Tag: Awareness

Three dimensions

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Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present, and the future all at once.

The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur. 

Immaturity is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, or even, living only two out of the three. 

David Whyte

Float

Karl Duffy2 Comments

In the pursuit of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can’t be gained by interfering

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching,

The nature of reality

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The waters before, and the waters after,

Now and forever flowing,

follow each other.

Alan Watts, The Flow of Zen

Living life to the full

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I will be like
someone who cannot
hide their love
but my joy will become 
ordinary 
and everyday
and like a lover
I will find out
exactly what it is like
to be the happiest, 
the only one in creation
to really 
understand 
how much,
I’m just a hair’s breadth
from dying.

David Whyte, Mortality My Mistress [extract]

Impermanence

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Somewhat easy to learn impermanence in Ireland this Summer… one day sun, the next grey, then rain…. Do not need the great Ryoken to remind me.

See and realize
that this world
is not permanent.

Neither late nor early flowers
will remain.

Ryokan, Zen Monk and Poet, 1758 – 1831

In stillness

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I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing.  I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be a prayer that transforms us.

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits