Author: Karl Duffy

This is a Mindfulness Practice Blog written in Laois, Ireland, containing reflections on meditation practice, psychological growth, spirituality and wellness which hopefully may encourage and benefit others as they reflect on their lives and seek to develop a more balanced, mindful and conscious approach to it.

Just not know

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This moment, this situation that faces us right now – this patient, this person, this family, this illness, this task, this pain or beauty –  we have never seen it before. What is it? How do we respond? I don’t know. Not knowing, I am ready to be surprised, ready to listen and understand, ready to respond as needed, ready to let others respond, ready to do nothing at all, if that is what is called for. I can be informed by my past experience but it is much better if I am ready and able to let that go, and just be present, just listen, just not know. Experience, knowledge, wisdom – these are good, but when I examine things closely I can see that they remove me from what’s in front of me. When I know, I bring myself forward, imposing myself and my experience on this moment. When I don’t know, I let experience come forward and reveal itself. When I can let go of my experience, knowledge, and wisdom I can be humble in the face of what is, and when I am humble I am ready to be truly fearless and intimate. I can enter into this moment, which is always a new relationship, always fresh. I can be moved by what happens, fully engaged and open to what the situation will show me.

Norman Fischer, Not knowing is most intimate

Staying present with difficult times

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Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you’re letting go of an habitual way of finding security and comfort. All those brain studies about meditation — where they place people in MRI machines or put electrodes on their heads — show us that each time you dare to remain where you are and do something completely fresh, unconventional, and nonhabitual, you open up new pathways in the brain. You experience that as strength and it builds your capacity to be open the next time around. By contrast, each time you follow your habitual approach, you reinforce the old pathway and make it more likely that you’ll go that way once again next time around.

We get many reruns in life, big reruns and small reruns. If your heart is gripped by jealousy or rage or loneliness or any other manifestation of fear, you don’t have to learn from it all at once. It’s not like if you get it right once, if you overcome your jealousy or anger once, then it’s smooth sailing with that emotional pattern for the rest of your life. There will be reruns. It will keep coming back, following the old grooves in the brain. That means you have lots and lots of chances to rouse yourself and let go. No need to exaggerate an emotional pattern, fixate on it, fuel it with more thoughts, or go into a tailspin. When you feel the shakiness, when the thoughts start to arise, when the tailspin is beginning, another rerun is in progress. You simply rouse yourself and let yourself be there.

Pema Chodron.

What helps us grow

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How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.

And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us,

are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.

Elisabeth Lesser, Broken Open

Two ways of dealing with everything

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Epictetus say that everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne and one which it cannot.

If your brother sins against you, he says, don’t take hold of it by the wrong he did you but by the fact that he’s your brother.

That’s how it can be borne.

Anne Tyler

Making the darkness conscious

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Ultimately, any attempt at finding deeper meaning in our life which avoids the messy parts of our personality or our history – or which is afraid of the truth hidden in our deeper emotions – will leave us open to ongoing issues that will sabotage our real contentment. It is not only by ascending that we find greater happiness, but also by descending.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,

but by making the darkness conscious.

Jung

Allowing things be as they are

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Letting go of what arises in the mind leads to witnessing the cessation of that which has arisen. Then there is the true peace of allowing things be as they are. No longer are we someone who has to get somewhere, do something, get rid of something or change something. When we’re caught in distracting ourselves with pleasures, then we’re somebody, and somebody who has to find happiness, or have success or become something. No matter how much excitement or pleasure I might experience, I have to have more than that. We are never content with the excitement and adventures of life. They just cause us to be caught up in that movement of having to have more and more – until you get burnt out. Then you go to the opposite extreme where because you are tired and worn out from all the excitement, and stimulation you just break down, fall asleep, get drugged or drunk…. You can only have so much excitement and then you can’t bear it any more.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is.