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.

The vulnerability of life

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Things are changing all the time. This makes us seek who and what will anchor us in all of this change:
Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird.
To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support.
Life and death are connected by vulnerability.
The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives.
Let’s not forget the preciousness and vulnerability of life during the times we are successful and popular.
Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

The kingdom of the eternal

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When we love and allow ourselves to be loved,

we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal.  

Fear changes into courage, emptiness becomes plenitude, and distance becomes intimacy.

John O’Donohue, AnamCara

Deep inside

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Go inside and listen to your body

because your body will never lie to you.

Your mind will play tricks,

but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts,

is the truth.

Miguel Ruiz

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Every simple act

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We must remind ourselves that, though our lives are small and our acts seem insignificant. we are generative elements of this universe, and we create meaning with every act that we perform or fail to perform.

It is here, on this earth, in the day-to-day, on our street corners, at our evening table, in the homes of our friends, at the bedside of the sick, in the warmth or sadness of our child’s days, that the universe is being formed. 

Kent Nerburn, Make me a channel of your peace

Hidden

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We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware –

beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

Kent Nerburn, Make me an Instrument of your Peace: Living the Prayer of Saint Francis

Doing the ordinary things right

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We like to think –  going into work this day – that we might get the opportunity to do something profound and meaningful that will change lives and impact upon policy. Or that we will change people in ways that will bring them closer to our point of view and values. And maybe we will. However, in the meanwhile, we will get lots of ordinary opportunities – to be kind or to listen –  small things which we can overlook, but if we do with love, can have a real impact upon persons.

 [Thomas Merton]  once met a Zen novice who had just finished his first year in the monastery. Merton asked the novice what he had learned during the course of the novitiate, half expecting to hear about encounters with enlightenment, discoveries of the spirit, perhaps even altered states of consciousness.  But the novice replied that during his first year in the contemplative life he had simply learned to open and close doors.

“Learned to open and close doors” Merton loved the answer and often retold the story, for it exemplified for him “play” at its very best – doing the ordinary while being absorbed in it  intensely and utterly.

Haase, A., Living the Lord’s Prayer: The Way of the Disciple

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