Tag: Life

Living in the future

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File:The Future Man.JPG

A lot of our anxiety comes from what we imagine the future to be like, and how we tend to fill in the worst possible scenarios and seem to not imagine positive alternatives. I have noticed since returning to Ireland that a lot of media time is taken up by discussions of possible disasters and downturns which may soon befall the country, particularly in the economic realm. Since, as the Roman poet Terence reminded us,  there are as many opinions as there are people, this speculation only succeeds in maintaining a sense of anxious rumination, without always having any solid base. It can often be the same in our personal stories, and therefore a good remedy can be simply to recognize our mental chatter for what it is and practice staying in the present.

Just as we tend to treat the details of future events that we do imagine as though they were actually going to happen, we have an equally troubling tendency to treat the details of future events that we don’t imagine as though they were not going to happen. In other words, we fail to consider how much imagination fills in, but we also fail to consider how much it leaves out.

Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

picture:  “The Future Man” by Paul Klee

Tolerating ambiguity

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fog cars
As one matures, a greater tolerance of ambiguity is essential both for growth
and as a measure of respect for the autonomy of the mystery.
James Hollis, Tracking the Gods

Here, now, amounts to so much

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IMG_2078

The trees in the garden have finally shed their leaves. We have had a long autumn here in Ireland but it finally begins to make way for winter. There is a certain sadness in seeing the yellow leaves and yet a beauty in the bareness of the branches. Two aspects of a life – it moves on and yet is fully here:

Why… Have a yearning for destiny?

…because being here amounts to so much, because all

this Here and Now, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely

concerns us.  Us the most fleeting of all….

Having been once on earth – can it ever be canceled?

            Rainer Maria Rilke, The Ninth Duino Elegy

How we learn to be

Karl Duffy2 Comments

bridge4444

You may wonder what the best approach is to helping society and how you can know that what you are doing is authentic and good. The only answer is nowness. The way to relax, or rest the mind in nowness, is through the practice of meditation. In meditation you take an unbiased approach. You let things be as they are, without judgment, and in that way you yourself learn to be.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Shambala

Simply noticing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Pennies in the present moment

A life of joy is not in seeking happiness,

but in experiencing and simply being with the circumstances of our life as they are.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Over and over again

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File:Loop the Loop, Luna Park, Coney Island.jpg

Narrative loops […} play over and over in our mind, the trains of thought pulling out of the station one after another and taking us for a long ride down the track even before we know we’re aboard. Meditation has to do with looking deeply into the mind and body to discern the various processes unfolding each moment that fabricate the virtual world of our existence.  For most of us the monkey mind chatters incessantly as it swings from one branch to another, seizing first this thought, then that idea, then a host of miscellaneous associations, memories and fantasies. We could watch this show all day and learn very little. As the mind gradually settles, however, upon the breath or some other primary object of attention, it gains some strength and becomes more calm. Then it is better able to see the stream of consciousness for what it is: a sequence of mind states unfolding one after another in rapid succession. As the foundations upon which mindfulness are established become more stable, one can look upon the flow of experience rushing by instead of being swept away by it.

Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind