Tag: Acceptance

Working with things as they are

Karl Duffy2 Comments

These are the things we can contemplate. We can’t control what arises in the mind, but we can reflect on what we are feeling and learn from it rather than simply being caught helplessly in our impulses and habits. Even though there is a lot in life that we can’t change, we can change our attitude towards it. That’s what so much of meditation is really about—changing our attitude from a self-centered, “get rid of this or get more of that” to one of welcoming life as it is. Welcoming the opportunity to eat food that we don’t like. Welcoming wearing three robes on a hot morning. Welcoming discomfort, feeling fed up, wanting to run away. This way of welcoming life reflects a deeper understanding. Life is like this. Sometimes it’s very nice, sometimes it’s horrible, and much of the time it’s neither one way nor the other. Life is like this.

Ajahn Sumedho

Holding

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holding a spaceBy not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation,  we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. If it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than the tendency to get to know them. Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently,  thoughts and feelings come and go  in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

How we carry

Karl Duffy2 Comments

....in the ordinary moments of this life.

How we carry what has gone wrong for us

is essential to being at home in ourselves,

and present to the world with all of its failings.

Krista Tippett

Whatever you think you are, that’s not what you are

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2881368710_small_1When we emphasise our personality we create problems, because the personal qualities are different for each one of us. We have our common human problems: old age, sickness and death; but there are attitudes, cultural expectations and assumptions wherein we differ, and these are conditioned into the mind after we are born. Because of this, I often say to people, ‘Whatever you think you are, that’s not what you are.’ The personality, the self-consciousness, the fears and the desires of the mind are what they are. In practice, we are not trying to dismiss them or add to them, or make any problems or difficulties around them. We are willing to let them be what they are. They feel this way, they have this quality; they arise and cease. And in that cessation, there’s the realisation of the peace, the bliss and the serenity of just being — and there’s no self in it.

Ajahn Sumedho, True but not right, right but not true

In our hands

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choppingGratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands,
because if we are not grateful,
then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want
to have something else or something more.

Br David Steindl-Rast

Fixing and punishing ourselves

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Unless you were raised by wolves, you probably heard at least a few of the following as you were growing up: “Don’t do that…. Why don’t you ever listen?… Wipe that look off your face…. You shouldn’t feel that way…. You should have known better…. You should be ashamed of yourself…. I can’t believe you did that…. It serves you right…. What were you thinking of?… The nurses must have dropped you on your head…. I had great hopes for you…. Don’t talk back to me…. Do as you are told…. Don’t you ever think about anyone else?” Somewhere along the line we conclude there is something wrong with us. What else could we conclude? If there were nothing wrong with us, people would not say those things, would they?

Being intelligent creatures, we soon take over the job of punishing ourselves, punishment being the way to improve so that we can be who and how we should be. We learn the self-improvement process as quickly as possible so we can fix ourselves before anyone else notices we need fixing. As a result, most people grow up with an unshakable belief that the primary reason they are “good” is that they punish themselves when they are “bad.” The very thought of not punishing ourselves when we make mistakes, say and do stupid things, feel inappropriate feelings, or act “bad,” makes us nervous: If I don’t punish myself when I do something wrong, what will keep me from doing it again? I might do even worse things! To this I would say that one process does not lead to another. Punishment does not make us good, punishment makes us punishing

Cheri Huber, There is nothing wrong with us