Tag: Acceptance

Meet the wind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

wind tree

The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness. When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to complain about the rain we could feel its wetness instead. When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on forever.

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Kindness towards oneself

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Flickr - The U.S. Army - Soldier returns to Haiti, helps family.jpg

Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect? You may try to change in ways that allow you to be more healthy and happy, but this is done because you care about yourself, not because you are worthless or unacceptable as you are. Perhaps most importantly, having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness.  Things will not always go the way you want them to.  You will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals.  This is the human condition, a reality shared by all of us. The more you open your heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of life.

 Kristin Neff

Being comfortable with non-doing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The emptiness of the desert makes it possible to learn the almost impossible:

the joyful acceptance of our uselessness. 

Ivan Illich

Starting from where you are

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Coming home

Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all that you have to work with. The process of becoming who you will be, begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

A prayer in time of difficulty

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

P1000282O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray and gather my thoughts to you. I cannot do it alone.
In me it is dark, but with you there is light.
I am lonely, but you do not desert me.
My courage fails me, but with you there is help.
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience.
I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me.

Dietrich Bonhoffer,Lutheran pastor imprisoned and executed by the Nazis.

Not right nor wrong

Karl Duffy1 Comment

flight-cancellations

See what is. Acknowledge it without judging it as right or wrong. See it clearly without judgment and let it go. Come back to the present moment. From now until the moment of your death, you could do this. As a way of becoming more compassionate, as way of becoming less dogmatic, prejudiced, determined to have your own way, absolutely sure that you’re right and the other person is wrong, as a way to develop a sense of humor, to lighten it up, open it up, you could do this.

Pema Chodron