Category: Be fully present

….in a shifting world

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

rope_bridgeIt’s often said that consumer society surrounds us with things and encourages us to pay too much attention to things, but in a way I think that’s also misleading. We live in a world that seems to be extremely unstable, to consist of fleeting images. A world that increasingly, thanks in part, I think, to the technology of mass communications, seems to acquire a kind of hallucinatory character. A kind of fantastic world of images, as opposed to a world of solid objects that can be expected to outlast one’s own lifetime. What has waned, perhaps, is the sense of living in a world that existed before one’s self and will outlast one’s self.

Christopher Lasch, Beating the retreat into private life

A solid base…

Karl Duffy3 Comments

sitting2Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. Regardless of our internal weather- our thoughts, emotions and perceptions- our breathing is always with us like a faithful friend. Whenever we feel carried away, or sunken in a deep emotion, or scattered in worries and projects, we return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind. We feel the flow of air coming in and going out of our nose. We feel how light and natural, how calm and peaceful our breathing functions. At any time, we can return to this peaceful source of life.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Fully present

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Focus1Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.

Osho, A Sudden clash of Thunder

Staying connected with an underlying joy

Karl Duffy2 Comments
Before one’s individual ability-to-be, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility.  Heidegger, Being and Time

There are two things, to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It’s like a person sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not have to do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.

Thich Nhat Hahn

 

Being grounded today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

photo.JPGThe mind can still slip away at the speed of a thought and without giving a moment’s notice. This means that we have to choose something useful to bear in mind – and to put some effort into staying with it – in order to keep to the fore an object or theme that supports clear, empathic, or stabilising states of mind. One of the fundamental ways of bringing the mind into the present moment is to focus on how we sense our own body. This bodily sense – that is awareness of the sensations and energies that manifest in the body – is something immediate that we can contemplate. It gives us ground and balance. It gives us the sense of being where we are. Although this may seem basic and obvious, much of the time we are not grounded in where we really are. Instead we are ‘out there’ in a world of changing circumstance and reactions to that, without having a central reference.

Ajahn Sucitto, Meditation, A Path to Awakening

Who we truly are

Karl Duffy1 Comment

I had a nice conversation yesterday on the challenge of finding purpose within,  in a world which has lost many of the traditional  places or containers which used to supply meaning in the past. It is a challenge all through life, and it comes down to having some degree of comfort  in our sense of who we are and where we are at this moment. In other words, as Winnicott says, “we gather the personality together from within”  by developing a  capacity to be at ease with an interior “formlessness and comfortable solitude”, without being afraid,  or needing to fill the space with objects and distractions. In this way we unlearn a lot of the messages which come from our restless society or from the wounds of our own history:

To know this spot of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core. Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.

Mark Nepo,