Tag: heart

Conscious living

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:RuWiki.Confer.20071028.Informal Discussion.jpg

The real goal of a therapy is not a “cure”, for the human condition is not a disease. Yes, real, resistant problems of daily life can and must be addressed and the resources of consciousness brought fully to bear on their resolution. But the real gift of a therapy, or of any truly considered life, is that one achieves a deepened conversation around the meaning of one’s journey – a conversation without which one lives a received life, not one’s own, a superficial life, or a life in service to complexes or ideologies.

James Hollis, What Matter most: Living a more considered Life

photo alexei kuprianov

Sunday Quote: Deep within

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sherrard Point-Larch Mountain-Oregon.jpg

Keep your feet on the top of the mountain

and sound deep to that

of God in everyone

George Fox, 1624 – 1691, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers)

With thanks to Cilla at http://www.weaversjournal.wordpress.com for the thought

photo wyldnthewoods

Remaining astonished by life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

tearmann

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension,

which we feel as paralysis because

we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet

photo of the coffee shop in Kilcullen, called An Tearmann,  which is Irish for “Refuge” or “Sanctuary”

Becoming silent

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:The Silent.jpg

As my prayer become more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen
– which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
not merely being silent.
This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking,
Prayer involves becoming silent,
And being silent,
And waiting until God is heard.

Søren Kierkegaard, 1813 – 1855, Danish Philosopher

photo miguel virkkunen calvalho

Withdrawing permission

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Tree still standing - geograph.org.uk - 964093.jpg

In standing still and receiving life with all its adversity and sorrow, you have withdrawn your permission for suffering to define your life. You have also withdrawn your consent to living in fear. Something profound happens in your heart when you turn with kindness toward all the circumstances of pain which you have previously repressed, dismissed or fled from. There is a softening, an opening, a deepening capacity and willingness to understand sorrow and its cause.

Christine Feldman, Compassion

photo shaun ferguson

Love does that

Karl Duffy3 Comments
File:Donkeys at Dooks Mountain - geograph.org.uk - 647635.jpg
All day long the little donkey labours, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about the things that bother only donkeys.
 
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labour.
 
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the donkey’s eyes and touches her ears
 
and for a few seconds the donkey is free
and even seems to laugh,
 
because love does that.
Love frees.
Meister Eckhart
photo dave whalley