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.

Noticing our worry questions

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From one perspective we seem to be composed of a bundle of worry-questions, both spoken and unspoken. These worry-questions precede us like a leash dragging us through our day-to-day existence. We are barely aware of them, so routine have they become for us, yet they start when we awaken in the morning. “What am I going to do today?”  “What do I have to do?” “What am I going to wear?” “What shall I have for breakfast?” “What will people think of me if…..?” “Will I be liked?” “Will I be happy?” And so many other worry-questions that set the course of our day, questions that are just beyond the periphery of our awareness, silently steering us through the real and imaginary uncertainties of life.

The worry-questions, these anxieties, are expressions of our egocentricity. Their parent is self-bias, the compulsive need to preserve, at all costs, the comfortable sense we have of ourselves. And how fragile that sense is.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be free of this theater! 

Gregory Mayers, Listen to the Desert: Secrets of Spiritual Maturity from the Desert Fathers and Mothers

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Sunday Quote: just be aware

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Thinking is difficult,

that’s why most people judge.

Jung

What kind of light

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There are many kinds of light. There’s the light that allows people lost in the dark to find their way home. There’s the light of compassion that comforts everything it touches. There’s the light of truth-telling about ourselves that allows us to see what we are doing — or allowing — that has helped bring this darkness upon us. There’s the light that shows us the way forward toward a better world. There’s the light of courage to walk that path no matter who says “Stop!“

No one of us can provide all of the light we need. But every one of us can shed some kind of light.

Every day we can ask ourselves, “What kind of light can I provide today?”

Parker Palmer, The Light for Another

Magic things ahead

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The world is full of magic things

patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

W. B. Yeats

We don’t realise

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The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us

and we see nothing but sand;

The angels come to visit us,

and we only know them when they are gone.

George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance, 

I flow

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Move back and forth into the change…
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I Am.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29.