Tag: Be fully present

Inside, not out

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Finding a refuge to come home to

Each one of us has a place to live, be it Ireland, France, Switzerland or the USA. And each of us has a set of current circumstances with which to live. These are our “plots of land”. It is by working with things as they are that we are challenged to find contentment

As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found – in himself.

Erich Fromm

Staying with our plot of land

Karl Duffy2 Comments

planting_seeds_4l

How do we cultivate the conditions for joy to expand?  We train in staying present.  In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and maitri (friendliness) :   in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.  We stay with our own little plot of earth and trust that it can be cultivated, that cultivation will bring it to its full potential.  Even though it’s full of rocks and the soil is dry, we begin to plow this plot of patience.  We let the process evolve naturally. . .

Being present …even with difficult emotions

Karl Duffy2 Comments

welcome-mat

In meditation …. meet what arises in the mind. First meet it and include it,  whether you like it or should be experiencing it or not. While stepping back, be curious, be more fully conscious. How is this anger, how does it feel? How am I with it? What’s it like when I don’t stiffen against it, lecture it? What’s it like when I don’t believe in the stories it tells me about them and me and how it should be, but distill all that down to one reference point: anger, simmering, burning? Can I see it as a trapped energy that needs some generous handling? Visualize it – what does it look like? Above all prioritize present engagement, feel it in your body, breathe into it. Abandon the idea of getting through it, or that you should be some other way. Then, when I’m not superior or inferior to my anger; when I am neither denying not justifying it – then I’m not overwhelmed and the anger is held with mindfulness. Deprived of further food, it reconnects to bodily vitality. So the mind becomes calm and bright.

Ajahn Sucitto, Spiritual work is Play

Reacting or responding?

Karl Duffy1 Comment

No matter what the situation is,
we are responsible for our own mind states

Joseph Goldstein

Push and pull

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Tug of war 2.jpg

Meditation practice provides the perfect context for observing our beliefs and recognizing the tug-of-war we have with our experience. Just sit quietly for five minutes and watch what happens. Unless we have some accomplishment in meditation, we won’t know what to do with all the activity. We become overwhelmed by the energetic play of the mind, pummeled by our own thoughts and emotions, bewildered by our inability to sit in peace. We will want to do something. And we really only have two means of escape from all this mayhem: we can either spin out into thought, which is an exaggeration of reality, or we can suppress or deny it.

Exaggeration and denial describe the dilemma we have with mind, and not just in meditation. Exaggeration and denial operate in conjunction with all our fantasies, hopes, and fears. When we exaggerate experience, we see what isn’t there. And when we deny it, we don’t see what is. Both exaggeration and denial are extraneous to the true nature of things, the nature we experience when we can just stay present.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question

wanting to be a pleasant feeling

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our attitude is frequently one of wanting to get it done, wanting to have it finished in order to be peaceful, to relax, or to enjoy ourselves….

We want to be a feeling.

Rushing along to be something in the next moment, we fail to open and appreciate this moment.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth