What holds meaning and mystery for you?

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The start of the season of Lent – an interior simplification and going into the desert. Seeing what is essential through a letting go of some of the distractions and non-essentials in our lives:

I like to ask one of the questions I have found most useful in setting intentions and making choices: Where does the energy want to go now?  I ask this question and sit with the sense of the life-force within. . . . following my breath, letting go of my to-do lists and all the things I think I “should” get to. . . .and every time- if I am willing –  I get a sense of where the energy that is manifest in this one small human life, is drawn. This isn’t a passive exercise – it’s not “just” about “going with the flow.” It’s discerning where our essential being is drawn, what holds meaning and mystery for us now, and then coming into alignment with that flow to take actions, make choices, offer what we are to the world

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

photo tiia monto

How to get free in our hearts

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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We often prefer to live in our ideas or dreams about life and not where it actually is.

Experiencing, 

rather than trying to have special experiences

is where real freedom lies

Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water

photo jaka ostrovrsnik

Putting limits on our lives

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The sky isn’t the limit;

the mind that sees the sky is the limit

Byron Katie

photo A.Davie

 

Sunday Quote: Walk with reverence, don’t rush through life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

sunday-q

When we walk on the earth with reverence,

beauty will decide to trust us

The rushed heart and arrogant mind

lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace,

John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible embrace

What makes life beautiful?

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Some reflections from Brother Roger of Taize who I once met when I spent a silent retreat there. He was a good and kindly man, and outlines here an approach which can shape our whole attitude to this day and to life:

Are there realities which make life beautiful

and of which it can be said that they bring a kind of fulfillment, an inner joy?

Yes, there are. And one of these realities bears the name of trust.

Do we realize that what is best in each of us is built up through a simple trusting?

This is something even a child can do.

Br Roger of Taize

photo nicor

A guide for all of life: Don’t try to control the sunset

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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One of the most growth-promoting experiences for another person  comes from my appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset. People are just wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot control it. When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.

Carl Rogers

photo Mmcbeth