Category: Be fully present

When *** changes – then …..

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We are always getting ready to live,

but never living

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gentle holding

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It took a long time for the analytical world to look at the importance of the way a baby is held, and yet when you come to think of it, this is of primary importance. The question of holding brings up the whole issue of human reliability.  

Winnicott

By not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation, we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. if it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than to get to know them.  Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability to stay with them,  and staying with them depends on our capacity not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently, thoughts and feeling come and go in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

The bridge

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File:Puente de hamaca.JPG

Breath is the bridge that connects life to consciousness, the bridge that unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo: chixoy

Step by step

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File:River Rothay stepping stones 120508w.jpg

You do not need to know precisely what is happening,

or exactly where it is all going.

What you need, is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment,

and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

Thomas Merton

photo: strobilomyces

Moving beyond concepts

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File:Morning Mist.jpg

We must not portray you in king’s robes,
you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes
we take the same gold for scepter and crown
that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you
till they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
our fervent hands hide you.

Rilke, Book of Hours, I 4

Not going anywhere in life

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I have tried to stress the critical importance of the non-dual aspect of meditation by emphasizing that it is not about getting anywhere else. This of course immediately brings up a lot of bewilderment in people, because almost everything we do seems to be about trying to get somewhere else. Why on earth would you not want to get somewhere else? If you’re in a lot of pain, or if you have some kind of illness or whatever, you always want to get back to where you were, or get to some better place in the future. It sounds almost un-American just to settle for what is, but that is a misunderstanding of the potential for living in the present moment. It’s not a matter of settling. It’s a matter of recognizing that, in some sense, it never gets any better than this.

Jon Kabat Zinn.