In this time of change

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In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Underneath

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Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Round and round

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Mindfulness is paying attention to real time reality. This can seem like such a small thing – and it is. It is a state of attention that is as natural and soft and wordless as our peripheral vision. Yet mindfulness also means to remember… what? Mindfulness pulls us back to a greater living reality, reminding us that life is more than our own repetitive thoughts or fears or desires. Rooted in the present tense world of the body rather than the thoughts, the strangely named mindfulness (bodyfulness? Lifefulness?) delivers us from the hellish centrifugal force of our own egos.

Tracey Cochran, The Open Door

Moving through life

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Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next.

Jack Kornfield

Not always pleased

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So here is the ongoing question that is my gauge for measuring my level of confusion – “In this moment, am I able to care?”. Not “Am I pleased?”

There are all sorts of things I don’t like. And in response to what I find unpleasant I often feel dismayed or impatient or annoyed or disappointed or grieved. What I try to so is to keep my mind from fighting with my experience, confusing and isolating itself in self-centred despair. The contentious mind is, by definition, confused. It hasn’t remembered that struggle creates suffering and a grateful response creates clarity. I am trying to stay unconfused and connected to my own kindness. Whenever I do, I relax, see what my options are and choose the nest of them. I wont always be pleased, but I’ll be happy.

Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an inside Job

Sunday Quote: Limitation of words

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Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
 to be understood.

Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes

What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.

[Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen]


Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus