Working with difficult moments – Page 13

Why difficulties are necessary

June 7, 2012May 30, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If we are going to achieve our purpose in life, we must be willing to fall out of grace and accept its lessons. When we feel righteous about ourselves, or deny our brokenness, we are fighting against the higher states of grace that await us. Failure is built into grace. You cannot have one without the other. It’s like two sides of a single coin. Everyone who has achieved a state of grace is certain at some point to fall, and to have fallen many times before. Every successful person, everyone you respect, will tell you that they have mountains of failure behind them…

When we are in grace, we begin to take things for granted and we actually stop working on ourselves. Falling out of grace shakes us up. It reconnects us to the larger universe in order for us to see ourselves anew. It forces us to rediscover where our true center begins, and to learn what needs to be set aside.

Sobonfu Some, Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom

photo http://www.vagabondjourney.com

When we are blown around

June 6, 2012May 30, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

When green leaves turn in the wind
I vow with all beings
to enjoy the forces that turn me
face up, face down on my stem

Robert Aitken Roshi, The Dragon Who Never Sleeps

A meditation exercise in times of transition

June 5, 2012May 30, 2012 Karl Duffy4 Comments

Bring your awareness to focus on something in your life that is changing or ending or dying right now. Breathe gently as you consider whatever transition is most significant right now in your life. Note any feelings that arise – trepidation, excitement, resistance, anger, annoyance, or grief. Every time your feelings get the better of you, become aware of your breathing. Meet your troubled and contracted feelings with your calm and expansive breath. Breathe, sigh, and stretch out on the river of change. Remember times when you have resisted change in the past. Regard how things turned out in the end – maybe not how you thought they would or you wanted them to, but in the end, there you were. Wiser, stronger, still alive. Smile. Relax. Allow yourself to break open. Sit tall, with dignity and patience, watching your breath rise and fall, rise and fall. Pray for the courage to welcome this new change with openness and wisdom.

Then, open your eyes, go back into your life, and do what you have to do, but do it with grace, with hope, and with a lighter touch.

Elizabeth Lesser

Staying awake in difficult times

June 2, 2012May 29, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

I am fascinated by what it takes to stay awake in difficult times. I marvel at what we all do in times of transition — how we resist, and how we surrender; how we stay stuck; and how we grow. Since my first major broken-open experience — my divorce — I have been an observer and a confidante of others as they engage with the forces of their own suffering. I have made note of how fiasco and failure visit each one of us, as if they were written into the job description of being human. I have seen people crumble in times of trouble, lose their spirit, and never fully recover. I have seen others protect themselves fiercely from any kind of change, until they are living a half-life, safe yet stunted. But I have also seen another way to deal with a fearful change or a painful loss. I call this other way the Phoenix Process — named for the mythical phoenix bird who remains awake through the fires of change, rises from the ashes of death, and is reborn into his most vibrant and enlightened self.

Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open

Lost in interpretation

June 1, 2012May 27, 2012 Karl Duffy8 Comments

When confronted with a difficult experience, the untrained mind wants to be anywhere but in the present moment, where it perceives acute unpleasantness. The mind becomes anxious whenever it’s uncertain and reacts as if one’s survival is at stake. So rather than staying with the experience and determining the best possible way to relate to it, the mind jumps to creating a story that involves worrying about the future or judging oneself or others based on past experiences. This pattern of resistance to staying present in experience is an automatic response arising from the limbic brain as it detects threats. Ironically, the story imparts a false sense fo knowing what’s going on, and therefore can seem temporarily soothing.

Philipp Moffitt, Emotional Chaos to Clarity

Not too tight, not too loose

May 31, 2012May 30, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

[Once] the Buddha asked a musician how he tuned his instrument before playing. The musician said “If I tune the strings too tight they break. If I tune them too loose, no sound will come out. So not too tight and not too loose works best” To which the Buddha replied “This is how you should hold your mind in meditation”. It works the same way with fear. If we immediately begin busying ourselves with explanations, solutions and rationalizations, then we haven’ t allowed space for perspective to develop – we’ve responded with too much tightness. If we fail to look at what frightens us, if we blow it off or continually procrastinate about acknowledging our fears, we’re missing an opportunity for self-knowledge and skilful action. This is too loose. Fear invariably makes us do one of two things in response to this uncertainty and unpredictability: Either we tighten up around it too quickly, and begin imposing structure and rules on something not as yet fully defined, or we pretend that what frightens us is no big deal. We stop paying attention and space out.