Tag: wellbeing

A definition of healing

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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To be in relationship to what you are going through, to hold it, and, in some sense, to befriend it — that is where the healing or transformative power of the practice of mindfulness lies. When we can actually be where we are, not trying to find another state of mind, we discover deep internal resources we can make use of. Coming to terms with things as they are is my definition of healing…….It’s very healing to realize, if only for a moment here and a moment there, that you can be in a wiser relationship with your interior experience than just being driven by liking it or hating it.

Jon Kabat Zinn

photo Franziska bauer

A spacious awareness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Lac Leman

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fuelling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Since non-acceptance is the very nature of the trance, we might wonder how, when we feel most stuck, we take the first step out of it. The very nature of our awareness is to know what is happening. Like a boundless sea, we have the capacity to embrace the waves of life as they move through us. Even when the sea is stirred up by the winds of self-doubt, we can find our way home. We can discover in the midst of the waves, our spacious and wakeful awareness.

Tara Brach

With thanks to Ellen van Kalmthout for sending me the beautiful photo of Lac Leman for use on the blog.

Trying to make things correspond to our ideas

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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When one composes one’s mind and looks inwards, there is a sense of coming to one point. If we are not caught in the thinking process, we can be aware of the here and now, the body, the breath, mental states, moods; we can allow everything to be what it is.  The attitude of many people is that there is always a need to change something. When we practise meditation with this idea of getting something, then even the word ‘meditation’, can bring up the reaction of: ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. If I’m in a bad mood I should get rid of that mood. I’ve got to concentrate my mind.’ If the mind’s scattered and we’re all over the place, ‘I should make it one-pointed; I’ve got to concentrate.’ And so we make meditation into hard work and there is a great deal of failure in it because we’re trying to control everything through these ideas.

[Instead]….Try looking inwards with an attitude of observing whatever is present. Just notice what kind of mood or feeling you are in. So now put yourself in this position of the Buddha – Buddho, the knower—not the judge — and just look.

Ajahn Sumedho, Developing an attitude toward meditation

Undoing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

let go

When meditation frees us, ot does not turn us into something better or different, nor does it get us somewhere. Rather, meditation allows for an undoing of our controlling behavior, an undoing of limiting beliefs, an undoing of habitual physical tensing, an undoing of defensive armoring, and ultimately, an undoing of our identification with a small and threatened self.

Tara Brach

No place for our doubts to land

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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The mind’s preference to fix things into a permanent form  even applies to how we see  our “flaws”.  We easily see ourselves as having enduring negative aspects to our personality – “I am very bad at ….” rather than recognizing the changing nature of our weaknesses.   That things are always changing is one of the fundamental truths which we try to understand at a deep personal level. The line from the Dhammapada – Anyone who understands impermanence ceases to be contentious – reminds us of a fundamental way to stop fighting with reality and with ourselves. We are continually changing. Our life path is continually changing. Sometimes agonizing about it only makes things worse.

The expounding, practising and realizing of impermanence

by the impermanent

themselves all must be impermanent

Dogen

Nowhere to go

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feet_sea
Where is there a place for you to be?  No place. 
Nothing outside you can give you any place. 
In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.
 
You needn’t look at the sky because 
it’s not going to open up and show no place behind it. 
 
You can’t go neither forwards nor backwards 
into your daddy’s time nor your children’s if you have them. 
 
In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got. 
If there was any Fall, look there, 
if there was any Redemption, look there, 
and if you expect any Judgment, look there, 
 
because they all three will have to be in your time 
and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?
Flannery O Connor, Wise Blood