Be fully present – Page 601

Receive reality softly

August 12, 2011September 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

What we normally perceive as concrete objects and discrete events emerge from interwoven relationships, our very act of seeing a part of the weave. When we recognize this, rather than feeling locked in by a state of mind, an encounter, an occurance, we see that the essential nature of all that is happening is not that of a wall but of a web. When I see only suffering and unfulfilled possibility, I need to remind myself of the mystery of life’s unfolding – the many linkages that are carrying my efforts through currents of connection to results that I may never see. In order to know the truth of interconnectedness, we need to look at the world with what Robert Thurman calls “quiet eyes”. It might be through silent meditation that we see the hidden patterns of connection that make up our inner life. It may be through pausing long enough that we realize where a plate of spaghetti comes from. However we do it, softly receiving reality with quiet eyes, rather than pinpointing objects and events as separate and distinct, opens up our view rather than closing it with predetermined boundaries. We take in what is appearing before reactions and conclusions get fixed. When we relax into this mode of perception, a different perspective on reality becomes available to us.

Sharon Salzberg, Faith

Seeing the secret

August 12, 2011August 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Another writer, Eugene O?Neill, describing a moment – when he looked up at the stars in the night sky – when he saw something as if for the first time. Although difficult, we try to bring some of this quality to each encounter and each moment, not meeting them through the filters of our conditioning, fears or preconceived notions:

For a moment I lost myself – actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the…high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life.. – to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way…. For a second you see the secret – and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning!

Eugene O’Neill, Long Days Journey into Night

Simple daily practices: Pause

August 12, 2011August 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Our habits are strong, so a certain discipline is required to step outside our cocoon and receive the magic of our surroundings. The pause practice—the practice of taking three conscious breaths at any moment when we notice that we are stuck — is a simple but powerful practice that each of us can do at any given moment.

Pause practice can transform each day of your life. It creates an open doorway to the sacredness of the place in which you find yourself. The vastness, stillness, and magic of the place will dawn upon you, if you let your mind relax and drop for just a few breaths the storyline you are working so hard to maintain. If you pause just long enough, you can reconnect with exactly where you are, with the immediacy of your experience.

Pema Chodron, Waking up to your World

Just being aware

August 11, 2011August 1, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

This quote, from a essay by Anne Dilliard, is as good a description of the simple – but difficult – act of paying attention, that moment before we add words to what we are experiencing. It is something which we keep working at, slowing down the continual commentary which accompanies everything in our mind, working on our capacity to just let thing be:

This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am petting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I’ve lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip’s stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat. I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator – our very self-consciousness – is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends.

Annie Dilliard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Letting the breath be

August 9, 2011August 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We are all breathing. The first instruction is just to know that we are, not in an intellectual sense, but to be aware of the simple sensation of, the in-breath and the out-breath. Even in this instruction we are learning something extremely important, to allow the breathing follow its own nature, to breath itself. We are not trying to make the breath simple or keep it shallow. We are seeing how it is.That flies in the face of our lifelong conditioning to control, direct and orchestrate everything. We’re terrified of chaos, afraid that if we don’t keep things in their place they will all fall apart. Most of us are quite good at controlling, and what we’d really like is to be even better at it. Our tendency is to ride the breath, push it along, help it out…..

That isn’t the instruction. The instruction is to let it be, to surrender to the breathing. We are learning even in this first instruction the art of surrender.

Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath