Tag: balance

Meaning is created

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When we don’t have sufficient information about what is happening around us, we create meaning. The problem is…this meaning is largely negative. We personalize events and other peoples reactions, interpreting them as responding to us when they aren’t. For example, we decide a person is judgmental because they are frowning while we talk, when we are actually missing the fact that this person always frowns when they are listening carefully. We make us a story that they dislike us, which makes us afraid of them. Why? Because negative facts make a stronger impression on us than positive or neutral ones. 

From a nice little book – Leah Weiss, The Little Book of Bhavana

The bigger picture

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Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river.

The river is flowing.

We are in it.

Richard Rohr

The best time

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If your mind isn’t clouded

by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

Wumen Huikai, 1183 -1260

It is uncertain, isn’t it

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After a weekend of alerts about storms and viruses, living with uncertainty is a skill we all need to cultivate:

My teacher Ajahn Chah would often respond to people’s questions, plans, and ideas with a smile and say, ‘Mai neh.’ The phrase means, ‘It is uncertain, isn’t it?’ He understood the wisdom of uncertainty, the truth of change, and was comfortable in their midst. As with the Cloud of Unknowing or the ‘unlearning’ of the Tao, wisdom grows by opening to the truth of not knowing. The Third Zen Patriarch puts it this way, ‘If you wish to know the truth, only cease to cherish opinions.’ … At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world. With wisdom we allow this not knowing to become a form of trust. St. John of the Cross described it this way, ‘If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.’

Jack Kornfield

Sunday Quote: New month

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Courage. Don’t be too timid or squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Universe behind

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If you pass through a period of darkness or depression, just ask, ‘Who is aware of the darkness?’ That’s how you pass through the different stages of your inner growth. You just keep letting go, and remain aware that you are still there. When you’ve let go of the dark psyche, and you’ve let go of the light psyche, and you’re no longer clinging to anything, you will reach a point where it will all open up behind you. You are now becoming aware of a universe behind your seat of consciousness. If you’re willing to let go, you’ll fall back and it will open into an ocean of energy. You will become filled with light. You will become filled with a light that has no darkness, with a peace that passeth all understanding

Michael Singer