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.

Be Happy

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Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday, or “Be Happy” Sunday. In practical,  day-to-day terms,  this starts from a mind that stops struggling with reality and one that realizes that it a moment does not have to be perfect for it to be complete. We do not need everything sorted out in our lives for them to be happy.

When we are using this term ‘basic goodness,’

we are talking about our inherent completeness. 

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Happiness is accepting and choosing life, not just submitting grudgingly to it. It comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment of our lives; we choose life as it is, with all its joys, pain, and conflicts. Happiness is living and seeking the truth, together with others in community, and assuming responsibility for our lives and the lives of others….We are not just seeking to be what others want us to be or to conform to the expectations of family, friends, or local ways of being. We have chosen to be who we are, with all that is beautiful and broken in us. We do not slip away from life and live in a world of illusions, dreams, or nightmares. We become present to reality and to life so that we are free to live according to our personal conscience, our sacred sanctuary, where love resides within us and we see others as they are in the depth of their being. 

Jean Vanier

Sunday Quote: Where wisdom lies

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Besides the noble art of getting things done,

there is the noble art of leaving things undone.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang, Chinese writer, 1895 –  1976

Storms of Life

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Rain forecast for Friday with milder temperatures

Wild, wet and windy weather in Ireland today, making it hard even to walk outside.  A day for sitting in beside the fire.

Teachers often suggest considering your thoughts to be like clouds in the sky.  Some are dark and stormy, some are beautiful and fat, while others are wispy and ethereal. Sometimes there are no clouds at all.  No matter. Just like clouds in the sky, thoughts pass through your mind. And just like the sky, your mind can contain it all. We are accustomed to identifying with every large or small thought that comes along. But you can train in identifying as the sky instead. When you do, tremendous confidence arises. You see beyond doubt that you can accommodate it all — sunshine, storms, mist, fog, hail — and never give up.

Susan Piver

The importance of empty days

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I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Connecting

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If you are connected to the body you are in the present moment. Now, any time we do mindfulness meditation, which is this very simple practice of noticing, we bring our attention to the experience, living that experience, and registering what’s here. If you are with your breathing it’s not only being with your breath — breath in breath out breath in — it is also letting the experience of breathing be registered in that experience. You are taking in the sensations of that experience in a deeper, fuller way. It’s like you are on the beach on a nice sunny day, you’re on the edge of the ocean, and you stand there and take in the breeze, the smell of the ocean, the sight. You really register the experience; you take it in. So, in the same way, you sit with your breath and take in the fullness of the experience of breathing in.

Gil Fronsdal

Breathing and letting go

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Just staying with  Thich Nhat Hanh to start this day, as his simple words can be one way of working with fearful thoughts as they arise.  So if you notice yourself getting anxious, or the mind beginning to rush and lean forward, you might like to try saying these words to yourself,  aligning them with the rhythm of your breathing:

I breathe in, I breathe out.

Deeper, gentler.

I become calm, I let go.

I smile, I am free.

photo: jamesjen