Tag: impermanence

Letting go of knowing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One thing that we notice very quickly when we practice meditation is that our experience is always changing. Thus practice helps us develop a mental flexibility by keeping us in the present moment, accepting what is present in the body and in our lives. We work with life as it is, without always being able to see the overall picture. Sometimes things become clear  only long after the event. We come to see that there is a larger context in which our life is unfolding and accept change as being one of the great realities of life. When we understand the impermanence of things, as the old saying tells us, we cease to struggle.

Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A meditation exercise in times of transition

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Bring your awareness to focus on something in your life that is changing or ending or dying right now. Breathe gently as you consider whatever transition is most significant right now in your life. Note any feelings that arise – trepidation, excitement, resistance, anger, annoyance, or grief. Every time your feelings get the better of you, become aware of your breathing. Meet your troubled and contracted feelings with your calm and expansive breath. Breathe, sigh, and stretch out on the river of change. Remember times when you have resisted change in the past. Regard how things turned out in the end – maybe not how you thought they would or you wanted them to, but in the end, there you were. Wiser, stronger, still alive. Smile. Relax. Allow yourself to break open. Sit tall, with dignity and patience, watching your breath rise and fall, rise and fall. Pray for the courage to welcome this new change with openness and wisdom.

Then, open your eyes, go back into your life, and do what you have to do, but do it with grace, with hope, and with a lighter touch.

Elizabeth Lesser

A faulty basic belief

Karl Duffy1 Comment

It’s the belief that we shouldn’t have any problems, any discomfort, any pain, that makes modern life seem so distressing. Life doesn’t match our image of how it should be, and we conclude that life itself is wrong. We relate to everything from the narrow, fearful perspective of ‘I want’ — and what we want is to feel good. When our emotional distress does not feel good, we recoil from it. The resulting discomfort generates fear, then fear creates even more distress, and distress becomes our enemy, something to be rid of. Let us instead examine our basic requirement that life should be comfortable. This one assumption causes all of our endless difficulties.

Ezra Bayda, Saying Yes to Life (Even The Hard Parts)

Self is a verb

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The practice of meditation invites us to investigate the flux of arising and passing events. When we get the hang of it, we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flash cards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the cards and pulling them of the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb.

Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind

Sunday Quote: Trying to hold on

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is not because of impermanence that we suffer,

but because of our ideas about permanence

Thich Nhat Hahn

When depth comes through the broken bits

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Growth can often involves a letting go of old ways, especially those that have ceased to serve. However, when we are in the midst of it, it can be hard to appreciate it in this way. We are more inclined to hold on to what is familiar and keep to what we know. However, sometimes the depth of new life can only be seen when the current one is broken open. It is true that there are occasions when we only grow when we pass through difficulties. With growth we move toward fuller healing and wholeness. It’s as if they had been waiting all along, until you made room for them to come into your life.

The world, I’ve come to think, is like the surface of a frozen lake.

We walk along, we slip, we try to keep our balance and not to fall.

One day, there’s a crack, and  so we learn that underneath us — is an unimaginable depth.

James Joyce, The Dead