Keep walking, though there is no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distance.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within
but don’t move the way fear makes you move
Rumi
Tag: heart
Seeing into the heart of things
I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin, French artist
Developing friendship towards ones life
The very first step, and perhaps the hardest, is developing an unconditional friendship with oneself. Developing unconditional friendship means taking the very scary step of getting to know yourself. It means being willing to look at yourself very closely and to stay with yourself when you want to shut down. It means keeping your heart open when you feel that what you see in yourself is just too embarrassing, too painful, too unpleasant, too hateful.
Pema Chodron
Downstream
At times we need to pay attention to what is going on upstream in our lives and in the world around us, rather than always reacting or playing catch-up. We can find that we have constructed a lot of reactive practices – fire-fighting – rather than dealing with the issues at source, somewhat like the Downstreamers in this contemporary fable by Donald Ardell. We need to recognize what are the stressors in the way our life is structured and take proactive measures to readjust the balance, rather than dealing with the symptoms when they become overwhelming. Or sometimes we need courage to go back in our history and face the events that are still having consequences in our life today.
It was many years ago that villagers in Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river. Some old timers remember how spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing. Sometimes, they say, it would take hours to pull 10 people from the river, and even then only a few would survive.
Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, the good folks of Downstream have responded admirably to the challenge. Their rescue system is clearly second to none: most people discovered in the swirling waters are reached within 20 minutes — many in less than 10. Only a small number drown each day before help arrives — a big improvement from the way it used to be.
Talk to the people of Downstream and they’ll speak with pride about the new hospital by the edge of the waters, the flotilla of rescue boats ready for service at a moment’s notice, the comprehensive health plans for coordinating all the manpower involved, and the large number of highly trained and dedicated swimmers always ready to risk their lives to save victims from the raging currents. Sure it costs a lot but, say the Downstreamers, what else can decent people do except to provide whatever is necessary when human lives are at stake.
Oh, a few people in Downstream have raised the question now and again, but most folks show little interest in what’s happening Upstream. It seems there’s so much to do to help those in the river that nobody’s got time to check how all those bodies are getting there in the first place. That’s the way things are, sometimes.
Donald Ardell, “The Parable of the Downstreamers” in High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease
To work with fear – notice, don’t analyse, don’t run
When we notice that the conditions of the mind and the body are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis and it is not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing of whatever passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise as soon as any fear, anger or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics, looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We are simply recognizing the way it is right now. Meditation is established on that which is ordinary, not on that which is extraordinary.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way.
What is prayer
It cannot be put any simpler or more beautiful than this. Just pay attention. And let what we see enrich our inner life.
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Mary Oliver, Prayer
Mindfulbalance 