Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
Tag: Stress Reduction
Time for ourselves….
Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves
– slowly, evenly –
without rushing toward the future
Thich Nhat Hahn
Swept along by the mind
One point that becomes clear about the current of the mind is that whatever way it’s flowing, we tend to get bound up with it. We want to protect and sustain a happy state and feel bad about its eventual decline and disappearance; our identity gets based on that state. On the other hand we feel stuck with and desperate about unhappy states. In its fullest sense, liberation …. is a liberation from cause and effect in the mind. It’s a process of mentally, emotionally, stepping back from any state and seeing it just as a state, without reactions and attitudes. This simple skill, which most of us do from time to time, is what we develop in … practice. More radically, it means stepping out of the program that asserts that my life gets fulfilled by having or being some state or another.
Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma
Sunday quote: Peace of Mind
I know but one freedom
and that is the freedom of the mind
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Letting go of perfection today
It is interesting being back in Ireland this December and seeing how Christmas is portrayed in advertisements. In today’s world there is a constant push toward self-improvement, towards presenting oneself perfectly and being seen in control of events. So we are encouraged to have the “perfect Christmas” by shopping in this store or by getting this product. This type of mentality gets us into a state of anticipation, of waiting, of thinking that things are transformed by getting this or changing that. We look forward to a special day or to the holidays, believing that it will somehow fix whatever out of balance in our lives. This drive can be almost overwhelming. However, there is never any such thing as a “perfect” Christmas, or a perfect holiday. It is better to recognize that lives and days are inevitably messy, a mix of good and bad, and to find our balance in that.
A lot of disappointed people have been left
standing on the street corner
waiting for the bus marked Perfection
Donald Kennedy
photo tinou bau
The importance of empty days
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
Mindfulbalance 