Tag: Be fully present

At home with oneself

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute non-connection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for the things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home in the hearth of your soul. . . . In everyone’s inner solitude there is that bright and warm hearth.

John O Donohue

Fully here, now

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is not easy to be fully in the moment, every moment. What we notice is that we have a host of  thoughts,  ideas,  expectations, preconceptions, hopes and fears working as a filter between us and the moment  – or the person – that stands before us. The ability to be right-here-now is what we practice each day; the capacity to choose between the world in our heads or the real world before us. It is true that we rarely see the world, or another person, as they actually are, but we see them as we are in that moment. So in order to be right here with whatever is going on we need, in one sense, to empty ourselves, to create space. The best way to do that is to pause and focus your attention before beginning something, such as a new task,  or a meeting,  or indeed, a conversation. Take a few conscious breaths today before you begin something, to allow a gap to open and the mind to relax enough in order to have the  space to welcome.

If my eye is to receive an image, it must be free from all other images; for if it already has so much as one, it cannot see another, nor can the ear hear a sound if it be occupied with one already. Any power of receiving must first be empty before it can receive anything.

John Tauler, 14th Century German mystic and preacher.

Being true to what is real

Karl Duffy1 Comment

There is only one life  you can call your own and a thousand others you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

By the lake in the wood in the shadows
you can whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from the water, remember,
it wants to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember, in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.

David Whyte, All the true Vows

A simple truth to remember today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 

The quality of our experience,

Moment by moment,

Will determine the quality of our lives

Matthieu Ricard

How to work with disappointment today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When you come in contact with some setback or disappointment, your goal is not to stop it, your goal is get to know it. Instead of running away,  you touch in, you tune in. Drop the storyline. What happens with the storyline is that you escalate it, and then it turns into rage.  Drop the storyline. Just experience the disappointment and stay with that.

Pema Chodron.

A pilgrimage to our own life

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place. In essence, staying close is a pilgrimage to the heart of where we are. Since it is we who lose our directness of living, our task is often to restore that freshness of being alive….How do we stray on and off the path of what matters? How do we befriend the life of obstacles? How do we find a home between suffering and loving the world? How do help each other respond to the invitation to grow?

Mark Nepo