Tag: Awareness

…but noticing blessings

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Beannachtai na Féile Padraig oraibh go léir! 

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day (literally “The Blessings of St Patrick’s Day be with you all”)

The word “blessing” is related in English to the word “blood.” Blessing is like the spiritual bloodstream that flows through the universe. When we bless something we are returning what we have received to its source. We know we receive life and breath from a source which is beyond us. We haven’t bought it or earned it. We are just put here and life comes to us from some mysterious source, and we can give it back. That is like the blood coming from the heart and going back to the heart. That blood keeps on flowing and if we tune in to the bloodstream of blessing the world comes alive. The same thing happens if we cut off the bloodstream or drain the sap from a tree; life withers.

The gifts or blessings of life are always there but if we are not aware of them, they don’t do much for us. That is where gratefulness comes in. Gratefulness makes us aware of the gift and makes us happy. As long as we take things for granted they don’t make us happy. Gratefulness is the key to happiness.

David Steindl-Rast.

Not leaning….

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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By pausing and accepting our experience, we free ourselves to respond to our circumstances in ways that bring genuine peace and happiness. In a pause, we simply discontinue whatever we are doing. We become wholly present, attentive and, often, physically still.  Try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing “no thing,” and simply notice what you experience.

Taking our hands off the controls and pausing lets us clearly see the wants and fears that drive us. We become conscious of how the feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning into the future. We can continue our futile attempt to manage our experience, or we can meet our vulnerability with the wisdom of what I call “radical acceptance.”

Tara Brach

photo greymalkn

Content in being

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The reason why men are so anxious to see themselves,

instead of being content to be themselves,

is that they do not really believe in their own existence. 

Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life

photo 4028mdk09

Sunday Quote: Home

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meditation-leaf

Your body is your first home:

“Breathing in, I arrive in my body.

Breathing out, I am home.”

Thich Nhat Hahn

The Basics of Practice 4: Just watch

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Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to your own experience. To do this requires that you become aware of the constant stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experience and learn to step back from it.

When we begin practicing paying attention to the activity of our own mind, it is common to discover that we are constantly generating judgments about our experience.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Losing contact with basic goodness

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Flowers book

The losing of paradise is enacted over and over again by the children of Adam and Eve. We clothe our souls with messages and doctrines, and lose contact with the great life in the naked breast of nature

Rabindranath Tagore

Does the rose have to do something? No, the purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just the way you are. This teaching …. allows us to enjoy ourselves, the blue sky, and everything that is refreshing and healing in the present moment. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness. Aimlessness is stopping and realizing the happiness that is already available.

Thich Nhat Hahn