growth – Page 44 – Mindfulbalance

Dissolving fear

August 25, 2015August 24, 2015 Karl Duffy1 Comment

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

hoto raul654

Taking a step into a larger life

August 10, 2015August 9, 2015 Karl Duffy6 Comments

We get to this point in our life [where] we see that stepping into a larger life is intimidating because it requires that we risk being who we really are, that is, what wants to come to the world through us – rather than serving our ego comforts or whatever instructions came our way. We cannot expect someone else to give us permission. The parent complexes, or the culture complexes, are embedded in our history and will never stop saying what they always said. So it is up to us at this later point, when we have served those voices so long, to realize that our own psyches have a unique point of view, that each one of us is different and that we are bound for different destinies. Stepping into largeness will require that we discern our personal authority – rather than the authority of others or the authority of our internalized admonitions – and live this inner authority with risk and boldness.

James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a more Considered Life.

photo wiros

Keeping the self fluid

August 6, 2015August 6, 2015 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Bend in the path to Ben Nevis - geograph.org.uk - 856447.jpg

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be. And know as well the need to not be:
let that ground of all that changes
bring you to completion now.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13

photo stephen sweeney

Not striving

July 24, 2015July 17, 2015 Karl Duffy1 Comment

You don’t have to do anything to acquire happiness. The great Meister Eckhart said very beautifully, “God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.” You don’t do anything to be free, you drop something. Then you’re free.

Anthony de Mello, sj.

photo paul nelhams

Sunday Quote: Freedom

July 19, 2015July 8, 2015 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The only freedom is the freedom from the known

J Krisnamurti

photo carl magnus-helgegren

Trust

July 18, 2015July 9, 2015 Karl Duffy2 Comments

The center that I cannot find
is known to my unconscious mind.

W.H. Auden

About this Blog

Mindfulbalance supports the slow, patient practice of mindfulness meditation, as a way to find balance and meaning in life, reduce stress and develop health and wellbeing. It contains reflections to encourage the practice of meditation as well as occasional posts from psychology, spirituality and the wisdom traditions. The daily posts are prompted by Rilke's advice: "Write about what your everyday life offers you, your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind, and your belief in some kind of beauty". Written in County Laois, Ireland