The mind creates the abyss,
the heart crosses it.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 – 1981, Indian non-dualist teacher
Overcoming our fears
Tag: Joy
Breathe
One of the oldest Muslim mystical sayings talks about the process of achieving a more refined spiritual consciousness consisting of the following steps:
Hoosh dar dam: To become mindful and aware of one’s breath
Nazar bar qadam: To have one’s eyes on one’s feet. Literally, to watch where you are and where you are heading
Khalvat dar anjoman: To maintain a practice of solitude and full presence, even and especially in the midst of the hustle and bustle of crowd
It all begins with becoming aware of the breath.
Omid Safi, Learning How to Breathe Again
90 seconds
We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.
So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the storyline. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.
Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change
Cultivate patience
Officially Springtime, and the clocks go forward this evening, but Ireland yesterday saw rain, hail and even snow in some places. Seek refuge indeed…
Cultivate your strengths, your patience, and take your refuge. Get established in your embodiment so your somatic energies know the place where it’s alright to not know, to be uncertain, to not have a clue. From there, good will arise, the good will come. This is the act of faith. The Dhamma field is a tremendous blessing that occurs when one takes that step in the dark with faith … and lingers and stays.
Ajahn Sucitto
Dropping the question
The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha thought, not edifying.
One must immerse oneself into the river of life and let the question drift away.
Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy
Inside and all around
The Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. What we need is already here, inside or all around us
If your spiritual guides say to you,
‘Look, the divine Realm is
in the sky’……. well then the birds
will get there ahead of you.
If they say, ‘It is in the sea’….. then the fish will precede you.
No, divine Reality exists inside and all around you.
When you come to know your true Self, you will be fully known —
realizing at last that you are a child of the Living One.
If, however, you never come to know
who you truly are,
you are a poverty-stricken being,
and it is your ‘self’ which will be impoverished.
The Gospel of Thomas, c 120 AD.
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