Tag: Acceptance

Let it be

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Corp2739.jpg

One of the most satisfying feelings I know – and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other 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

…in its own time

Karl Duffy2 Comments

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly.

For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself,

“There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Enemies

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:HK Sheung Wan 新紀元廣場 Grand Millennium Plaza lift lobby 08 visitors queue morning July-2012.JPG

We encounter a lot of “enemies” each day – queues, bad weather, deadlines, meetings that don’t go according to plan, traffic slowing us down when we are in a hurry, people who disagree with us, events we do not like. We instinctively try to avoid,  grumble about them and turn them into enemies, with us quickly feeling like victims.  This quote reminds us that a lot  of our dissatisfaction is self-created, a lot of stress caused by our own minds.

When an enemy arises in your life, even though you may kill it,

another will simply arise,

because all arisings are simply a manifestation of your own state of consciousness

Kalu Rinpoche

photo crepoastoram

Accepting each moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Last breath… by Francisco Javier Epinoza Pérez.jpg

All things, the grass as well as the trees,
are tender and soft while alive
When dead, they are withered and dried.

Therefore the stiff and the rigid are companions of death
The gentle and the kind are the companions of life

Lao Tzu

photo Francisco Javier Epinoza Pérez

Inside not beyond

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Three crows in a tree in Summit NJ.jpg

The most heartbreaking thing is not heartbreak; it’s avoiding heartbreak. Inside the transience of life is the thusness of everything, of the tree with forty crows on it in the winter, the sound of death-metal drums from the kids in the barn, and the feeling of sadness when you lose someone. A lot of suffering is resistance to the life of feeling. If you surrender, you are surrendering to what is really going on. This is just to notice that nothing beyond your life is more important than your life.

John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way

Sitting through difficulties

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:An Afghan elder and his cat sit outside his store at the Anaba bazaar in Panjshir province, Afghanistan.jpg

When we sit we are doing two things. First, sitting becomes a container; whatever has happened we sit still and feel it. The other side of sitting is the stillness of non-reactivity. We feel all…without doing anything to anybody. The feeling becomes our own responsiblity. Instead of our attention being directed, as it usually is, to making somebody else treat us differently, the way we want to be treated, we come back to experiencing what is at stake in being treated this way, what the hurt is really all about, and who we think we are that we can be hurt.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness