Tag: Awareness

Learning to stay

Karl Duffy2 Comments

running away 2

The sad part is that all we’re trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don’t keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

The mist, the wind and the rain.

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File:Mist on Blessington Lake - geograph.org.uk - 1615577.jpg

How would it be to allow for knowing

and not knowing: allowing room

for the mystery of creating

to be able to wonder softly

without needing to understand everything

to trust in the process

to trust in love

to trust in the mystery and wonder

of the universe

that beats softly wildly

true

all round about us,

that is hidden in the mists

in the clouds and the rain

in the wind blowing and the rain lashing down on your window,

reminding you poetically

prosaically

that this is where you are,

on the island, at the edge,

in a place of finding  and refinding,

and remembering

to remember

the feel of the mist, wind and rain.

John O’ Donohue

photo of mist on Blessington Lake, Co Wicklow by irishflyfisher

Four seasons in a day

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bad _weather

The weather is very changeable here in Ireland this January. Beautiful bright days are followed by stormy ones, which give way to grey and then another early Spring day appears. It is no wonder the plants are confused.

We all accept that no one controls the weather. Good sailors learn to read it carefully and respect its power. They will avoid storms if possible, but then caught in one, they know when to take down the sails, batten down the hatches, drop anchor and ride things out, controlling what is controllable and letting go of the rest. Training, practice, and a lot of firsthand experience in all sorts of weather are required to develop such skills so that they work for you when you need them. Developing skill in facing and effectively handling the various “weather conditions” in your life is what we mean by the art of conscious living.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Interpreting

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jigsaw_pieces

We all have a tendency to rush to interpretation in our lives, and that can present a challenge to being mindful of our experience. Instead of staying mindful of whatever is happening in the moment, we immediately begin to interpret our experience and create a story based on past associations and attitudes we have about ourselves and others. However, our interpretation is only our view of our experience; it isn’t the actual experience. As soon as we start to interpret an experience, we’re no longer having the experience, we’re having an experience of our interpretation: therefore, we miss the real experience.

 Phillip Moffit, Maintaining Mindfulness in Daily life

Just doing nothing

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bird flying33

What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Being at home in our deepest self

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stupa

At times in life we can have a sense of just wandering on, feeling a bit lost, when the moments we find ourselves in don’t seem to quite fit with what we were hoping for. At other times we find ourselves at home, when a spacious sense of acceptance becomes the more constant abiding. This can happen whether we are in Ireland or Geneva, at work or on pilgrimage, when the mind gets in contact with its own essential goodness and we switch off the need to be elsewhere. We realize that we are not really going anywhere, but not really staying anywhere either.

Meditation is …. not about getting somewhere else, 

but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.

Jon Kabat Zinn,  Wherever you go, there you are

photo of Ruwanweliseya Stupa, Anuradhapura, by dear friends Patrick and Bow on pilgrimage in Sri Lanka