Tag: Joy

Walking from the inside out

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The key to life is how we relate to its unfolding,  minute by minute. In one sense, we do not have to get anywhere and anyway,   even if we think we do, there is no GPS,  no pre-determined  maps, no magical tarot cards which give us the final, clear answers to its mysteries. We move either by fear or by trusting that all is fundamentally well. If the latter,  we move the way joy and confidence makes us move, building our life from the inside out.

Keep walking, though there is no place to get to 

Don’t try to see through the distances

That’s not for human beings.

Move within

But don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Rumi

Being carried

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 Sometimes I go about in pity for myself,

and all the while,

a great wind carries me across the sky

Ojibwe Tribe saying.  The Ojibwe are one one of the largest Indigenous ethnic groups in the US and Canada.

Living life fully

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Today is Valentines day, normally celebrated with a special meal and even chocolates. It is also Ash Wednesday in the Christian tradition, a day of fasting, the start of Lent – a season of simplification. They seem quite opposed as celebrations.

However, both are reminders that our lives are short,  and that we should live them with passion and to the fullest, appreciating, and celebrating fully, beauty as it appears in each day  .

In the school of mind

you learn a lot,

And become a true scholar for many to look up to.

In the school of love

you become a child

to learn again

Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, Sufi Poet, 967 – 1049

Sunday Quote: Stop waiting

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Dance in the body you have.

Agnes de Mille, 1905 – 1993, American dancer and choreographer.

Don’t look to others

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Every person has a vocation to be someone:

but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation

he can only be one person: himself.

Thomas Merton

Master Rinzai said ‘Place no head above your own’.

That is, to look outside of ourselves for true peace and satisfaction is hopeless.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

Start again

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

My dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

The one who has thus prepared himself,  whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind; but those who live for hope alone find that the immediate future always slips from their grasp.

 Seneca