Tag: Awareness

Taking deliberate action

Karl Duffy2 Comments

One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don’t give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul’s bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you’re on the right track? I like Rumi’s counsel: ‘When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Elizabeth Lesser,  The Seeker’s Guide: Making Your Life A Spiritual Adventure

Noticing small boredoms

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

https://i0.wp.com/www.ohiofur.net/marcon01/Waiting_for_Elevator.JPGAll of us experience small boredoms at work – routine, seemingly dull events that we often take for granted: remaining “on hold” on the phone, waiting at the copier or coffee line, pausing for a computer screen to open, being stopped in traffic. We may consider such moments irritating or unproductive, a waste of our time to be avoided if possible. However, properly handled, such small boredoms can ease the speed and restlessness of our jobs, helping us remain alert, available, and awake at work. What is so powerful about small boredoms in general is that we are actually trying to avoid our experience, to distract ourselves from the sharp immediacy of the moment.

Small boredoms – whether they are elevator rides, pauses in a speech, or sitting in a traffic jam – can feel vaguely unnerving. We are being poked by our world, provoked, invited to wake up. Acknowledging small boredoms encourages us to engage that slight discomfort by being alert and fully present with no mindless distractions. Rather than letting boredom, short or prolonged, put us to sleep, we reverse the equation, engaging boredom in all its simple, unadorned vividness, letting it wake us up. By relating to small boredoms with this kind of precision, we turn them into practice, stepping-stones we walk each day that form the basis for slowing our speed, letting go of our inner rehearsals, and being fully alert to our circumstances.

Michael Carroll

Giving yourself a break today

Karl Duffy5 Comments

If you’re like me, so much of what we twirl around with in the mind is, frankly, a waste of time. It doesn’t solve a problem, prevent a bad thing from happening, or bring us to peace with others. And it’s deeply unnatural. As we evolved, our ancestors probably experienced more physical but less mental fatigue than most people today in the developed nations. Consequently, our bodies are adapted to weariness – but our minds are not. For a brief time – finals week, an intense month at work, a demanding year with a new baby – OK, sometimes we just have to crank the mind up into overdrive and tough it out. But as a way of life, it’s nuts.

We have to take a stand against the crazy mental busyness that has become the new normal. We’re bombarded with things to think about all day long, flooded with words and images to process, and forced to juggle unprecedented complexities. Our minds are being hauled along behind a culture without a speed limit – but the human body and brain does have a limit, a natural carrying capacity, and when we exceed it there’s always a price. It’s like being trapped in rush hour your whole life. Each time you know this, each time you pull out of the mental traffic, it’s an act of freedom and kindness and wisdom.

Rick Hanson.

Just seeing whatever is, today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The goal of meditation is to see things as they are; it is a state of awakened attention. And this is a very simple thing. It isn’t complicated or difficult or something that takes years to achieve. It is so easy, in fact, that you don’t even notice it. When you think in terms of having to practise meditation, you are conceiving it as something you have to attain …….. you have to control your emotions, you have to develop virtues in order to attain some kind of ideal state of mind. You might have images of a lot of yogis sitting in remote places on mountain tops and in caves. ….. and it all sounds very remote and very far from what you can expect from your life as a human being. The point is to look at meditation as awakenedness and awareness throughout daily life in whatever way we live and in whatever conditions. There is in that the sense of allowing things to be in this present moment, allowing whatever way the body is or the emotional and mental states right now to be the way they are. Just be the observer of whatever is. Right now the mood is ‘this’, ‘I feel this’. Just be aware whether you are confused, indifferent, happy, sad, uncertain or whatever. Be that which allows things to be what they are.

Ajahn Sumedho

This moment is the most profound

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

True honesty also means relating to each moment completely. When you are dishonest, you miss this moment because you are thinking of the next moment, or the last moment or next week’s moments. And therefore you are failing to relate to this moment, to the reality that is right in front of you. By not paying total attention to this moment, you are disrespecting this thought, this energy, taking this moment for granted. Now, when we ignore the present moment in this way, there are consequences… we create suffering. If we live this moment only fifty percent, the fifty percent we failed to live will surely cause us difficulties later. So when we say “be mindful” in this tradition, we are simply saying: this moment is more profound than anything else on earth.

Venerable Shyalpa Rinpoche, A Path of Honesty

A short meditation exercise for when you feel under pressure

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Close your eyes gently. Let your body be at rest and your breathing be natural. Begin to listen to the play of sounds around you. Notice those that are loud or soft, far and near. Notice how sounds arise and vanish on their own, leaving no trace. 

After you have listened for a few minutes, let yourself sense, feel or imagine that your mind is not limited to your head. Sense that your mind is expanding to be open like the sky – clear, vast like space.  Feel that your mind extends outwards beyond the most distant sounds. Imagine there are no boundaries to your mind, no inside or outside. Let the awareness of your mind extend in every direction, like the sky.

 Relax in this openness and just listen. Let every sound you hear – people, the breeze, your breath – arise and pass away like a could in the open space of your mind.  Let thoughts and feelings – pleasant, unpleasant – come and go without resistance or struggle. Relax and rest in this openness.  Let sensations float and change. Pay attention to consciousness itself. Notice how the open space of awareness is clear, transparent, timeless and without conflict – allowing for all things, but not limited by them. This is your own true nature. Rest in it. Trust it. It is home.

Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart