Tag: balance

Standing still

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Rosa Löffler-01.jpg

One of the words in Tibetan for a person can be translated as “one who is on the go” or  a “migrating being”.  There is a deep truth in this and we do not have to be at an airport to realize that we’re always going somewhere or continually in transit. There is a tendency to be  perpetually “on the go”, moving towards or moving away,  always in the search of a perfect feeling.

As long as we chase the myth, trying to get happiness by attempting to manipulate and control life – whether through trying harder to succeed, trying to please others, seeking comfort and diversions or even using spiritual practice to become calm –  we will continue to trap ourselves on the roller coaster cycle of personal happiness and unhappiness, And sadly we will never taste the true contentment that comes when we learn how to stay present with what is, exactly as it is.

Ezra Bayda, Beyond Happiness

photo Hans Stieglitz

Space for gratitude

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Brave person walking out on the glacier point ledge.jpg

Then there was Jim, who said that for many years he took walks that were ‘ranting’ walks. He would walk and contemplate all the things that angered him about the world. One day he decided to begin taking ‘gratitude’ walks. ‘Now while I walk I recount all the things I am grateful for in my life and don’t allow myself to think of negative things at all. I have found this simple practice to be a great gift.’

John Izzo, The Five Secrets you must Discover before Your Die

A deeper source

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:There's still life in this old tree - geograph.org.uk - 1039441.jpg

Maybe you are searching among the branches

for what only appears in the roots

Rumi

 photo evelyn simak

Half Circles

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Day moon (16669185823).jpg

These last few months I have come to see more and more how some sense of longing seems to be a part and parcel of human nature, and will never go away. It comes from the fact, as John O’Donohue wrote in Anam Chara, that the human person is a “threshold where many infinities meet”. This can explain why, for many of us, a sense of wonder can exist in a world which is finite:

The human being is an in-between presence, belonging neither fully to the earth from which she has come, nor to the heavens toward which her mind and spirit aim….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. That is why you can’t enter your own life or inhabit your full presence without a vital and real relationship with some other person.

John O Donohue, The Presence of Compassion

photo hedera baltica

When busyness distracts

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:In a hurry - geograph.org.uk - 866521.jpg

Become aware of impatience as it arises during the day. Be aware of the signals in the body (tapping fingers) and the talk in the mind (“Hurry up!”) that accompany impatience. Ask yourself, “Why am I in a rush? What do I want to rush ahead to get to?” See what answers arise.

Jan Chozen Bays, How to train a Wild Elephant

photo david pickersgill

In the assumed, not in the now

Karl Duffy1 Comment

bali

It’s in the abstract, the assumed, the possible and ‘what others think’ that the mind holds its phobias – as life messages of abandonment or inadequacy … Those qualities aren’t there in specific direct experience: there’s painful and pleasant moments, but there are no life messages. However our daily world is commonly held in terms of non-specific generalizations, like its ‘another Monday,’ or, ‘a typical man’, or ,‘I dread meeting Janice, she’s always like this,’ or ‘I’m hopeless.’ In fact…. any sense of a lasting entity or state of being is an act of generalization. It’s a useful convention, but one that allows the mind’s neuroses and corruptions to be projected onto the here and now.

Ajahn Sucitto, The Low Point