Tag: Life

Choosing to disconnect

Karl Duffy2 Comments
It is now possible to always feel loved and cared for, thanks to the efficiency of our “comment walls” on Facebook and seamless connection with everyone we’ve ever known. Your confidence and self-esteem can quickly be reassured by checking your number of “followers” on Twitter or the number of “likes” garnered by your photographs and blog posts. The traction you are getting in your projects, or with your business, can now be measured and reported in real time. Our insatiable need to tune into information – at the expense of savoring our downtime – is a form of “work” (something I call “insecurity work”) that we do to reassure ourselves.
 
So what’s the solution; how do we reclaim our sacred spaces? Soon enough, planes, trains, subways, and, yes, even showers will offer the option of staying connected. Knowing that we cannot rely on spaces that force us to unplug to survive much longer, we must be proactive in creating these spaces for ourselves. And when we have a precious opportunity to NOT be connected, we should develop the capacity to use it and protect it.
Scott Belsky,  What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space

Allowing things to be….

Karl Duffy1 Comment

You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings. The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are. We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both.

Ajahn Sumedho.

Resting in the knowing

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Through mindfulness practice you begin to experience how conditioned the world is and how these conditions constantly change. To free ourselves we need to quiet the mind through some mindfulness in meditation. Them, instead of identifying with the changing conditions, we learn to release them and turn toward consciousness itself, to rest in the knowing. Ajahn Chah called this pure awareness resting in “the One Who Knows”….The senses and the world are always changing conditions, but that which knows is unconditioned. With practice we discover the selflessness of experience; we shift identity. We can be in the midst of an experience, being upset or angry or caught by some problem, and then step back from it and rest in pure awareness.

Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma

Being grounded for the future

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If we do not stand firmly in the present moment we may feel ungrounded when we look at the future. We may think that in the future we will be alone, with no place of refuge and no one to help us. Such concerns about the future bring about unease, anxiety and fear, and do not help us at all in taking care of the present moment. The best way of preparing for  the future is to take good care of the present, because we know that the present is made up of the past, then the future will be made up of the present. All we need to be responsible for is the present. Only the present is within our reach. To care for the present is to care for the future.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Our Appointment with life.

…and taking the first step.

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground beneath your feet,
your own way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own question,
give up on other people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something simple.

To find another’s voice,
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes a  private ear
listening to another.

Start right now,  take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in, don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing
close in, the step
you don’t want to take.

David Whyte, Start Close in

When we become a mood

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Normally, as a negative mood arises, it catches hold and infects the whole mind – we become that mood – with its characteristic form. This is the big weakness of the undeveloped mind – it makes how I feel into who I am. There’s a grasp, a contraction, and we get pushed into the story, get mesmerized by it and rehash it time and time again.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma