Tag: balance

Of and from

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people’s freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.

Ajahn Brahm, Opening the Door of Your Heart

Why we are always restless

Karl Duffy3 Comments

The creator of the universe loves circles:

time and space are circles, the day is a circle, the year is a circle, the earth is a circle.

But when creating and fashioning the human heart, the creator only created a half-circle, so that there is something ontologically unfinished in human nature.

John O’Donohue

 

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,

we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished.

Karl Rahner, sj., Catholic theologian

 

Getting lost

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The word “lost” comes from the Old Norse los meaning the disbanding of an army, and this origin suggests soldiers falling out of formation to go home, a truce with the wide world. I worry now that many people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know.  Advertising, alarmist news, technology, incessant busyness, and the design of public and private life conspire to make it so.  A recent article about the return of wildlife to suburbia described snow-covered yards in which the footprints of animals are abundant and those of children are entirely absent. As far as the animals are concerned, the suburbs are an abandoned landscape, and so they roam with confidence. Children seldom roam, even in the safest places.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to getting Lost

 

Embrace

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Today try taking some time to explore the possibility of sitting with yourself as if you were your own best friend.

Dwelling in the awareness of the breath, allowing thoughts and feelings to come and go, experiment with the possibility of embracing yourself as you would embrace another person who is dear to you and needs to be held.

 Saki Santorelli

We are weak

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Weakness is at the heart of each one of us. Weakness becomes a place of chaos and confusion, if in our weakness we are not wanted; it becomes a place of peace and joy, if we are accepted, listened to, appreciated and loved.

Some people are infuriated by weakness. Weakness awakens hardness and anger in them.  But to deny weakness as part of life is to deny death, because weakness speaks to us of the ultimate powerlessness, of death itself.  To be small, to be sick, to be dying, are stages of powerless, they appear to us to be anti-life and so we deny them.

 If we deny our weakness and the reality of death, if we want to be powerful and strong always, we deny part of our being, we live an illusion. To be human is to accept who we are, this mixture of strength and weakness. 

Jean Vanier,  Becoming Human

Welcome what is

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As long as the mind is in conflict – blaming, resisting, condemning – there can be no understanding.

If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

J. Krishnamurti.