Tag: balance

Allowing things to sit

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Dog.in.sleep.jpg

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Beauty and Terror

I was intrigued reading over these words, just this morning  as I sat watching my faithful pup breathe out a most-contented sigh : It’s as if in these short moments, simple flecks of time, he is able to surrender fully to all of life and that which life brings us. And just by breathing in…he settles in.

A friend joked the other day that he and his dog both suffered the troubles of a “5 minute memory”…as if, this was such a very bad thing. But, perhaps that is the trick of it, isn’t it? To allow things to sit, for only just a little bit — and then bid them farewell as they slip away into another day.

“No feeling is ever final.” Too often, we find ourselves struggling to hold onto happiness — fearing it forever lost in the wash of emotions that life carries with it. And we are left to wonder, how we may embrace the absolute richness of this life when we ourselves appear to weaken. How do we create a happiness that is big enough to experience all of these moments — the fear, the pain, the heartache and sorrow, and that will also allow for continuous gratitude, as well?

It’s this very impermanence that creates a space of ‘fully living.’  So, my dears, instead of worrying so very much over ‘what might have been’… “ flare up like a flame and make big shadows” .. for true happiness to settle in.

Pema Chodron, Finding Happiness Amongst Uncertainty

photo eugene0126jp

Staying in the present moment

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Pug lying in bed with its head on the pillow.jpg

When we wake up in bed on Monday morning and think of the various hurdles we’ve got to jump that day, immediately we feel sad.

Bored and bothered.

Whereas actually we’re just lying in bed.

Alan Watts

photo christoper michel

A simple practice

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Traffic signal in Italy with red light.jpg

Driving is a daily task in this society. I am not suggesting that you stop driving, just that you do it consciously. While we are driving, we think only about arriving. Therefore, every time that we see a red light, we are not very happy. The red light is a kind on enemy that prevents us from attaining our goal. But we can also see the red light as a bell of mindfulness, reminding us to return to the present moment…. It is easy to transform a feeling of irritation into a pleasant feeling. Although it is the same red light, it becomes different. It becomes a friend, helping us to remember that it is only in the present moment that we can live our lives…

The next time you are caught in a traffic jam, don’t fight it. It’s useless to fight. Sit back and smile to yourself. Enjoy the present moment, breathing and smiling, and make the other people in your car happy. Happiness is there if you know how to breathe and smile, because happiness can always be found in the present moment. Practicing meditation is to go back to the present moment to encounter the flower, the blue sky, the child. Happiness is available.

 Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step.

Stepping back from the program

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File:Grado St.Eufemia - Geometrisches Mosaik 6.jpg

Our sense of self always has to have something or do something. It wants to be approved of by somebody, or be busy winning at something, or be analysing itself or trying to wipe itself out. It is always orbiting around some need or another. There’s the need to know something, or have an opinion; or the need to feel one’s doing good enough; the need to feel that one is useful; the need to feel that other people like me. The need to be the same as everyone else. Or the need to be different from everyone else. Or, different on some days, the same on other days. And the need to be able to change from being same to being different when I need to. And so on – it never really settles.

But our sense of self is just a series or programs – isn’t it good to know that that self is not you! It’s the same for everyone; they all have a variation on the same themes. It’s just that when the programmable mind is immersed in the scenario of competition and performance and achievement – all of which have no satisfaction in them – it gets programmed into the unsatisfactory. However we can witness these programs and step back from them. The self-programs can be short-circuited by seeing them clearly for what they are and emotionally staying cool and non-reactive to them.

Ajahn Sucitto, Good Enough

photo of mosaic at the Cathedral of Sant’Eufemia by Wolfgang Sauber

How we look

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A mother lovingly looking at her baby

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves.

The least of things with a meaning is always worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: The practice of psychotherapy

Looking inside

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unmask
A human being has so many skins inside, 
covering the depths of the heart. 
 
We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! 
 
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, 
cover the soul. 
 
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. 

 Meister Eckhart