Tag: love

The work within us

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Real growth in life is slow and can sometime pose its challenges. It requires that we keep the  space within us open in face of the unknown and move towards being comfortable with that. Often this means that we have to keep our heart curious and vulnerable, resisting the impulse  to close down the experience by putting labels on it,  or on ourselves. When faced with the unknown, the temptation  is to put on armour in case  we will be hurt. And our experience now can often bring us back to where we were once wounded or where our needs were unmet and release old fears. However, it is by having a conversation with the unknown in our lives that we can clarify what we need to hold on to and what we need to let go of. Only then can we take the next step on a journey into something bigger,  into who we can become, into where our life actually is now.

The work of the eyes is done.

Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.

Rilke

Being, before doing

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When you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things, to be and to do. Dont think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It’s like a person sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not have to do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Be Beautiful, Be yourself

Sunday Quote: Giving

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Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.”

In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

Erich Fromm

How we grow and mature

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Healing does not mean that one will reach an end-point where all is clear and conflict free. How could we imagine that the attitudes of one stage of our life would be adequate for subsequent stages and altered realities? While it is the secret hope of the nervous ego to fix the world and make it more predictable and secure, all is in flux. Finding the secret sources of our distress, and being enlarged by the suffering of this conflict, is how we grow and mature. As Jung notes, “Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness”.  Our goal is not happiness, which is evanescent and impossible to sustain; it is meaning which broadens us and carries us toward our destiny

James Holllis, Creating a Life: Finding your Individual Path.

Weekend, winding down…when work is finished

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What in your life is calling you,
When all the noise is silenced,
The meetings adjourned…
The lists laid aside,
And the Wild Iris blooms
By itself
In the dark forest…
What still pulls on your soul?

Rumi

Caring for what is troubling

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In matters of soul,

it is advisable never to compensate or to try to escape,

but instead to tend better

the very thing that is causing trouble.

Thomas Moore, Soul Mates