Tag: Be fully present

The need for sanctuary

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Sanctuary is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm: it’s about spiritual survival. Today, seeking sanctuary is no more optional for me than church attendance was as a child.

 Sometimes I find it in churches, monasteries, and other sites designated as sacred.

But more often I find it in places sacred to my soul: in the natural world, in the company of a trustworthy friend, in solitary or shared silence, in the ambience of a good poem or good music.

Parker Palmer, Seeking Sanctuary in our own Sacred Places

Not giving up

Karl Duffy2 Comments

It is sometimes through times of testing that we come to know what endures.

The Zen student, the poet, the husband, the wife — none knows with certainty what he or she is staying for, but all know the likelihood that they will be staying “a while”: to find out what they are staying for. And it is the faith of all of these disciplines that they will not stay to find that they should not have stayed. That faith has nothing to do with what is usually called optimism. The faith, rather, is that by staying, and only by staying, we will learn something of the truth, that the truth is good to know, and that it is always both different and larger than we thought.

Wendell Berry

Dramas

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All delusions begin in the mind

All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves

and then believing what we are saying.

Adyashanti

Whatever

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swallow

If you remember nothing else, always remember this one great secret of spiritual practice: we don’t have to feel any particular way. We don’t have to have special experiences, nor do we have to be any particular way. With whatever arises, whether it’s pleasing or not, try to remember that all we can do is experience and work with whatever our life is right now. No matter what life is and no matter how we feel about it, all that matters in practice is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on, and then stay present with the physical experience of that moment.

Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart

Ordinary everyday wisdom: The grass is green

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We have to be patient with ourselves. Over and over again we think we need to be somewhere else, and we must find the truth right here, right now; we must find our joy here, now. How seductive it is, the thought of tomorrow. We must find our understanding here. We must find it here; it is always here; this is where the grass is green.

 John Tarrant, Calling on the name of Avalokiteshvara

Monday morning encouragement: Keep going….trust

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We come here to search…

to go on searching through silence and meditation,

to get in touch with our inner life.

Christ always said,

Do not worry,

give yourself.

Br Roger of Taize