Notice the treasure before your eyes

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One way we need to work with the mind these days is to notice the beauty in the ordinary moments of each day…

I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S. Thomas, The Bright Field

A simplification

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These days we have to reduce our activities, which creates conditions that are good for meditation practice. And in an associated way, meditation practice creates the conditions of mind which helps us to work with the new situation.

Sitting in meditation is essentially simplifying space. Our daily lives are in constant movement: lots of things going on, lots of people talking, lots of events taking place. In the middle of that, it’s very difficult to sense what we are in our life. When we simplify the situation, when we take away the externals and remove ourselves from the ringing phone, the television, the people who visit us, the dog who needs a walk, we get a chance to face ourselves.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Every moment is rich

Karl Duffy1 Comment

With the restriction on movement and activities these days due to the virus and our caring for each other by creating some distance, we renounce some of the things we would normally like to do.  However, this can make space for noticing what we have in our lives, instead of focusing on what we have not.

The ground of renunciation is realizing that we already have exactly what we need,

that what we have already is good.

Every moment of time has enormous energy in it,

and we could connect with that.

Pema Chodron

A spark

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Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

John O’Donohue, Benedictus, To Bless the Space between Us

Sunday Quote: Wounds

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Challenging situations can bring out defensive behaviours, such as seen in supermarkets recently. But we see each day examples of generosity and dedication, such as the report here of a nurse postponing her retirement to continue her work caring for those in hospital and many doctors coming out of retirement to give support to their colleagues.

If you’re a stranger to your own wound,

then you’re gonna be tempted to despise the wounded

Fr Gregory Boyle, in an interview with Sarah Silverman

It is always unknown territory

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It’s been a unsettling week. The old rhythms which felt known and familiar are challenged. But as yesterdays post said, it’s the unknown which pulls back the veil…

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” (Plato)…
The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration – how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost