Tag: Be fully present

The missing piece

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I spent many years looking for the perfect place to live, the perfect spiritual teacher, the perfect path, the perfect career, the perfect community, and so on, before realizing that no such lasting perfection exists except as an imaginary idea.

The only real perfection is Here / Now, and it’s not about the content, it’s about the awareness and the presence that is here regardless of the content, not because of the content. I also spent many years chasing some final enlightenment event, some happy ending, believing that there was some Finish Line that I had not yet crossed.

Finally, that whole fixation and search for enlightenment fell away, not in any Big Bang event, but gradually and quietly and imperceptibly, and not because “I” became permanently enlightened at last, but because that very idea became transparently absurd.

Joan Tollifson

Rest

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There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes. In wild silence the channel bursts.

Rest is the mother of wisdom.

Rumi

Sunday Quote: gratitude

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I cannot pretend I am without fear.

But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.

I have loved and been loved;

I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

 Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

Just pause

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When you can’t get what you want, your underlying tendencies to get exasperated or feel let down come up – and they then interpret the situation as ‘lazy disorganized people’ or ‘no one considers my feelings’. Actually there are generally a number of causes as to why things don’t go my way — the Buddha just called it ‘dukkha’ – but the immediate reaction and interpretation are an indication of tendencies in one’s own mind. 

So just to pause at that point – reactions are normal, but we can read them, learn what they are, and that they take us into suffering. We don’t have to guess at why things aren’t going according to plan; and jumping to a conclusion is always a move into the shadows of one’s own mind. 

So, pause. A pause is not a disapproval or a judgement; it’s an opening of attention into awareness. And that allows us to respond to our reactions with mindfulness and compassion. 

Pausing is an essential, deep and accessible practice.

Ajahn Sucitto

The right rhythm

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For this new month….

We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any predetermined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program or plan for our lives.

Rather, we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your own destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you attend to yourself and seek to come into your presence, you will find exactly the right rhythm for your life

John O’Donohue, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Not needing validation

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Could human life’s central task be a matter of consciously discovering and becoming who we already are and somehow unconsciously know?

I believe so.

Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had

Richard Rohr