Tag: love

Grow, even in difficult times

Karl Duffy1 Comment

One of the challenges of ongoing lockdowns is that we postpone life until this is all over, and because of this, the possibilities that are there in every day can pass us by.

Be present. Make love. Make tea. Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation. Buy a plant, water it. Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed. Have a smart mouth, and quick wit. Run. Make art. Create. Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain. Take chances. Ask questions. Make mistakes. Learn. Know your worth. Love fiercely. Forgive quickly. Let go of what doesn’t make you happy. Grow.

Paulo Coelho

Only three things

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When you die, only three things will remain of you, since you will abandon all material things on the threshold of the Otherworld:

What you have taught to others,

what you have created with your hands,

and how much love you have spread.

So learn more and more in order to teach wise, long-lasting values. Work more and more to leave the world things of great beauty. 

François Bourillon, A French Druid Triad

Space will not hold paint

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The Buddha taught his students to develop a power of love so strong that the mind becomes like space that cannot be tainted. If someone throws paint, it is not the air that will change color. Space will not hold the paint; it will not grasp it in any way. Only the walls, the barriers to space, can be affected by the paint. The Buddha taught his students to develop a power of love so strong that their minds become like a pure, flowing river that cannot be burned. No matter what kind of material is thrown into it, it will not burn. Many experiences – good, bad, and indifferent – are thrown into the flowing river of our lives, but we are not burned, owing to the power of the love in our hearts

Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness

Healing the heart

Karl Duffy2 Comments

If the purpose of life is to ‘feel the rapture of being alive,’ and if our capacity to feel is crippled by old wounds and a lack of emotional education, then it follows that an important part of the spiritual path is to heal the heart and to become emotionally intelligent. As we work on opening the heart, we will confront, over and over, our fearful habit of closing to pain. The price for staying heart blind is a life unlived. The Dalai Lama has gone as far as saying that ‘the tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.’ Heartfulness work is the cessation of avoidance. Jung said, ‘What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate,’ and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of the heart

Elizabeth Lesser