Awareness – Page 493 – Mindfulbalance

Midway

February 1, 2012January 31, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. Thoreau, Walden

In the old Celtic and Gaelic calendar, today, February 1st, is the start of Spring. It was the Celtic feast of Imbolc, which centred around the lighting of fires, celebrated because it is halfway between the winter and the spring solstices. Similarly tomorrow, the feast of Candlemas, traditionally involved a procession of candles and the blessing of candles for use in the home. It would seem that there was a need for people to remind themselves of warmth and light around this midway point – when the cold weather can return with a vengeance as it has this year – as encouragement that new growth will soon be here. It is the same for us today, for we all can find ourselves at midway points from time to time, not sure where we are arriving, but too far away from where we started from to recognize it and go back. We have no overall map for this journey, we can lose our sense of direction and easily get lost. It can feel, as Dante says, as if we are “midway in this way of life we’re bound upon …. in a dark wood, where the right road was wholly lost and gone”.

It is no surprise that journey narratives appear so frequently in all wisdom traditions and mythologies. We are never really in just one place, even when things are quite stable, but always somewhat in-between. Still, whenever we’re moving into anything new we often feel a hesitancy within and tension or unease arises because we prefer to stay as we were, where we felt comfortable. And the brain tends to interpret our underlying unease as anxiety and therefore as negative, leading us to be afraid because something new is demanded. And this can feel like darkness and being lost. However, what these ancient feasts remind us is that this darkness is often the gateway from one place to another, and a natural part of a cycle that leads to new depths. Trust is needed as is mindfulness, which allows us to hold the feeling of unease in awareness, without reactivity, and without the need to run away or fix it. We can thus tolerate the experience of being lost without believing the story of being lost. This holding of awareness is like holding a candle in the darkness – it allows us stay in the darkness without fear until it teaches us what we need to learn.

This month, allow yourself to feel

February 1, 2012January 31, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Meditation practice is a period of self-reflection that offers an opportunity for us to feel. To feel is to be present, which allows for depth and insight to occur. By learning to feel, we can contact the inherent openness of our being – known…in the Shambala teachings as basic goodness. This universal nature is characterized by kindness and compassion. A successful meditation practice is one in which we intimately connect with this naturally occurring love in our hearts and then embody it in our lives…. Resting in this space is self-empowerment minus the ego. By contacting that open feeling , the inherently pure stream at the depth of our being, we are laying the seeds for those feelings of love to grow within our own consciousness. Then those potent seeds will materialize in our life.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Stop, Relax, Wake up

Everything today is special

January 31, 2012January 29, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

So many of us have been trained to think that being particular about what we want is indicative of good taste, and that not being satisfied unless our preferences are met is a sign of worldliness and sophistication. Often, this kind of discernment is seen as having high standards, when, in actuality, it is only a means of isolating ourselves from being touched by life, while rationalizing that we are more special than those who can’t meet our very demanding standards.

The devastating truth is that excellence can’t hold you in the night, and, as I learned when ill, being demanding or sophisticated won’t help you survive. A person dying of thirst doesn’t ask if the water has chlorine or if it was gathered in the foothills of France. Yet, to be accepting of the life that comes our way does not mean denying its difficulties and disappointments. Rather, it means that joy can be found even in hardship, not by demanding that we be treated as special at every turn, but through accepting the demand of the sacred that we treat everything that comes our way as special.

Mark Nepo, Being Easily Pleased

Being Quiet

January 29, 2012January 28, 2012 Karl Duffy3 Comments

Being quiet in the midst of a frenetic life is like picking up a new instrument. If you’ve never played the violin and you try to play it for the first time, every muscle in your body hurts. Your neck hurts, you don’t know how to hold that awkward wavy thing called a bow, you can’t get your knuckles round to touch the strings, you can’t even find where the notes are, you are just trying to get your stance right. Then you come back to it again, and again, and suddenly you can make a single buzzy note. The time after that, you can make a clearer note. No one, not even you, wants to listen to you at first. But one day, there is a beautiful succession of notes and, yes, you have played a brief, gifted, much appreciated passage of music.

This is also true for the silence inside you; you may not want to confront it at first. But a long way down the road, when you inhabit a space fully, you no longer feel awkward and lonely. Silence turns, in effect, into its opposite, so it becomes not only a place to be alone but also a place that’s an invitation to others to join you, to want to know who’s there, in the quiet.

David Whyte, The Questions that have no right to go away

Being, before doing

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

When you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things, to be and to do. Dont think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It’s like a person sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not have to do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Be Beautiful, Be yourself

Keeping our attention firm, no matter what experiences we have

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Sometimes you may feel that you have amazing, tremendous meditation, and at other times you may feel that you have no meditation at all. This characterizes experience, which fluctuates a great deal. Realization, which is distinct from experience, does not change, but experiences can fluctuate a great deal or alternate between good and bad. There will still be times when you will have what you regard as good experiences and, in contrast, what you regard as bad experiences. When that occurs, just keep on looking. Don’t get distracted or sidetracked by the experience. Whatever meditation experience arises, you should recognize that it is transitory. As is said, “meditation experience is like mist, it will surely vanish.”