Working with difficult moments – Page 17

Difficult moments in our lives

November 23, 2011November 23, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Rilke

Every shift in our life comes courtesy of the friendly forces; every catastrophe can offer us exactly what we need to awaken into who we really are. It’s difficult, though, when you are in the middle of a painful transition to mine the experience for inner growth. And when your life falls apart, it’s a lot easier to blame someone, or to rail against fate, or to shut down to the hopeful message carried by the winds of change. Sometimes when friends try to help by saying “There’s a reason for everything” or “It’s a blessing in disguise”, you just want to run away or you want to say” Yeah, if it’s such a blessing, then why does it hurt so much?” So forgive me when I say that everything in life is a blessing – whether it comes as a gift wrapped in happy times or as a heartbreak, a loss, or a tragedy…. It helps me to remember that everyone is confused when the friendly forces come knocking; there is no one alive who did not want to go back asleep instead of making a big change; and the journey from Once-Born innocence to Twice-Born wisdom is never easy.

Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open

Not believing the propaganda of Moods

November 11, 2011November 11, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Our moods can be strong at times, and may be so at times today, but they are not the most reliable place to look if we want to get a true picture of our own worth or of what to do. In the long-term they rarely give correct messages about our lasting happiness.They frequently get in the way of us experiencing what is happening directly, and we lose a lot of the richness which is before us each day, as we are caught in these strong internal states.

Moods come with grand words and general ideas, but as intelligences they are less than we are, prone to think in terms of the best and the worst, and to make unnecessary comparisons that squeeze out life. At sunset there is no best or worst..….. A mood can only remove us from the evening’s sharpness. It is common to think of moods and despairs as genuinely earned and as part of our personality but that is their deception – they are propaganda from the Ministry of Despair and the Department of Grandiosity. When Psyche turns away from them, when the meditation continues to plod humbly along, these moods, like other old advertisements, wither and grow stale.

John Tarrant, The Light inside the Dark

How to begin to change what seems frozen or stuck

November 10, 2011November 10, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

How is there going to be less aggression on the planet rather than more? Only in an open space where we’re not all caught up in our own version of reality. Bring this question down to personal level: How do I communicate with someone who is hurting me or hurting others? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable and eternally aggressive begin to soften up and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen? Begin with being willing to feel what you are going through. Be willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of yourself that you feel are not worthy of existing. If you are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable but also of what pain feels like, if you even aspire to stay awake and open to what you’re feeling, to acknowledge it as best you can in each moment, then something begins to change.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

……and developing spaciousness.

November 7, 2011November 6, 2011 Karl Duffy2 Comments

So let’s go back to our experience-body, focus on it, and let things happen within that focus, without pushing or trying to find anything, or come to a conclusion. In that context, when we come out of wanting something to happen, there’s some spaciousness – and when a feeling comes up, try to attune to that spaciousness. Develop an attitude and energy of not-feeding, demanding, pushing away, skipping off or proliferating around the feeling. This is non-attachment. By practicing in this way, we realize that for these few moments we don’t have to solve the problem of existence, or know who we are, or what we’re going to do. By being with something that we can directly attend to, not through inference or report, we can find an interesting point of nondependence.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth

Staying with yourself in moments of difficulty

November 4, 2011November 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The importance of meditation, yoga, and other spiritual practices is that they allow you to reconnect with your priorities over and over again. At least for a moment, you let loose of your fears, experience a touch of mental clarity, and feel the sweet breeze of a peaceful mind. You become accustomed to staying with yourself in moments of difficulty and learn not to let them consume your mind. You develop concentration that leads to strength of mind. Certain practices teach you to stay within the body in times of emotional turmoil. Most of all, you find a place outside the ego in which you can receive any experience without neglecting the ego’s needs….. Every human being has this innate capacity to act outside the immediate ego panic. Spiritual practice makes it more likely that it will be accessible in a time of need.

Phillip Moffit, Surrendering to Suffering

When we are hurt in our life

November 3, 2011November 4, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Sitting with and through all sorts of conditions that don’t fit our picture of how we want our life to go may be a far more valuable practice than being able to settle into a calm or blissful quiet. When we sit we are doing two things. First, sitting becomes a container; whatever has happened we sit still and feel it. The other side of sitting is the stillness of non-reactivity. We feel all…without doing anything to anybody. The feeling becomes our own responsiblity. Instead of our attention being directed, as it usually is, to making somebody else treat us differently, the way we want to be treated, we come back to experiencing what is at stake in being treated this way, what the hurt is really all about, and who we think we are that we can be hurt.