Tag: Mindfulness

Little things today

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In the dew of little things

the heart finds its morning

and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran

Not always clear

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Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.

Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and scientist, died this day 1955

photo nathalia morelatto

Not wanted

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Saying yes to everything in a day, including things we would prefer not to be happening, is not easy, but it helps us remember that life is made up of both pleasant and unpleasant:

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water —

not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

Jane Hirshfield, A Cedary Fragance from Given Sugar, Given Salt

In here

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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A lot of what we consider to be an objective contact with reality is actually “interpretation contact”, filtered through stories we tell ourselves about our lives and other people. Our practice in staying in the present – or with simple felt contact –  is to help us detach a little from our perceptions of the future and the past and question their reliability as pointers to what is actually happening.

Much of what you see “out there” is actually manufactured “in here” by your brain …

Only a small fraction of the input to your occipital lobes comes from the external world;

the rest comes from internal memory stores and perceptual-processing modules.

Rich Hanson, Buddha’s Brain

photo elvert barnes

Moments are all we have

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lyrath

How do we cultivate the conditions

for joy to expand?

We train in staying present.

Pema Chodron

photo of Spring wildflowers at Lyrath House, Kilkenny

At our feet

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

Wendell Berry, The Unforseen Wilderness

photo frankoweaver