Tag: Stress Reduction

Coming and leaving

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Revolving Door Sign.jpg

Whenever one of these states arise, just know that it has arisen. To see feelings in the right way is to see them as a sort of imposter, not identifying them as ourselves. Anger or doubt are not us: they are not people or beings. So see them without giving them an identity, as just strangers coming in and then leaving. When there is cause they arise,  and when there is no cause they fall away.

Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth

photo daquella Manera

Hold lightly

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:U.S. Army Capt. Erik Hickly, foreground, and other members of the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team participate in a nine-mile rucksack march Sept 120911-N-II659-690.jpg
We have these incredibly heavy burdens we carry with us like rocks in a big rucksack.
We think that carrying this big heavy rucksack is our security; we think it grounds us. We don’t realize the freedom,  the lightness of just dropping it off, letting it go. That doesn’t mean giving up relationships; it doesn’t mean giving up ones profession, or one’s family, or one’s home. It has nothing to do with that; it’s not an external change. It’s an internal change. It’s a change from holding on tightly to holding very lightly
Tenzin Palmo, Into the Heart of Life

Speed

Karl Duffy3 Comments
File:Shenandoah National Park SHEN9228.jpg
It’s a long weekend here in Ireland and the weather is even forecast to be good. A time to slow down, let go our that part of the mind which is task driven and touch into some non-doing:
The great tragedy of speed as an answer to the complexities and responsibilities of existence is that very soon we cannot recognize anything or anyone who is not traveling at the same velocity as we are…..as slaves to speed, we start to lose sight of family members, especially children, or those who are ill or infirm, who are not flying through the world as quickly and determinedly as we are. Just as seriously, we begin to leave behind the parts of our own selves that limp a little, the vulnerabilities that actually give us color and character. We forget that our sanity is dependent on a relationship with longer, more patient cycles extending beyond the urgencies and madness of the office.
David Whyte.

Courage

Karl Duffy5 Comments

File:Climbing to "Magaro", Mountain Galichica, Ohrid, Macedonia.jpg

A little reminder to stay firm and to trust, even if it seems tough.

Difficulties are just things to overcome,

after all.

Ernest Shackleton, polar explorer, born Kilkea Co Kildare 1874

photo : Krisaemilia

Always hoping

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Lough Dan reflections (27765469).jpg

A lot of conversation in Ireland revolves around the weather. These days we wonder what the Summer will be like, or even stress about whether the weekend will allow a walk or a barbeque. In a way this unpredictability can support our practice and can lead to a reduction in stress: it reminds us that reality is always changing and that we have to be with the present however it manifests, open to possibility and not too fixed in expectations:

A large degree of life happens independent of, and often contrary to, your expectations. At first this may seem dismaying, but as you develop more and more awareness, you eventually start to realize that carrying around this jumble of expectations in your head is a burden  and that it gets in the way of being present in,  and responding to, the life you have.

Phillip Moffitt, Emotional Chaos to Clarity

photo of Lough Dan in Wicklow by Hugh C

A hidden stream within

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Silence comes from the Latin word, silens, meaning to be still, quiet, or at rest. Other words related to it are: calm, peace, serenity, tranquility, poise, composure, noiselessness, hush, and solitude. In his description of stillness, Romano Guardini cuts to its very essence: “Stillness is the tranquility of the inner life; the quiet at the depths of its hidden streams. It is a collected, total presence, a being ‘all there,’ receptive, alert, ready . . . It is when the soul abandons the restlessness of purposeful activity.”  Within this definition we learn silence’s first fundamental lesson: It is not so much a lack of sound as it is a cultivation of interior stillness.

Eugene Hemrick, Silence: Taken from the promise of virtue