Tag: Mindfulness

Welcoming all parts

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File:Torki Holy Trinity.jpg

I find hospitality to be one of the most significant and most challenging of all the monastic virtues… There is another dimension to this practice which we sometimes might be tempted to forget which is inner hospitality. Within each of us we have a multitude of feelings. experiences, and inner selves that we would prefer to close the door on. We have many inner strangers knocking at the door of your hearts. How many times have I refused to welcome grief or anger, the scary new dream, the embarrassing aspect I want to deny, or the part of myself that doesn’t seem to fit with others?

Christine Valters Paintner, Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics

Acceptance

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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True freedom is living as if you had completely chosen

whatever you feel or experience in this moment.

This inner alignment with the Now is the end of suffering

Eckhart Tolle, Silence Speaks

photo Sharada Prasad

Choosing

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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid,

or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.

We always have this choice.

Pema Chodron

Enough light

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Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, “How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?” There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let’s rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.

Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Donne–nous aujourd‘hui notre pain de ce jour

French translation Matthew 6:11

photo Sasikanth balachandran

Not listening to our fears

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The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts. It knows the vulnerable spot, and life does not, our friends and lovers do not, because seldom do they have the imagination equal to the task.

Anais Nin

Endings

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Everything is meant to be let go of.

Meister Eckhart

A little more from Rilke, because sometimes he says it best.  Changes of direction and endings are an inevitable part of our lives, but can be difficult especially if we do not choose them.  Our instinct is to look for certainty, for solid ground, when in actual fact, the deep reality which we come to accept is that nothing is really lasting or solid.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

Rilke