Category: Make the most of life

Living without “shoulds” today

Karl Duffy6 Comments

File:Children, Hope and Kindness (6908813189).jpg

I have not posted thoughts from Pema Chodron for a while, but was reminded by a close friend as to how inspiring her words can be. She is perhaps the most quoted person on this blog, so here is another idea from her:

Some of us can accept others right where they are a lot more easily than we can accept ourselves. We feel that compassion is reserved for someone else, and it never occurs to us to feel it for ourselves. My experience is,  that by practicing without “shoulds”, we gradually discover our wakefulness and our confidence. Gradually, without any agenda except to be honest and kind, we assume responsibility for being here in this unpredictable world, in this unique moment, in this precious human body.

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

photo SuSanA secretariat

Sunday Quote: What is important

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Mother and Child, Peru (8651500642).jpg

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,

but what is woven into the lives of others.

Pericles, Greek Statesman, Orator and General,  495 – 429 BC

photo rod waddington

What Holiness is

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Gougane Barra.jpg

This is, I think, what holiness is:

the natural world, where every moment is full
of the passion to keep moving.

Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light,
full of snow, full of concentration.

I’ve knelt there, and so have you,
hanging on to what you love,

to what is lovely.

Mary Oliver, At the Lake

photo of St. Finbar’s Oratory, Gougane Barra by (WT shared) Spircle at wts Wikivoyage

Your bliss station

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Bahnhof Jenbach - Achenseebahn, 2014 (04).JPG

Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it.

Joseph Campbell

Natural wakefulness

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Steps down from the Citadel, Herefordshire Beacon - geograph.org.uk - 1384844.jpg

What then is our path, and what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; Feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of a coach or a ship to carry you away;

All this order of things you must set aside and refuse to look at: Instead, you must close the eyes and call upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.

Plotinus, philosopher 204 – 270, The Enneads, 1.6.

photo bob embleton

Taking a step into a larger life

Karl Duffy6 Comments

File:Tightrope walking.jpg

We get to this point in our life [where] we see that stepping into a larger life is intimidating because it requires that we risk being who we really are, that is, what wants to come to the world through us – rather than serving our ego comforts or whatever instructions came our way. We cannot expect someone else to give us permission. The parent complexes, or the culture complexes, are embedded in our history and will never stop saying what they always said. So it is up to us at this later point, when we have served those voices so long, to realize that our own psyches have a unique point of view, that each one of us is different and that we are bound for different destinies. Stepping into largeness will require that we discern our personal authority – rather than the authority of others or the authority of our internalized admonitions – and live this inner authority with risk and boldness.

James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a more Considered Life.

photo wiros