tempted to share dramatically everything about it as a way to control it (sometimes called ventilating or dumping). The saint merely weeps over the shadow and forgives it — and by God’s grace forgives himself for being a mere human. He opens his arms to that which has been in exile and welcomes it home for the friend that it often is.

Richard Rohr,  On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for Men

Never enough

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One of the more persistent forms of suffering, the sense that we have to do more, have more:

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have

is to feel that now is not enough.

Pema Chodron