Tag: Life

Celebrating each moment

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The festival of Samhain, which is behind modern-day Halloween, marked the end of the Celtic year and of agricultural work. People followed the rhythm of nature and wound down their activity. This festival began that period of resting,  and was an occasion for meeting up, for building bonfires, celebrating the harvest and for storytelling. It was felt that the gap between the material and spiritual worlds was very thin at this time. The bonfire tradition still persists in Ireland and England to this day. The Western Churches took over the importance of this date – with its themes of endings and beginnings –  and added to them remembrance for those who have gone before us. So…reminders of change but also of celebration, of fully living each moment that is given to us.

We must make good use of this life for the time we have left. This brief flash of light, like the sun appearing through the clouds.

Kalu Rinpoche

What are you letting go of?

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I was walking again
in the woods, 
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.

Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.

There, I said to myself,
that’s done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.

Jane Hirshfield, Changing Everything

Shelter and Blessings

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We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.

John O’Donoghue

Miracles

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Only a total dance, an authentic love, a whole-hearted joy, may perhaps create some miracles around you.

But you will not be the one who has done them; you will not be the one who can brag about them.

They will happen only when you are not.   

Osho

Let the Universe handle it

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When someone says or does something that I find either obnoxious or unattractive – anything that my ego uses to separate myself from others –  I’ll just soften my eyes and fall back into that “something else.” That something else is what does the transforming – it is the grace that makes it work. My only effort is to be aware enough to realize what’s happening. The moment of realizing is actually, in itself, a form of healing. The moment I see that and am willing to fall back into grace, then there’s a possibility for something different to happen within myself. Instead of judging an experience – which makes more separation- I can fall back into letting the universe handle it. This is a gift that’s quite freeing.    

Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Living: Recognize It, Trust It, Abide in It

Time for what is essential

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Not just writers, but politicians, journalists and most of modern distracted society…

Most writers waste people’s time with too many words. I’m trying to reduce everything down to the minimum.

My last work will be a blank piece of paper.

Samuel Beckett