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.

A simple practice

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Traffic signal in Italy with red light.jpg

Driving is a daily task in this society. I am not suggesting that you stop driving, just that you do it consciously. While we are driving, we think only about arriving. Therefore, every time that we see a red light, we are not very happy. The red light is a kind on enemy that prevents us from attaining our goal. But we can also see the red light as a bell of mindfulness, reminding us to return to the present moment…. It is easy to transform a feeling of irritation into a pleasant feeling. Although it is the same red light, it becomes different. It becomes a friend, helping us to remember that it is only in the present moment that we can live our lives…

The next time you are caught in a traffic jam, don’t fight it. It’s useless to fight. Sit back and smile to yourself. Enjoy the present moment, breathing and smiling, and make the other people in your car happy. Happiness is there if you know how to breathe and smile, because happiness can always be found in the present moment. Practicing meditation is to go back to the present moment to encounter the flower, the blue sky, the child. Happiness is available.

 Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step.

Leaving things alone

Karl Duffy1 Comment

72043640.imsXORT6.QuietTime

The only way out of this struggle is to leave our mind alone, to fully accept the mind that we have, anger, dualisms and all. And when we no longer judge ourselves or try to emotionally neuter ourselves, the internal conflicts and tensions gradually begin to quiet down. We might say this is the most basic psychological insight: I cannot escape myself, so I have to come to terms with the mind that I have.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Stepping back from the program

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Grado St.Eufemia - Geometrisches Mosaik 6.jpg

Our sense of self always has to have something or do something. It wants to be approved of by somebody, or be busy winning at something, or be analysing itself or trying to wipe itself out. It is always orbiting around some need or another. There’s the need to know something, or have an opinion; or the need to feel one’s doing good enough; the need to feel that one is useful; the need to feel that other people like me. The need to be the same as everyone else. Or the need to be different from everyone else. Or, different on some days, the same on other days. And the need to be able to change from being same to being different when I need to. And so on – it never really settles.

But our sense of self is just a series or programs – isn’t it good to know that that self is not you! It’s the same for everyone; they all have a variation on the same themes. It’s just that when the programmable mind is immersed in the scenario of competition and performance and achievement – all of which have no satisfaction in them – it gets programmed into the unsatisfactory. However we can witness these programs and step back from them. The self-programs can be short-circuited by seeing them clearly for what they are and emotionally staying cool and non-reactive to them.

Ajahn Sucitto, Good Enough

photo of mosaic at the Cathedral of Sant’Eufemia by Wolfgang Sauber

How we look

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A mother lovingly looking at her baby

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves.

The least of things with a meaning is always worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: The practice of psychotherapy

When we come to it

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
Earthrise
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet 
Whose hands can strike with such abandon 
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living 
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness 
That the haughty neck is happy to bow 
And the proud back is glad to bend 
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction 
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 
 
When we come to it 
We must confess that we are the possible 
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world 
That is when, and only when 
We come to it.
.
 Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth

 

Sunday Quote: Magic things

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Montrond Colomby de Gex 001

The world is full of magic things,

patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

W.B. Yeats

wild flower photo by Ellen van Kalmthout