Holding on too tightly

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Not that difficult to grasp in the weather here in Ireland this last week. Not so easy to grasp in our inner lives:

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other. All around us the wind, the fire, the earth, and the water, are always taking on different qualities; they’re like magicians. We also change like the weather. We ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid.

And so we suffer.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

photo of clouds in Malahide,  Dublin,  by Miguel Mendez

How we choose to tell the story

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We stick to the wrong thing quite often, not because it will come to fruition by further effort, but because we cannot let go of the way we have decided to tell the story and we become further enmeshed even by trying to make sense of what entraps us, when what is needed is a simple, clean breaking away. To remove our selves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and at times un-compromisingly is often the real and radically courageous break for freedom.

David Whyte, ‘Withdrawal’ From Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

photo waffen5

Our Practice for today. Simple, but not easy.

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Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell, Prayer

photo thomas brown

A contented mind

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Great wealth consists in living on a little with a contented mind;

for of a little there is never a lack.

Lucretius, Roman poet c 99 BC – 55 BC,  On the Nature of Things Book 5,  1118-1120

photo Suriya Donavanik

The way things are

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Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don’t hold strongly to the self as self, what do we have to fear?

Have faith in the way things are.

Love all things that happen as your self; then you can care for all things.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

photo : julio nohara

Not getting stuck in passing thoughts

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One should learn from nature by observing the fact that flowing water never stagnates

and a busy door with active hinges never rusts

Sun Ssumo

photo dhowes9