Category: Be fully present

Preoccupied

Karl Duffy1 Comment

beech leaf

I often think that if the rest of creation could actually speak,

it would be looking at us wondering why we quibble about the details of living out our lives

when everything around us and everything inside us is so utterly and totally unique.

David Whyte, What to Remember when Waking

Training the heart

Karl Duffy4 Comments

open gate 2

Our entire life has been training. The question is: training in what? This question means: training in which direction? If we train ourselves to reach for a snack or pick up the phone to text-message whenever we feel frightened or bored, this is definitely training. The next time we feel uncomfortable we will also tend to reach for some comfort outside ourselves, eventually establishing a deeply ingrained habit, another brick in the wall of our mental prison. Are we training in how to distract ourselves from inner discomfort or anxiety? Are we training in numbing ourselves in the face of fear, or training in waking up? Training in opening the heart, or training in shutting down?

Gaylon Ferguson, Fruitless Labor

Using what happens today

Karl Duffy1 Comment

cr-two-paths-diverged-in-a-wood-and-i

Our life’s work is to use what we have been given to wake up. If there were two people who were exactly the same – same body, same speech, same mind, same mother, same father, same house, same food, everything the same – one of them could use what he has to wake up, and the other could use it to become more resentful, more bitter, and sour….whatever you’re given can wake you up or put you to sleep. That’s the challenge of now: what are you going to do with what you have already – your body, your speech, your mind.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

Hurry up

Karl Duffy2 Comments
File:Child painting.JPG
 
I watched the Ireland People of The Year Awards on Saturday evening, which showcased extraordinary people who have helped others or overcome adversity in their own lives, like nine-year-old Joe Prendergast,  who was determined to write a book and dedicate it to his father who died slowly of lung cancer. He is now completing his third book, and donates the proceeds to Cancer research. But there was also an example of everyday “extraordinary” commitment in the simple story of the man who won “Dad of the Year”. He is a fireman who,  having seen how easily lives can be changed in a second, tries to make the moments of each day special for his children.  His young son said that his father allows him do most things, including allowing “him to get dirty”.  As this poem reminds us, how we model our priorities and our use of time is easily picked up by our children:
 
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   
and the gas station and the green market and   
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   
as she runs along two or three steps behind me   
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.   
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?   
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?   
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,   
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—   
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.   
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking   
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,   
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.
 
 
Marie Howe, “Hurry” from When She Named Fire
 
photo zivya

Rushing, time, and opening to our lives

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Child drawing.jpg

It doesn’t actually take any more time to say good-bye or hug you know, your children or whatever it is in the morning when you’re on your way to work. But the mind says, ‘I don’t have any time for this.’ But actually that’s all you have time for, is this because there’s nothing else than this…So when your four year-old can’t decide which dress she wants to wear, that’s not a problem for you, unless you make it a problem for you. That’s just the way four year-olds are. And the more we can sort of learn these lessons the more we will not be in some sense running towards our death, but in a sense opening to our lives.

Jon Kabat Zinn

photo D Sharon Pruitt

The art of living

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Claude Monet-Waterlilies.jpg

The art of living…is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past….on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as being utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and fully receptive

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity