Tag: wellbeing

A need for the timeless

Karl Duffy1 Comment

One of the signs of work that’s debilitating is when you feel constantly besieged by time, when you are constantly trying to fit your work into a schedule. Now there’s no work that is immune to the sense of deadline or of being limited. But if you don’t have a cyclical visitation of the timeless in your endeavours, I’d say that’s a pretty good sign it’s not your conversation, it’s not your work and you should be elsewhere. Or you should move on from something that perhaps once brought that into your life but no longer does.  The whole idea of pilgrimage is not necessarily moving on from a particular form of conversation, but finding – and I do think work is a kind of out loud, visible conversation – it’s keeping that conversation real, and in order to do that, finding new forms appropriate to it.

David Whyte

On not waiting too long…….to live your life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The great Indian poet Kabir reminding us that at every moment in our life we are challenged to live fully.  We need not wait for some time in the future to find the “right conditions” for happiness. There is no such thing as a perfect time. Now is the only time we have –  to face into our fears, to shake off what we know is holding us back, to let go of whatever we are carrying that  no longer gives us life, to cross the river ahead of us.

Wherever you are is the entry point

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road,
and no road.

Be strong then, and
enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place
for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else

If you don’t break your ropes
while you’re alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?

The choice to be still

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Practicing mindfulness meditation is making the choice to be still — to step into the quiet shade instead of running away from difficult thoughts and feelings. We sometimes call meditation non-doing. Instead of being swept away by our usual conditioned reactions, we’re quiet and watchful, fully present with what is, touching it deeply, being touched by it, and seeing what is happening in the simplest and most direct fashion possible. Doing nothing really means not doing many of the things we usually do, like holding on to or hiding from our experience, so that we can get new perspectives, new insights, and new sources of strength.

Sitting quietly and observing mindfully is a particularly productive way of “doing” nothing. Through the regular practice of meditation we discover the real happiness of simplicity, of connection, of presence. We come closer and closer to living each day in accord with this lovely quotation from Wordsworth: “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

A work in progress

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Self-actualization is not a sudden happening or even the permanent result of long effort. The eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint Milarupa suggested: “Do not expect full realization; simply practice every day of your life.” A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.

David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships

The address of life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

“I have arrived” is our practice. When we breathe in, we take refuge in our in-breath,  and we say “I have arrived”. When we make a step, we take refuge in our step, and we say “I have arrived”.  This is not a statement to yourself or to another person.  “I have arrived” means I have stopped running, I have arrived in the present moment, because only the present moment contains life.

Stopping running is a very important practice . We have been running all our life: we believe that peace happiness and success are present in some other place and time. We don’t know that  everything – peace happiness and stability – should be looked for in the here and now. This is the address of life –  the intersection of here and now.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Happiness

Finding the life you ought to be living

Karl Duffy2 Comments

This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe to anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing is happening there. But if you have a sacred place, and use it, and take advantage of it, something eventually will happen….

Most of our action is economically or socially determined and does not come out of our life… the claims of the environment upon you are so great, that you hardly know where the hell you are! What is it you intended? You’re always doing things that are required of you; this minute, that minute, another minute! Where is your “bliss station”?” Try to find it! Put on the music that you really love… or the book you want to read. Get it done! And have a place in which to do it! There you’ll get the “thou” feeling of life. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. And the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth; Sacrifice and Bliss.