Category: Be fully present

The tone and quality of your life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life. It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness. All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. Your life is no longer consumed by hunger for the next event, experience or achievement. You learn to come down from the treadmill and walk on the earth.  You no longer squander yourself on things and situations that deplete your essence. You know now that your true source is not outside you. Your soul is your true source and a new energy and passion awakens in you.

John O’Donoghue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

New life

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Letting go of all the theories from the past frees us to go with how it is actually unfolding

Throw away the light, the definitions,

and say of what you see in the dark

Wallace Stevens

Change and constancy

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Your job may change, your relationships may change, your body may change, your beliefs may change, your desires may change, your ideas about your role in the world may change, but the essence of who you are is the continuity of awareness that has no beginning or end. Your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, goals, and experiences may come and go, but the one who having the experiences – the experiencer – remains.

Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga

Fresh

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Today is the Spring Equinox – from the Latin “equal night”, when there is equal light and dark in our day –   marking the beginning of Spring for countries in the Northern Hemisphere.

We, the older ones,
Call it Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.

But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.

Mary Oliver, Children, It’s Spring

How we learn

Karl Duffy3 Comments

 

We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous

as much through exile as homecoming,

as much through loss as gain,

as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.

David Whyte

Sunday Quote: Underneath the chatter

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The simplest sentences contain the most challenging teachings…

Activate the mind without dwelling on anything

The Diamond Sutra