Category: Working with difficult moments

Who says that life should be straightforward?

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When uncomfortable things happen to us, we rarely want to have anything to do with them. We might respond with the belief ‘Things shouldn’t be this way’ or ‘Life shouldn’t be so messy.’ Who says? Who says that life shouldn’t be a mess? When life is not fitting our expectations of how it’s supposed to be, we usually try to change it to fit our expectations. But the key to practice is not to try to change our life but to change our relationship to our expectations — to learn to see whatever is happening as our path. “Our difficulties are not obstacles to the path; they are the path itself. They are opportunities to awaken. Can we learn what it means to welcome an unwanted situation, with its sense of groundlessness, as a wake-up call? Can we look at it as a signal that there is something here to be learned? Can we allow it to penetrate our hearts? By learning to do this, we are taking the first step toward learning what it means to open to life as it is. We are learning what it means to be willing to be with whatever life presents us.

Ezra Bayda, Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life

Cradling our fears

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The essential practice is to cultivate maitri, or loving-kindness. The Shambhala teachings speak of “placing our fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness.” Another image for maitri is that of a mother bird who protects and cares for her young until they are strong enough to fly away.  People sometimes ask, “Who am I in this image – the mother or the chick. The answer is both….Without loving kindness for ourselves it is difficult if not impossible to genuinely feel it for others

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

Everything comes and goes

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Often in meditation we speak of letting go of something: let go of thoughts, let go of emotions, let go of pain. Sometimes that is not exactly the right phrase, because letting go suggests that you need to do something. A better phrase to work with is “Let it be”. Let it be. Everything comes and goes by itself. We do not have to do anything to make it come or to make it go, or to let go. We just have to let it be.

Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation

Trusting the body

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The body always leads us home . . .

if we can simply learn to trust sensation

and stay with it long enough for it to reveal appropriate action, movement, insight, or feeling. 

Pat Ogden

Let them fade

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It’s helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing to whatever arises, without picking and choosing. It’s definitely not meant to repress anything, and it’s not intended to encourage grasping either…  To the degree that we‘re willing to see our enmeshment or grasping and our repressing clearly, they begin to wear themselves out…. Up come all these thoughts, but rather than squelch them or obsess with them, we acknowledge them and let them fade.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

Just notice, don’t blame

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Some people once brought a blind man to Jesus and asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ They all wanted to know why this terrible curse had fallen on this man. And Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.’ He told them not to look for why the suffering came but to listen for what the suffering could teach them. Jesus taught that our pain is not punishment, it is no one’s fault. When we seek to blame, we distract ourselves from an exquisite opportunity to pay attention, to see even in this pain a place of grace, a moment of spiritual promise and healing.

Wayne Muller, Legacy of the Heart