Category: Make the most of life

Being disturbed

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.

may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

John O Donohue

Sunday Quote: What autumn teaches

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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Imitate the trees.

Learn to lose in order to recover,

and remember that nothing stays the same for long,

not even pain.

May Sarton

Lean toward

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The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering — yours, mine, and that of all beings.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

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Conscious living

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The real goal of a therapy is not a “cure”, for the human condition is not a disease. Yes, real, resistant problems of daily life can and must be addressed and the resources of consciousness brought fully to bear on their resolution. But the real gift of a therapy, or of any truly considered life, is that one achieves a deepened conversation around the meaning of one’s journey – a conversation without which one lives a received life, not one’s own, a superficial life, or a life in service to complexes or ideologies.

James Hollis, What Matter most: Living a more considered Life

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Taking things personally

Karl Duffy1 Comment

lakes

It’s true that different people have different mind stuff to work with, but essentially there comes about a realization that the core of the feeling of suffering comes from something we all do: we take things personally. And you can’t stop doing this simply as an idea. The practice involves cessation – letting go of “self” through directly knowing “self”. This must occur by feeling out and examining some pretty well-known positions ….”I cant do it” is one of them, and the list goes on through every kind of self-view about “I’m not worthy/good enough”, “It’s not good enough for me” ” I have a lot of karma to work out”…In the course of practice, all of these self-views come and go continually until gradually the realization of their impermanence begins to sink in.

Ajahn Sucitto, The Dawn of the Dhamma

The key to balance

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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More wisdom, this time from the Taoism tradition, on keeping our sense of self fluid:

Can you call your mind back from its wandering
and keep to its original oneness?
Can you concentrate the energy of life
and keep it supple like a newborn child?

Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and in this way understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 10

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