Tag: Acceptance

Complaining

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself….

The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also about situations.

What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy.

The implication is always: this should not be happening;

I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to be doing this; I’m being treated unfairly.

And the ego’s greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

New life

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Letting go of all the theories from the past frees us to go with how it is actually unfolding

Throw away the light, the definitions,

and say of what you see in the dark

Wallace Stevens

How we learn

Karl Duffy3 Comments

 

We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous

as much through exile as homecoming,

as much through loss as gain,

as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.

David Whyte

Our futile attempts to resist change

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A severe weather system is passing over Ireland, with heavy snow forecast, causing a lot of concern and even, panic buying of bread in the supermarkets. A change in the normal circumstances causes uncertainty and reveals that, deep down, we think things should always remain the same. Instinctively,  we seem to try to make some moments last forever.  Nature teaches us that no matter how much we wish or try to control things, tomorrow may not look the same as today. Changes in circumstances in life, like the weather, are a given; happiness – or unhappiness – comes from our response to that given.

High winds do not last all morning

Heavy rain does not last all day

Why is this? Such is Heaven and Earth!

If heaven and earth cannot make things eternal

Why do we think it happens for us?

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

The big challenge

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Merely to say the same thing twice — language is language — how is that supposed to get us anywhere?

But we do not want to get anywhere.

We would like only, for once, to get just to where we are already.

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1889 – 1976

Why we get anxious

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,

but from wanting to control it.

Kahlil Gibran