That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning:
‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’
Mary Oliver, Foreword, Long Life: Essays and other Writing
Tag: heart
Intimate Kindness
Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather, it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference. Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing. As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel — to be here is immense. To be created and come to birth is to be blessed. Some primal kindness chose us and brought us through the forest of dreaming until we could emerge into the clearance of individuality, with a path of life opening before us through the world.
John O Donohue
Always looking elsewhere
There is no greater mystery than this,
that we keep seeking reality
though in fact we are reality
Ramana Maharsi
photo epsos.de
Trust
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
David Whyte
A story about doing what is right
Once, the sage Tulsidas saw a scorpion that was struggling to escape from a river. The scorpion was about to drown, when Tulsidas reached over and saved it. The scorpion immediately stung Tulsidas. In shock, Tulsidas dropped the scorpion back into the waters, where it began struggling again to keep from drowning. Tulsidas again reached over and picked up the scorpion to save it from drowning. The scorpion stung Tulsidas once again. This happened three more times, before Tulsidas was finally able to toss the scorpion to safety in the wooded land around the river.
A man who had been watching this whole incident walked over to Tulsidas, and asked him, “Are you crazy?”
Tulsidas replied, “It is the scorpion’s nature to sting, and it is my nature to be helpful to all beings. If the scorpion keeps its nature even in the face of death, why should I give up my compassionate nature in the face of his sting?”
Photo: Per-Anders Olsson
Moving forward in spite of our fears
I drove back from some meetings yesterday across the Curragh, which is unique in Ireland as a flat open plain of land which has existed for thousands of years as uncultivated land, nowadays used for grazing. It is without fences, so the sheep roam freely, and sit at the side of the road, or, as was the case yesterday, simply wander out in front of the car without any regard for safety or “rules”. It was interesting to see them behaving without fear because of their familiarity with traffic and because they have become used to the freedom of the area, having grown up in flocks where this “courage” was normal. Most of our fearful behaviour is learnt, often due to frightening responses or lack of encouragement when we were young, or simply by being in proximity with people whose dominant narrative was fearful. Knowing where they originate is less important than recognizing their presence in us as adults, where they frequently operate as thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that we may not be aware of or simply think are inevitable.
We are more addicted to fear than to fearlessness. Notice how much of the day you hold tightly to your fears, especially the fear of the loss of control. All of our “what if” thinking falls into this category: “What if I don’t do it right?” “What if it’s painful?” “What if I look bad?“ These thoughts are based on wanting to control some imagined future more than on what’s happening now. It’s crucial to see and to label them with the question: “What is my most believed thought right now?”
After seeing the mental constructs, we just sit, experiencing what’s happening right now, aware of the intense physical sensations of anxiety — the tightness, the queasiness, the narrowing down. We might ask the practice question, “What is this moment?” What happens when we do this? Finding the answer is what practice is really about.
Again, the simplicity and clarity of practice amounts to this: first, we must see through the mental process, dropping the story line of “me.” What is the story line of “me”? It’s the addiction to comfort and thoughts, to our self-judgments and emotions, to our identities and our fears.
Ezra Bayda
Mindfulbalance 