Billions of ways

Karl Duffy2 Comments

When we are afraid, the fear-body tends to contract. The word anxiety has its roots in the Latin word ‘angere’ meaning to choke, or become tight, constricted, trapped and limited. It is good to breathe into this body sense and to maintain an awareness of spaciousness and of choice. To lift our eyes up to the hills.

Listen my love, illumination is eternal

Now is always evolving.

As there are billions of stars

There are billions of steps.

As there are billions of souls

There are billions of ways to grow. 

Rumi

Thusness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

For those who would see directly into essential nature, the idea of the sacred is a delusion and an obstruction: it diverts us from seeing what is before our eyes: plain thusness. And This, thusness, is the nature of the nature of nature. The wild in the wild

Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

We shall dance

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Our life is shorter than flowers.
Then shall we mourn?

No, we shall dance
Plant gardens
Dress in colours
And teach our children
To make the world more beautiful.

Because our life
Is shorter than flowers.

Toltec fragment

Sunday Quote: Meaning

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveller.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Happy

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Whenever you are offended, it’s usually because your self-image has not been worshiped or it has been momentarily exposed. The false self will quickly react with a vengeance to any offenses against it because all it has is its own fragile assumptions about itself.  Don’t waste much time defending your ego. The True Self is untouchable, or as Paul puts it “it takes no offense” (1 Corinthians 13:5). People who can live from their True Selves are genuinely happy. 

Richard Rohr, The Illusion of an Autonomous Self

Flow

Karl Duffy6 Comments

Pain is physical, but suffering is mental.

Outside of the mind there is no suffering.

Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer.

Suffering is entirely due to clinging or resisting;

it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 – 1981, Indian teacher of nondualism