Traditionally the season of Lent was associated with some form of simplification, which in Ireland became reduced to “giving up” something. The true meaning is in making space for the deeper realities in our lives and room to see what is happening.
The ground of renunciation is realizing that we already have exactly what we need,
that what we have already is good.
Every moment of time has enormous energy in it,
and we could connect with that.
Pema Chodron
The key to life is how we relate to its unfolding, minute by minute. In one sense, we do not have to get anywhere and anyway, even if we think we do, there is no GPS, no pre-determined maps, no magical tarot cards which give us the final, clear answers to its mysteries. We move either by fear or by trusting that all is fundamentally well. If the latter, we move the way joy and confidence makes us move, building our life from the inside out.
Keep walking, though there is no place to get to
Don’t try to see through the distances
That’s not for human beings.
Move within
But don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Rumi
Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,
but from wanting to control it.
Kahlil Gibran
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it.
In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are
Rilke, Letters
Even on a grey snowy morning like this one…
The mind is luminous, brightly shining, and this is never absent. However, it is sullied by incoming defilements, coloured by the thoughts and emotions that people put upon it. If you were to see the luminous freedom of the mind, you would cultivate it before anything else, keeping it free from all attachments
Anguttara Nikaya, early Buddhist scripture
