impermanence – Page 382 – Mindfulbalance

Not letting anxiety become fear

September 27, 2011September 27, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The truth is that you will never be absolutely safe. All things change constantly, even what is most precious. You know that you and those you love will die, but not when or how. This is the angst of life, the price of being a conscious human being. It is not a flaw, although many people cannot let loose of seeing it in such a manner. It is just the way life is constructed. When your awareness of this vulnerability is triggered, you can be swept into panic, collapse into depression, or desperately try to distract yourself. One of the values of practice is that you are able to come to terms with this anxiety in a conscious manner. Your life becomes more integrated because you are no longer trying to deny or avoid what is true.

For instance, you simply forget a meeting, yet you are traumatized, certain that you are losing your ability to focus. Or someone disappoints you and you collapse into complete self-hatred, fearing that you have no worth to the other. With mindfulness practice, you learn to see how the untrained mind is agitated by the human condition and how not to allow this general anxiety to fuel your fear in a specific situation. You also gain tolerance for the unpleasantness of uncertainty and also the naturalness of your own imperfection. You have confidence that “life is like this.” You cannot and are not supposed to miraculously fix it; rather, you gain the insight that happiness and peace come from relating to life just as it is.

Phiilipp Moffit, Freedom from Fear

A time of silent growth

September 24, 2011September 24, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Yesterday’s equinox saw a shift in the balance of light and darkness in each day. We too can find light and darkness, strength and weakness, within us. We like strength, but weakness often frightens us and our instinct is to run away. What if we could stop struggling with those parts of our lives and look at them, without seeing them as the enemy? To grow emotionally and psychologically, we first need to acknowledge our personal vulnerability.

I gratefully acknowledge how darkness has become less of an enemy for me and more of a place of silent nurturance, where the slow, steady gestation needed for my soul’s growth can occur. Not only is light a welcomed part of my life, but I am also developing a greater understanding of how much I need to befriend my inner darkness.

Joyce Rupp, Little pieces of light

The start of Autumn and letting go

September 23, 2011September 22, 2011 Karl Duffy3 Comments

Autumn is the season of reaping what has been sown and of things coming to fruition. Traditionally, it is also the period when one begins to wind down and celebrate the abundance and goodness of the earth, before the year moves into the dark and cold time of winter. Because of the rich colours and changing light it is a very suggestive time, and leads us to reflect on changes and growth, as well as letting things go and moving on. From the Autumn Equinox onwards the days get shorter and darkness and night take center stage. These changes are natural and remind us of the balance in our lives between light and darkness, growth and rest. We often more naturally prefer light and warmth to the dark and the cold. However, in this poem, we are reminded that some of the darkness in our lives is also a time of growth, as necessary as the bright days of Spring or Summer. The poet reflects on loss, and sees reflections of her struggle and grief outdoor in Nature. She sees the challenge, where she needs to go – to let go “as trees let go their leaves,” and “treelike, stand unmoved before the change.”

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.

May Sarton, Autumn Sonnets

The seasons change…note the craving to be otherwise today.

September 23, 2011September 23, 2011 Karl Duffy2 Comments

The changing of the seasons reminds us that we too are always changing, as we move from birth to death. There are also continual mini seasons in our lives, as we have periods of growth and rest, of planting and bearing fruit. And the same dynamic is even seen in each moment, and is at the heart of being aware:

The present moment hovers between past and future, just as life hovers between birth and death. We respond to both in similar ways. Just as we flee from the awesome encounter with birth and death to the safety of a manageable world, so we flee from the pulse of the present to a fantasy world…..Evasion of the unadorned immediacy of life is as deep-seated as it is relentless. Even with the ardent desire to be alert and aware in the present moment, the mind flings us into tawdry and tiresome elaborations of the past and future. The craving to be otherwise, to be elsewhere, permeates the body, feelings, perceptions, will – consciousness itself. It is like the background radiation from the big bang of birth, the aftershock of having erupted into existence.

Stephen Bachelor, Buddhism without Beliefs