Tag: Awareness

Knowing in a new way

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth.

Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing the “ten thousand things” in a new way.

I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be truly present to what is right in front of you. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightly, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary for wisdom, and in many ways, it is the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep 1) your heart space open, 2) your mind without division or resistance, and 3) your body not somewhere else — and all at the same time!

Most religions just decided it was easier to believe doctrines and obey often-arbitrary laws than the truly converting work of being present. Those who can be present will know what they need to know, and in a wisdom way.

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now, Learning to See as the Mystics See

The tone and quality of your life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life. It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness. All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. Your life is no longer consumed by hunger for the next event, experience or achievement. You learn to come down from the treadmill and walk on the earth.  You no longer squander yourself on things and situations that deplete your essence. You know now that your true source is not outside you. Your soul is your true source and a new energy and passion awakens in you.

John O’Donoghue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Holding life lightly

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One should say before sleeping,

“I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved had sat upon my knees and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved.

Everything that has been shall be again.”

W.B. Yeats

Change and constancy

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Your job may change, your relationships may change, your body may change, your beliefs may change, your desires may change, your ideas about your role in the world may change, but the essence of who you are is the continuity of awareness that has no beginning or end. Your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, goals, and experiences may come and go, but the one who having the experiences – the experiencer – remains.

Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga

Our view for the day

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Meditation is the natural process of becoming familiar with an object by repeatedly placing our minds upon it. Whatever we’re doing, we always have a view; we’re always placing our mind on one object or another. For example, when we get up in the morning and we’re anxious about something, anxiety becomes our view for the day: “What about me? When will I get what I want?” The object of our meditation is “me.”
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

A fresh way of seeing things

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Starting over, being open to all possibilities, not being bound by our familiar conclusions:

To observe anything –  your mind must be free of any conclusion, any previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot possibly see ‘what is’. Isn’t that so? If I want to learn about you  I must observe. I must observe, listen and not come to any conclusion. Conclusion is the image which divides you and me. So to observe, there must be no image, no conclusion, no formula. And in that lies our difficulty, because we live according to formulas, a formula set by another or a conclusion which we have come to according to our conditioning and experience. So can the mind be free of every conclusion, because a conclusion is in the field of time which is the past? You can’t conclude something about the future. You can conclude about the future according to your past conditioning, therefore your conclusion is always based on the past – past knowledge, past experience… various forms of knowledge.

So can the mind, to investigate something which is not of time, be free of conflict so that it can observe completely? This has been the enquiry of man right through the centuries: how is the mind to be so quiet, so still, without any distorting factor in it, so that it is capable of perception without any distortion?

J. Krisnamurti, Fourth Public Talk in New York  7 May 1972