Tag: balance

Facing our conflicts

Karl Duffy2 Comments

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. A spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence.

Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis

Sunday Quote: Go Home

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Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. The wounded child in you needs you. Go home and be there for all these things. Practice mindful walking and mindful breathing. Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Not leaning forward

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Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Not trying to become

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Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become
enlightened.

When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be.

Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.

Ajahn Chah, A Still Forest Pool

Growing resilience

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Each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant.
The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.
       Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.
Paulo Coelho, Brida

Always changing

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High winds do not last all morning

Heavy rain does not last all day

Why is this? Such is Heaven and Earth!

If heaven and earth cannot make things eternal

Why do we think it happens for us?

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching