Happiness and not judging anything

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Some of the early Christian Desert Fathers saying are almost  Zen-like in their simplicity. In this example we find echoes of yesterdays post. It contains an instruction on what leads to us being content –  finding rest from our inner agitations: Turn the mind away from judgments, either about ourselves or others, keep the self fluid and in this way stop sticking labels on what is happening. Good advice for today.

Abba Poeman said to Abba Joseph, “Tell me how to become a monk”

He said, “If you want to find rest here below…in all circumstances say ‘who am I’ and do not judge anyone”

Sunday Quote: Deep within

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Keep your feet on the top of the mountain

and sound deep to that

of God in everyone

George Fox, 1624 – 1691, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers)

With thanks to Cilla at http://www.weaversjournal.wordpress.com for the thought

photo wyldnthewoods

A middle way

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Our task is to find a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extra activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more.

The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity

Sogyal Rimpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse

photo b traeger

What distracts us

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In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves:

the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

photo Karin Beate Nøsterud/norden.org

Our Inner world

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Do not despise your inner world. Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status.

But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger. We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possessions of externals.

What is the remedy…? A kind of self-love that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with which to talk about needs and feelings.

Martha Nussbaum., American Philosopher, Lecturer in Ethics and Law, born 1947

The wrens nest

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Wrens 
make their nests of fancy threads 
and string ends, animals 
abandon all their money each year. 
What is it that men and women leave? 
Harder than wren’s doing, they have 
to abandon their longing for the perfect. 
The inner nest not made by instinct 
will never be quite round, 
and each has to enter the nest 
made by the other imperfect bird.
Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words
photo sylvain haye