Tag: Present moment

a fantasy world

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

As I grew up, I experimented with many traditional religious patterns. I soon discovered that, too often, form only has been preserved at the expense of content. Many “religious” people, as a result, are more interested in romantic projection and fulfilment of stereotypes than in learning the difficult self-forgetfulness of the exchange of Love with the Other.

They use religion to make themselves feel good, and call it the search for God. They invest all their energy to create a fantasy world where they will not experience any pain.

Maggie Ross, Seasons of Death and Life: A Wilderness Memoir

The spark

Karl Duffy6 Comments

Do not worry if all the candles in the world flicker and die

we have the spark that starts the fire.

Rumi

a still heart

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

In the still heart

that refuses nothing,

the world is twice born.  

Jane Hirshfield

Serene

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Before the universe was born.
there was something formless and perfect
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the ten thousand things.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 25

Sunday Quote: The secret

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Those who are willing to be vulnerable

move among mysteries

Theodore Roethke, American Poet, Straw for the Fire

A living myth

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The Winter Solstice – a day which held great spiritual and mythic significance for people down through the ages. All over the Northern Hemisphere, ancient festivals marked this, the shortest day of the year. The word in Irish –  Grianstad – means the stopping of the sun, a pause in the battle between darkness and light, where light eventually triumphs.

Jung realized that the problems of our time are rooted …above all in the loss of a living myth which would give meaning to our lives.

He saw that the dissociation of the conscious ego from what he called the primordial or instinctual soul presented a growing and unperceived danger to humanity. The more we emphasized reason and the supremacy of the rational mind, the greater the danger that instinct — whose power we have failed to acknowledge or understand — would drive, possess, delude and overwhelm us and the more we would fall victim to secular and religious ideologies and utopian goals which could ultimately lead us to destroy ourselves.

The paramount goal we need to focus on is reconnecting our conscious mind with the deeper dimension of the soul.

Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul