Tag: gratitude

Taking Responsibility 2: Ending blame

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A similar reflection to the earlier one from Hollis, this time from a Buddhist perspective:

From a meditator’s point of view, as long as we’re looking for someone to blame, our mind is unable to settle. By putting ourselves into a mind space where we’re constantly projecting out into the world—trying to find someone or something who could be responsible for our unhappy state—we abandon the possibility of harmony. Blame is a form of aggression. Looking outward for an object to which we can attach our negativity and irritation hinders our ability to have peace. The meditation path encourages us to be bigger, more openminded, more mature. It’s suggesting that we take responsibility for our behavior. This means that one day we will simply have to stop blaming the world.

Blame is an obstacle on the path of openmindedness and understanding. By blaming others when the world doesn’t move the way we want, we’re creating narrow parameters into which everything must fit. We become dead-set on what will solve our problem; nothing else will do. Blame ties us to the past and reduces who we are. Our possibilities become confined to one small situation.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, End Blame

Having more love than fear

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Fear-based decisions prevent us from accessing our deepest needs, values, and wishes. We are sometimes driven or stopped by fear because it feels too overwhelming for us. Fear may convince us that the worst will happen and that we will be unable to handle it. This is the powerlessness that makes fear so sinister.

Adult relating is in the capacity to commit ourselves without being immobilized by the fear of abandonment if someone pulls too far away, or by the fear of engulfment if someone gets too close. It will seem as if these fears result directly from the behavior of our adult partner, but these are phantom fears from childhood. What is hurting us is gone but still stimulates. We are reacting to the inner landscape of our own past, a landscape ravaged by archaic plunder that has never been acknowledged, restored, or forgiven.

Fearlessness does not consist in having less fear or no fear but having so much more love that we go beyond fear! Fear is the porcupine on the trail as we hike: interesting, but not stopping us and not to be eliminated, since it belongs to the ecology of the psychic path. We rally our power with the conviction that there is an alternative to what the frightened mind has construed and that we do have it within us to handle whatever comes our way.

David Richo

An evening prayer

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May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden you.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams,
Possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.

John O’Donoghue, May the light of your soul gude you

Hospitality

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I am at home in Ireland and have been struck by the welcome, ease and friendliness of people, in shops, taxis and at a football match. Early Celtic spirituality placed a huge emphasis on hospitality, and some of that has persisted to this day.

The focus of hospitality was especially directed toward strangers and the poor, and that still challenges us today, especially in our self-obsessed society. However, another reflection on openness and welcome which can be looked at, in the light of the last few posts, is how we offer hospitality to ourselves, to our fears, to the people and situations that scare us? We are sometimes easier on others than we are on ourselves. Can we turn towards those emotions that frighten us, rather than turn away?

May the blessing of light be on you – light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great  fire,
so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.
And may light shine out of your eyes,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

Early Scottish Prayer

Don’t listen to yourself

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The trick is not how much pain you feel but how much joy you feel.

Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses not to love, excuses, excuses, excuses.

Erica Jong

Reduce the negative, develop the positive…

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When we are having a tough day, finding the positive side of everyday happenings can be difficult.  It is an even greater struggle for people suffering from depression. But by developing skills to tune into the positive, depressed people can strengthen their overall wellbeing and mental health, a 2009 Ohio State University study found. By staying mindful of the positive elements of daily events, or by documenting each days happiest moments in a journal, a person may lower their stress levels. “Positive emotions build resilience to stress, in addition to having an undoing effect on depression” says Alan Keck, Psychologist at the Centre for Positive Psychology.

He goes on to say that we should consciously build up our positive resilience by really focusing when we are having an experience that we find especially pleasant. This may simply be a good cup of coffee, a special brunch, a visit to friends, a nice meal. To magnify the results, he says, pay attention to what you see, hear, and feel, both physically and emotionally, and smile. Then consciously tell yourself to “remember this” experience for which you feel grateful. Doing this helps the mind store the positive effects of the moment for future use.