Tag: Acceptance

The importance of knowing that we are not capable of everything

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Flat Tyre.jpg

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal. This will lead us to the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands… . The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, … this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.

Carl Jung,  The Red Book

Step through again and again

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

How do we work with this tendency to block and to freeze and to refuse to take another step toward the unknown? If our edge is like a huge stone wall with a door in it, how do we learn to open the door and step through it again and again, so that life becomes a process of growing up, becoming more and more fearless and flexible, more and more able to play like a raven in the wind?

The wilder the weather is, the more the ravens love it. They have the time of their lives in the winter, when the wind gets much stronger and there’s lots of ice and snow. They challenge the wind. They get up on the tops of the trees and hold on with their claws and then they grab on with their beaks as well. At some point they just let go into the wind and let it blow them away.  They have had to develop a zest for challenge and for life. 

Pema Chodron

photo Ingrid Taylar

Right now

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:The park bench (2669222928).jpg

We can spend our whole lives waiting to start living, instead of loving fully, even though we are flawed.  As Emerson reminds us: “Give all for love. Obey thy heart…when half-gods go, the gods appear”

Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, Touch in,
Let go.

John Welwood

photo rosino

Saturday: Moments which contain everything

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:CSIRO ScienceImage 939 Prawn salad.jpg

 

Look, I want to love this world

as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get

to be alive

and know it.

Mary Oliver, October

photo CSIRO

A challenge for this Friday

Karl Duffy1 Comment

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Light%2C_PST_loop%2C_Poznan.JPG/800px-Light%2C_PST_loop%2C_Poznan.JPG

Accept – then act

Whatever the present moment contains,

accept it as if you had chosen it

This will miraculously transform your whole life

Eckhart Tolle

photo MOs810

Learning to let go, as life passes

Karl Duffy1 Comment

What I mean to say is that you hear the Bat Kol (The Divine Voice). You hear this other deep reality singing to you all the time, and much of the time you can’t decipher it. Even when I was healthy, I was sensitive to the process. At this stage of the game, I hear it saying, ‘Leonard, just get on with the things you have to do.’ It’s very compassionate at this stage. More than at any time of my life, I no longer have that voice that says, ‘You’re fucking up.’ That’s a tremendous blessing, really.

Leonard Cohen’s wisdom as he gets older and is more aware of his mortality

photo taken from leonardcohen.com