Tag: love

Healing by our presence

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Since the condition that has caused our dis-ease is a fixed, partial view of our experience, we cannot promote healing just by adopting a different view. It might be a better view, it might be a wonderful view, it might be the greatest view of reality in the world, but it will not be healing if it’s just another set of beliefs and attitudes. Instead of building bigger or fancier boxes, we need to develop the antidote to all our partial views of reality: being present with our experience as it is. We could call it beginner’s mind. This is unconditional presence. As Suzuki Roshi says “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few” We have all become experts at being ourselves, and in so doing we have lost our ability to be present with our experience in a fresh, open-minded way.

John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening

Relationships as practice

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

runningStephen Levine has noted that relationship, though not the easiest method for finding peace, is certainly the most effective for discovering what blocks it. The fact that relationships often bring the most painful and unhealed aspects of our life out of the shadows makes them a potentially powerful teacher. But let’s be honest, who actually wants such a teacher? What do we really want from relationships? We want what we want! We want someone to fulfill our needs, someone who will make us feel good, give us security, appreciation, affection, and love.

As soon as a conflict arises and we feel threatened in some way, we tend to forget all about relationships as a vehicle of awakening. We tenaciously hold on to our views, judgments, and need to be right. We protect and defend our self-image. We close down or lash out. And, believing in all these reactions as the unquestioned truth, we perpetuate our suffering. As we continue to do this, the disappointment we cause ourselves and others becomes a pain we can’t ignore. That’s the beauty of relationships as spiritual practice. The pain motivates us to awaken; disappointment is often our best teacher. This is when practice can really begin.

Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water

Showing up with others

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If we don’t show up for our own life, we tend to ask other people to fill in the bits we won’t show up for. That makes it hard on them. So love begins with really showing up. And practice helps. It’s a way of not dodging the difficult, painful bits. It’s also not dodging the beauty and the marvel of life, the wonder and our capacity to connect to others. Love starts there. But we make a few really basic errors. We sometimes have the idea that a relationship is like a machine, one we can fix if we put the right oil on it or replace a few sprockets. We also can think that a relationship is a matter of calculating the sums of good and bad, what we’re getting and not getting. If we start looking at other people as a gift, it helps us out of these traps. You notice with a child that you show up without wanting a lot in return. It’s not an exchange: give this, get that. It can be like that in all our relationships, with lovers, teachers, friends, what have you. It’s not a trade. Love means bearing people’s differences without trying to change them—not just bearing, but valuing and appreciating and loving people’s uniqueness. That’s a path all by itself. What if the fact that you’re different from me is a gateway rather than an obstacle?

John Tarrant, Not Knowing Is the Most Intimate

Living through things together

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Frequently, the reflex to solve, rescue, and fix removes us from the tenderness at hand. For often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held. I am learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to fix those we love.

Mark Nepo

The great challenge in life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Many people don’t think they are loved, or held safe,

and so when suffering comes they see it as an affirmation of their worthlessness.

The great question of  the spiritual life is to learn to live our brokenness under the blessing and not the curse.

Henri Nouwen

Listening to the soul

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego’s will to prevail. To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life – to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.

Elisabeth Lesser.