Tag: Awareness

More than our fears

Karl Duffy2 Comments

In Ireland,  Summer is officially over at the end of August, and, as if to acknowledge this, yesterday began foggy and grey. Typically,  however, the rest of the day turned out better than most of the Summer. The fog passed through, the sun came out. Today, we are told to expect heavy rain.  Small upsets or bigger storms…the sky can hold whatever passes through it.

It is essential to understand that an emotion is merely something that arises, remains and then goes away. A storm comes, it stays a while, and then it moves away. At the critical moment remember you are much more than your emotions. This is a simple thing that everyone knows, but you may need to be reminded of it: you are more than your emotions.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Healing Pain and Dressing Wounds

Not giving up on our dreams

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We should never give up on our dreams or let them be blocked by the limitations of our own or others fears; but rather believe in that voice within and trust our capacity to achieve it.

Since the powers of nature in this dreamer, in that dreamer, and in the macrocosm of nature itself, are the same, only differently inflected,

the powers personified in a dream are those that move the world.

All the gods are within you

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God

per Laura V, ritrovata dopo molti anni ma mai veramente andata dal cuore

The difficulty of just being still

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Here in my head, language
keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends
with the hard white stars

whose flaring and hissing are not speech
but a pure radiance?

How can I hope to be friends
with the yawning spaces between them

where nothing, ever, is spoken?

…What can we do
but keep on breathing in and out,

modest and willing, and in our places?

Mary Oliver, Stars

As it is

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Meditation is a form of training the mind, so that it does  not get hooked by all our inner storms, but rather relates to the world, or other people, in a fresh way, just as they are:

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used the phrase “first thought, best thought” to refer to that first moment of fresh perception, before the colorful and coloring clouds of judgment and personal interpretation take over. “First thought” is “best thought” because it has not yet got covered over by all our opinions and interpretations, our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes. It is direct perception of the world as it is.

Dr Jeremy Hayward, First Thought

 

Have confidence that you are enough

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Good instructions when you are feeling fragmented or small, or when you are giving too much power over to others.

Settle the self on the self

and let your life force blossom

Zen instruction, from my current reading : Blanche Hartman, Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart

Ways into life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

I believe that anybody can find a way into the world:  

some landscape, a particular room, neighborhood street, a  building such as a barn with its smells, or a thing privately treasured,  for instance a baseball glove or a pair of shoes. “All things are full of Gods” is an ancient Greek saying; “In my Fathers house are many mansions”, a Christian one. These suggest that there is something divine even in the baseball glove and the neighborhood street.

James Hillman