Tag: Mindfulness

Giving up the plan

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Almost every one of Odysseus’s encounters coming home from Troy are losses of some type – his men, his control, his power, his time, his memory, his fame, the boat itself. Falling, losing, failing, transgression and sin are the pattern, I am sorry to report.

Yet they all lead towards home.

In the end, we do not so much reclaim what is lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process. Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan, and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Holding our sense of self lightly

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is the root of all suffering.

When you contemplate, ‘This is not me, this is not mine, this is not my self,’ you’re no longer identifying with experience.

You see the body, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions as they are – impermanent, conditioned phenomena – and you stop taking them personally. That’s how you drop self-view.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Four Noble Truths

Lean back

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Life was unfolding in spite of me, not because of me. The more I leaned back and trusted, the more life took care of itself.

The key is to stop fighting. Lean back , let go and let life flow through you.

When you do, you will see that life knows what it’s doing

Michael Singer, The Surrender Experiment

not knowing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Stepping into a new month

The idea that we should or even can know ourselves is a tyranny.

It assumes that clarity is always preferable to mystery, that explanation is always better than wonder.

But what if not knowing is the most honest relationship we can have with ourselves?

Adam Phillips,  British psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

The best advice

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Way back in the ’80s, my guru asked me, “What is stress?” He had never heard of stress because he came from the Himalayas. I told him stress is the perception of threat: physical, emotional and psychological. After a while, he said, “You mean resistance to existence.” And he said, “If you don’t resist existence, you will have flow.” That’s the best advice.

Deepak Chopra in Wall Street Journal, November 2024, Deepak Chopra Doesn’t Believe You’re Too Busy to Meditate

Sunday Quote: Where you are

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

For the awakening of the heart,

conditions are always good enough.

Ajahn Sumedho