Tag: Mindfulness

…leading to long, slow conversations

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Old couple in love.jpg

Our culture is so focused on … youth, that we don’t have a good model for what aging and dying could be like. All we feel is the lack of things: we’re not as youthful as we were, we’re not as limber as we were, we’re not as this, we’re not as that. Almost everything that we hear and see in the media is about how to maintain your youth as long as possible. All this focus on stopping aging implies that someone made a big mistake in the universe. It’s as if we should be getting younger instead of older.

But we’re missing a very important point. There’s something beautiful about quiet and peace. There’s something beautiful about not trying to do anything, but simply, in some way, your heart joining  the whole world. There’s a time in life for building something up in this world: a family, an institution, a business, a creative life: there’s a time for that. There’s also a time for becoming quiet, a time for slow conversations with people that we love, and a time for reflecting on all the things that we’ve seen in many years of living. When the time for those things comes, it’s beautiful.

Norman Fischer, Suffering and Possibility

photo ian mckenzie

Short pauses….

Karl Duffy2 Comments

door_closing

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action,

even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door.

Such pauses take a brief moment,

yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.

David Stiendl Rast

Gratitude as a choice

Karl Duffy2 Comments

two doors

Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly.

Henri Nouwen

Appreciating

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

rainy autumn day

We will not perish for want of information,

but only for want of appreciation

The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding

that life without wonder in not worth living.

Abraham Heschel, God in search of Man

Reading the world

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Male House Sparrow (2).jpg

The storm which arrived in Ireland and England yesterday and overnight helps us to be more aware of the world of nature and its power. However, it is always there, even in its smallest, quietest  elements:

Reading the world
As if it were a book
Written before words —

That sparrow perched
On the withered stalk
In the garden — isn’t
The bird itself
A song to the beloved

Even before it sings?

Gregory Orr, American Poet, 1947 –

photo Linda Tenner

Being happy with here

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Everything you need is already here

This is what we notice when we simply sit quietly with ourselves for even a few moments: we experience the accumulated momentum of mental noise, booming and buzzing. We notice how strongly we are trained to want something different from what is happening. We notice that our minds are very well-trained in dissatisfaction and distraction. Almost always our focus is on something else — not this. We seek another moment of greater happiness — not this moment. Contentment seems always elsewhere — never here.

Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Wakefulness