Tag: Life

Offer no resistance

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Sometimes you do your best but you are met with mistrust, or things don’t quite work out as planned: 

Somebody says something to you that is designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense, or personal withdrawal, you let it pass right through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power — not in someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind. Whether it is a car alarm, a rude person, a flood, an earthquake, or the loss of all your possessions, the mechanism is the same.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. 

Being joyful in an uncertain world

Karl Duffy4 Comments

The last sentence in this quote has become quite famous as a way of navigating the inevitable ups and downs of this life:

All life is sorrowful; there is however an escape from sorrow; the escape is nirvana – which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere, like heaven. It is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas – joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. 

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

…and make us stronger

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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See how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.

Jane Hirshfield,  For What Binds Us 

photo Kanchelskis

How difficulties can be creative…

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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A different way of seeing the challenges in life, and maybe a more helpful way of looking at the slow diversions which life obliges us to take:

Une difficulte est une lumiere. Une difficulte insurmontable est un soleil. Paul Valery

(A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun)

We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity… I love these lines from Paul Valery: this is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven, and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive toward perfection. We want everything flattened into one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes… The imagination in its loyalty to possibility often takes the curved path rather than the linear way. Such risk and openness inherit the harvest of creativity, beauty and spirit.

 John O’Donohue Anam Chara

photo kilabs

The gift of life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A reminder to see each day as a gift to be celebrated: 

God has given us the gift of life

It is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living fully

(Dieu nous a donné le vivre; c’est à nous de nous donner le bien vivre)

Voltaire, 1694–1778, French writer, philosopher and public activist,  Œuvres complètes de Voltaire: melanges. commentaires sur corneille. 

Surviving or celebrating?

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Ghana women dance (7250869584).jpg

Harley Swift Deer, a Native American teacher, says that each of us has a survival dance and a sacred dance, but the survival dance must come first. Our survival dance, a foundational component of self-reliance, is what we do for a living — our way of supporting ourselves physically and economically. For most people, this means a paid job. Everybody has to have a survival dance. Finding and creating one is our first task upon leaving our parents’ or guardians’ home.

Once you have your survival dance established, you can wander, inwardly and outwardly, searching for clues to your sacred dance, the work you were born to do. This work may have no relation to your job. Your sacred dance sparks your greatest fulfillment and extends your truest service to others. You know you’ve found it when there’s little else you’d rather be doing. Getting paid for it is superfluous. You would gladly pay others, if necessary, for the opportunity. Hence, the importance of self-reliance, not merely the economic kind implied by a survival dance but also of the social, psychological, and spiritual kind. To find your sacred dance, after all, you will need to take significant risks. You might need to move against the grain of your family and friends.  Swift Deer says that once you discover your sacred dance and learn effective ways of embodying it, the world will support you in doing just that.

Bill Plotkin, SoulCraft