Tag: Be fully present

Being aware of our patterns

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Mosaic - Mosquée de Paris.jpg

One reason we strengthen our awareness in meditation is to see more clearly the patterns laid down in our childhood, how we believe these to be our personality and the limiting stories which they often tell us about our abilities.

According to neuroscience, even before events happen the brain has already made a prediction about what is most likely to happen, and sets in motion the perception, behaviors, emotions, physiologic responses and interpersonal ways of relating that best fit with what is predicted. In a sense, we learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect.

Regina Pally, The Predicting Brain

photo MarcCooperUK

Keep starting over

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Leaning tower of Pisa.jpg

Research by Carol Dweck at Stanford University says that it is better if we develop a “growth mindset”  which sees challenges and mistakes as opportunities to grow and does not give up when things go wrong. A learning organization is one that is prepared to make mistakes. And, as someone said to me yesterday, even the challenge of a person’s mood can be an occasion to learn:

If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like…. but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . .

If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live.

If you have learned only how to be a success,

your life has probably been wasted

Thomas Merton

photo: cc-by-2.5

The life that’s waiting

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned,

so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Saturday: learning by doing nothing

Karl Duffy5 Comments

trees quote 1

The dream of my life

is to lie down by a slow river

and stare at the light in the trees –

To learn something by being nothing

a little while but the rich

lens of attention

Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom

“If only” this would change …

Karl Duffy2 Comments

drop

People [have always] faced the same kinds of  issues we face now, but with different window dressing. In the time of the Buddha,  men and women were arguing, gossiping, judging others, losing their perspective, overreacting, sexualizing their experiences, chasing after greener pastures, obsessing about non-essentials, feeling lonely and creating too many pipe dreams….. Nothing has fundamentally altered.

How many of us  are still convinced, mature as we may be, that if our partner would only change, or if we could meet the perfect person, everything would be fine?  These are the dysfunctional myths and illusions that drive our lives in very dissatisfying directions.  How many people remember the song from the musical Fiddler on the Roof – “If I were a Rich Man…” 

What is your “big if”?  The big “if” that leads you away from wisdom and reality?

Lama Surya Das,  Awakening the Buddha within

Courage

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Heian Shrine, Kyoto (4610169861).jpg

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now.

The conditions are always impossible

Doris Lessing

photo np&djjewell