Tag: heart

There is nothing ahead

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Flickr - law keven - Looking forward....jpg

Some of the sentiments expressed around New Year –  or the current fad of people posting pictures online –  can lead us to think that looking to the future, or looking for happiness somewhere other than where we are,  is good for our mental health. These beautiful few lines from Rumi – an extract from a longer inspiring poem –  reminds us that it is in this moment,  in what is right here, and not in our concepts, is where we need to keep our awareness.

 Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.

Rumi,

from Coleman Barks, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing

photo kevin law

Expectations

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Marseille Girl Looking Over Calanque Sormiou.jpg

Our life in the world comes to us in the shape of time.

Consequently, our expectation is both a creative and constructive force.

If you expect to find nothing within yourself but the repressed, abandoned, and shameful elements of your past or a haunted hunger, all you will find is emptiness and desperation. 

The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.

In a vital sense, perception is reality.

John O’Donohue,  AnamChara

photo of girl standing on the Calanque of Sormiou, near Marseille by benh lieu song

How to open up infinite possibilities

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Looking over the Negev (7680744384).jpg

When you become comfortable with uncertainty,

infinite possibilities open up in your life…fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do,

and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change

Eckhart Tolle

photo neil ward

Nowhere to go, Nothing to achieve

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Relax.jpg

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one with oneself.

(La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi)

Michel de Montaigne, Essais Book I, ch. 39

Seeing all we have

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Eigg.jpg

It is important to emphasize, in discussing meditation … that you shouldn’t start out with some idea of gaining. This is the deepest paradox in all of meditation: we want to get somewhere—we wouldn’t have taken up the practice if we didn’t — but the way to get there is just to be fully here. The way to get from point A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection to the present, which is all we ever have. If your breathing is shallow, your mind and body restless, let them be that way, for as long as they need to. Just watch them. The first law  is that everything is constantly changing. No one is saying that the breathing should be some particular way all the time. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation, there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that, and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is. You may think that you want it to change, but that act of acceptance is in itself a major change.

Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing

photo griff le riff

The secret of living fully

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Comunidad Pemon niño.JPG

A man sees in the world

what he carries in his heart.

Goethe, Faust

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

photo zuliannyGM