Tag: Joy

…and create room for joy

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We create room for joy as we move beyond “shoulds” and “musts” to an expansive state where we accept our capacity to be both powerful and gentle, expansive and reclusive, delighted and bored, wise and confused, passive and assertive, giving and receptive, generous and withholding, frightened and adventuresome, angry and loving. As we become accepting of ourselves we are more able to reach inside and speak our truths: Yes, No, I want, I can, I feel, I believe, I see, I love. This is a form of self-love that creates unity and peacefulness within because we are living at one with our wisest self.

Charlotte Kasl, Finding Joy

Quietening the mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Inside me a hundred beings are putting their fingers to their lips and saying,

“That’s enough for now.  Shhhhh.”

Silence is an ocean.   Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk

to the language-river.

Listen to the ocean,

and bring your talky business to an end.

Rumi, Send the Chaperones Away

We fall, we get back up

Karl Duffy2 Comments

As yesterday morning’s post stated, we can find that we pass through periods which don’t fit our picture of how we want our life to be. Or we can find that some things don’t go exactly as we would like. These words of the Irish writer, Samuel Beckett, can help at such times and  show a deep understanding of the gentleness and non-judmental attitude we need to take towards ourselves in meditation and in life. The key in both is simply starting over, without letting  judgmental or self-critical thoughts take over. We like to imagine that we can have a mind without fault, but mostly this is not possible. We imagine we will someday have a perfect personality, but again this is unlikely to last long. So our main work is cultivating self-compassion and not dwelling too long on critical stories about ourselves.

Ever tried. Ever failed.

No matter.

Try Again. Fail again.

Fail better

Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Every morning a new day is created

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A simple poem, suggested by the sky at dawn this morning. Even as the days shorten, and darkness seems to encroach more, the light at dawn is beautiful. There are moments of light and strength, even at those times when we seem to struggle.

Every morning the world is created…

If it is in your nature to be happy..

And if your spirit  carries within it

the thorn that is heavier than lead….

there is still somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted –

each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, every morning,

whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not you have ever dared to pray.

Mary Oliver

What happens today is not a deviation from life

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The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening. The more difficulties you have, in fact, the greater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot.

Pema Chodron

Sunday Quote: Like a leaf

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Walk around feeling like a leaf
know you could tumble at any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

Naomi Shibab Nye, The Art of Disappearing