Tag: impermanence

Going deeper

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We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life

Jung

Lean forward

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The truth is that every fresh experience has this dizziness of freedom that we must move through. Every time we reach beyond what is familiar, there is this necessary acclimation to what is new. It is the doorway to all learning. We needn’t be afraid of it or give it too much power. We simply have to keep leaning into what we are learning.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Have wings

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Sentiments – on a very cold and wintry New Years Eve morning in Ireland – for the end of this year and the start of a new one:

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter

Freedom

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From the 17th to the 23rd of December a special sequence of invocations have been prayed, since at least the 5th Century.  The one for today remembers the Israelites journey out of slavery in Egypt:

O Adonai, You appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
and gave him the Law on Sinai:
come and save us with an outstretched arm.

The word in Hebrew – Mitzraim – means “a narrow place”, so “going out from Egypt” can mean going from a place where we are stuck, to a wider place, a place where we are free. Many of us have felt stuck this year, so this ancient desire at this time, the darkest days of the year, reflects a deep longing to be freed, to see where we are trapped and to let go of what is dead in our lives.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

David Whyte, Sweet Darkness

Pause and stay present

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The propensity to feel sorry for ourselves, the propensity to be jealous, the propensity to get angry — our habitual, all-too-familiar emotional responses are like seeds that we just keep watering and nurturing. But every time we pause and stay present with the underlying energy, we stop reinforcing these propensities and begin to open ourselves to refreshingly new possibilities.

As you respond differently to an old habit, you may start to notice changes. In the past when you got angry, it might have taken you three days to cool down, but if you keep interrupting the angry thoughts, you may get to the point at which it takes only a day to drop the anger. Eventually, only hours or even one and a half minutes. You’re starting to be liberated from suffering

Pema Chodron, Free yourself from the story of You

Walk in the dark

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Perhaps the main lesson to be learnt from this year

My teacher Ajahn Chah would often respond to people’s questions, plans, and ideas with a smile and say, ‘Mai neh.’ The phrase means, ‘It is uncertain, isn’t it?’ He understood the wisdom of uncertainty, the truth of change, and was comfortable in their midst….wisdom grows by opening to the truth of not knowing.

For a long time I didn’t understand this. As I matured, I began to see that it is much simpler than this. At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world. With wisdom we allow this not knowing to become a form of trust. St. John of the Cross described it this way, ‘If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.’

Jack Kornfield