Tag: Awareness

What is this

Karl Duffy5 Comments

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At a retreat once in the UK with Martine Bachelor, I heard her talk of a practice which was taught in the monastery where she was as a nun. It seemed simple  – to keep repeating the words “What is this” when involved in the different activities of the day. It was an exercise designed to allow the person create a gap or a pause, and notice what was before them, therefore encouraging them to enter more deeply into whatever was happening in that moment. It is a good practice for getting in touch with the felt sense in our body. It slows down the tendency to spin off into our stories and our fears. It develops our ability to fully experience the moment we are having, and this may strengthen our capacity for joy.

All religions point to the fact that being fully present is the only state in which you can wake up—not by somehow leaving.

So you have to find your own simple, grounded language to say that to yourself,

What is this moment, this situation, or this person trying to teach me?

Another one that I love is “This is a unique moment. Maybe I’m not so glad about it because it’s painful, but I don’t want to waste it, because it’s never going to happen again this way.

So let’s taste it, smell it, experience it”.

Pema Chodron

Working with our patterns

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Mindfulness and some anxiety problems

Sometimes it is hard to let go and let the future evolve, or let set-backs simply pass through, as the brain’s default pattern tends to be negative and we are always scanning for danger. Our habit of comparing ourselves with others evolved as a necessary survival skill, essential to see who was stronger – and a threat – or to identify potential allies. This survival necessity became deeply embedded in our consciousness as an alertness, a certain vigilance. However, for some people,  –  depending on the level of constancy they experienced in the first years of life with their parents – this low-level hum of vigilance can be replaced by a continual anxious scanning for danger and  everyday experiences  can start the neurons in the brain gossiping and worrying.

It is not easy to work with the mind when it is triggered into deep anxieties. However, Pema Chodron’s quote this morning encourages us to identify this frequently active comparing mind and to try cultivating a “don’t know” mind.  The more we can see these mental energies for what they are – perceptions and judgments of the mind – the less they have the capacity to pull us out of the moment. Outside of our mind, the relative concept of “better” has no sense.

For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much — just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work — to make us feel that we are not okay. As a friend of mine put it, “Feeling that something is wrong with me is the invisible and toxic gas I am always breathing.” When we experience our lives through this lens of personal insufficiency, we are imprisoned in what I call the trance of unworthiness. Trapped in this trance, we are unable to perceive the truth of who we really are.

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

Changing like the weather

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The weather has turned quite windy with heavy showers here in Ireland and they say that it is finally going to get colder. Indeed the leaves are turning colour and falling, although much later than we are accustomed to in this part of the world. It is a change from the last two years and people would be quite happy if the good weather continued for another few weeks. We have a natural tendency to try and hold on to,  and make permanent, things that are going well. However, as the old text reminds us, it is when we understand impermanence that our minds cease to be contentious and we stop fighting with how things are:

When you feel that you are making emotions and thoughts solid,

contemplate impermanence as a reminder that all is in flux.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

 

Sunday Quote: Here and Now

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The future is made of the same stuff as the present

Simone Weil

….leads to freedom

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sky

Sometimes it takes a great sky
to find that

small, bright and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

David Whyte, The Journey

Keeping in touch with an underlying truth

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Unless that underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element in your make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into whatever profile the world prepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You’ll be in danger of molding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those of your own intuitive being.

Seamus Heaney