Tag: Acceptance

Softening the mind

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Softness means opening to what is there, relaxing into it. At such a time try this mantra: “It’s ok. Whatever it is, it’s ok. Let me feel it” . That is the softening of the mind. You can open to your experience with a sense of allowing, and simply be with whatever predominates: a pain, a thought, an emotion, anything.

Softening the mind involves two steps. Firstly, become mindfully aware of whatever is most predominant. That is the core guideline for all insight meditation: so the first step is just to see, to open. For the second step, notice how you are relating to whatever arises. Often we can be with an arising appearance but in a reactive way. If we like it we tend to hold on to it, we become attached. If we do not like it because it is painful in any way, we tend to contract, to push away out of fear, irritation or annoyance. The easiest way to relax is to stop trying to make things different. Rather than try to create another space, simply allow space for whatever is going on.

Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation

An undivided heart

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When the heart is undivided, everything we encounter becomes our practice. Service becomes a sacred exchange, like breathing in and breathing out. We receive a physical and spiritual sustenance in the world, and this is like breathing in. Then, because each of us has certain gifts to offer, part of our happiness in this world is to give something back, and this is like breathing out. One friend calls this ‘simple human kindness’. Our work, I think, is to get out of the way of our own innate wisdom and compassion- that simple human kindness – and allow our inborn ability to see what another needs, to serve the dying and the living.

Frank Ostaseski, Founder, Zen Hospice Project

Where growth begins

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Without darkness, Nothing comes to birth, As without light, Nothing flowers.

May Sarton

It has taken me a long time to recognize that darkness is an essential element for personal growth. No matter how many ‘right things.’ I do, darkness will still come unannounced and uninvited because it is an essential part of life. Without darkness I cannot become the person I was meant to be.

Joyce Rupp, Little Pieces of Light

When depth comes through the broken bits

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Growth can often involves a letting go of old ways, especially those that have ceased to serve. However, when we are in the midst of it, it can be hard to appreciate it in this way. We are more inclined to hold on to what is familiar and keep to what we know. However, sometimes the depth of new life can only be seen when the current one is broken open. It is true that there are occasions when we only grow when we pass through difficulties. With growth we move toward fuller healing and wholeness. It’s as if they had been waiting all along, until you made room for them to come into your life.

The world, I’ve come to think, is like the surface of a frozen lake.

We walk along, we slip, we try to keep our balance and not to fall.

One day, there’s a crack, and  so we learn that underneath us — is an unimaginable depth.

James Joyce, The Dead

A crisis is an invitation to grow

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Crises come at critical points in our lives. Usually they make it painfully obvious that the previous world view or attitudes of consciousness are inadequate to encompass the new situation. Accordingly, the crisis requires the development of new attitudes, however disdainful the ego may be. Often these crises are tied to the exhaustion of the dominant attitudes of consciousness and are indications that neglected portions of the psyche need to be brought into play. Any crisis bring the limitations of conscious life to the surface and reveals the need for enlargement….The meaning of crisis for us all [is] the invitation to sort and sift, to discern, to move to enlargement, to outgrow the sundry comforts of the old vision of self and world

James Hollis, Creating a Life

In-between repression and acting out

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The journey of awakening happens just at the place where we can’t get comfortable. Opening to discomfort is the basis of transmuting our so-called “negative” feelings. We somehow want to get rid of our uncomfortable feelings either by justifying them or by squelching them, but it turns out that this is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. By trying to get rid of “negativity,” by trying to eradicate it, by putting it into a column labelled “bad,” we are throwing away our wisdom as well, because everything in us is creative energy — particularly our strong emotions. They are filled with life-force.

There is nothing wrong with negativity per se; the problem is that we never see it, we never honor it, we never look into its heart. We don’t taste our negativity, smell it, get to know it. Instead, we are always trying to get rid of it by punching someone in the face, by slandering someone, by punishing ourselves, or by repressing our feelings. In between repression and acting out, however, there is something wise and profound and timeless.

Pema Chodron, To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself