Tag: heart

Letting go of old patterns

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realise how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits.

John O’Donohue

Never having really lived

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered: 

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

A love that does not have conditions

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We can develop a love that is steadfast and universal. We develop it not because we force ourselves to love so fully. Rather, we discover that loving unconditionally is the greatest source of joy, and that we are the loser for any hesitation or interruption in that love, such as “I would really love you if you would just do your share of the cooking, if you would just do this, if you would be like that.”

Whenever we hesitate like that, we lose. This helps me remember not to mortgage away any of my days by having a grudge or a grievance or making myself distant. That would simply cause a rupture in that steadfast, universal love that is so joyful.

Sylvia Boorstein

Making space for new words

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Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past Into indifferent lives, or into any future; You are not the same people who left that station Or who will arrive at any terminus.  T.S. Eliot, The Dry Savages

The Latin word “limen” means “threshold” . Liminality is an inner state ands sometimes an outer situation where people can begin to think and act in genuinely new ways. It is when we are betwixt and between, have left one room but not yet entered the next room, any hiatus between stages of life, stages of faith, jobs, loves or relationships. It is that graced time when we are not certain or in control, when something genuinely new can happen. We are empty, receptive, an erased tablet waiting for new words. Nothing fresh or creative will normally happen when we are inside our  self-constructed comfort zones,  only more of the same. Nothing original emerges from business as usual. It seems we need some anti-structure to give direction, depth and purpose to our regular structure. Otherwise, structure, which is needed in the first half of life, tends to become a prison as we grow older. Much of the work of …human destiny itself is to get people into liminal space and to keep them there long enough to learn something essential and genuinely new. It is the ultimate teaching space. In some sense it is the only teaching space.

Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return

Sunday Quote: Identity

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Your identity is not equivalent to your biography

John O Donohue, The Inner Landscape of Beauty

Being patient and starting over

Karl Duffy2 Comments

I was thinking about the GPS in my car. It never gets annoyed at me. If I make a mistake, it says, “Recalculating.” And then it tells me to make the soonest left turn and go back. I thought to myself, you know, I should write a book and call it “Recalculating” because I think that that’s what we’re doing all the time. If something happens, it challenges us and the challenge is, OK, so do you want to get mad now? You could get mad, you could go home, you could make some phone calls, you could tell a few people you can’t believe what this person said or that person said. Indignation is tremendously seductive, you know, and to share with other people on the telephone and all that. So to not do it and to say, wait a minute, apropos of you said before, wise effort to say to yourself, wait a minute, this is not the right road. Literally, this is not the right road. There’s a fork in the road here. I could become indignant, I could flame up this flame of negativity or I could say, “Recalculating.” I’ll just go back here. And no matter how many times I don’t make that turn, it will continue to say, “Recalculating.” The tone of voice will stay the same.

Sylvia Boorstein.