wellbeing – Page 85 – Mindfulbalance

Sunday Quote:Slowing Down

December 23, 2012December 23, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Life is so short,

we should all move slowly.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Coming home

December 22, 2012December 22, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.

Wendell Berry

Simple choices, each moment

December 22, 2012December 22, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We can only make one choice. Throughout our lives, we do only one thing – again and again, moment by moment, year by year. It is how we live our days, and it is how we shape our lives. The choice is this: what is the next right thing for us to do? Where, in this moment, shall we choose to place our time and attention? Do we stay or move, speak or keep silent, attend to this person, that task, move in this or that direction? …Our choices are small, quiet, intimate things that flow from us as water from a mountain spring, simple, endless, each thimble of water tumbling into the next, creating a small stream that somehow…inevitably, finds its way down the mountain to the sea.

Wayne Muller, A life of Being, Having and Doing Enough

Learning, letting go

December 21, 2012December 21, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

As you meditate, keep bringing your attention back to what is happening in the moment: the breath, a feeling in the body, a thought, an emotion, or even awareness itself. As we become more mindful and accepting of what’s going on, we find—both in meditation and in our lives—that we are less controlled by the forces of denial or addiction, two forces that drive much of life. In the meditative process we are more willing to see whatever is there, to be with it but not be caught by it. We are learning to let go.

Joseph Goldstein, Here, Now, Aware: Practicing Mindfulness

Calendars, dates, moments

December 20, 2012December 20, 2012 Karl Duffy3 Comments

There is some interest in some circles about ancient calendars and texts and the end of the world happening these days. Now I do not wish to comment on the accuracy of such predictions but simply to see what such an interest can reveal in some people. There is a lot of uncertainty and instability in the world today, stemming from human tragedies, economic problems, the difficulties between different views of culture and values, tension between religions and within religions, and from storms and natural disasters. And there are always uncertainties in our personal lives. Things change. People close to us get ill or move away. This can make us feel very insecure. One way of dealing with not-knowing and with the fundamental unease that is at the basis of our existence is to seek something outside, or someone stronger than us, to steady us on this uncertain ground. So we provide an explanation for things we cannot understand and that explanation, even if it means the end of the world, seems preferable to not knowing why some things happen. It is a radical way of dealing with the fact that, at a fundamental level, there is a groundlessness inherent in our existence. It is also an extreme variant of our common, everyday way of working with the unsatisfactory nature of individual moments – we “lean towards” something in the future, and this distracts us from this moment and how it actually is. What we are trying in our practice is not to focus on any future, “better” or “more secure” moment, but on this one, even if it is not as we would want it. The best way to prepare for the future – or the “end of the world” if you like – is to care for this moment and then the next moment. There are enough distractions in the world today, including these spiritual or mythical ones, pulling us away from noticing where our life is, now.

Meanwhile, here we are, missing the fullness of the present moment, which is where the soul resides. It’s not like you have to go someplace else to get it. So the challenge here is, Can we live this moment fully? When you ask a group of people to spend five minutes watching their own breaths moving in and out of their bodies, just as an experiment, they discover that their minds are like bubbling vats, and it’s not so easy to stay on the breath. The mind has a life of its own. It carries you away. Over a lifetime, you may wind up in the situation where you are never actually where you find yourself. You’re always someplace else, lost, in your head, and therefore in a kind of dysfunctional or nonoptimal state. Why dysfunctional? Because the only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You’re only here now; you’re only alive in this moment. The past is gone, and I don’t know what’s coming in the future. It’s obvious that if I want my life to be whole, to resonate with feeling and integrity and value and health, there’s only one way I can influence the future: by owning the present.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Not limitiing our sense of self

December 19, 2012December 19, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The most important form of distortion fundamental to the way our minds operate has to do with creating the notion of self out of what is essentially an impersonal process. Selfhood is the expression of a particular kind of distortion of view, a situation that develops gradually from basic misperceptions, to the casting of whole sets of misinformed thoughts, and eventually to a deeply rooted belief system that becomes imposed upon all further perception and thought. Here again we see a cyclical pattern. Perceptions give rise to thoughts, which congeal into beliefs, and which then influence perception. When the system operates optimally, it allows for growth, learning, and transformation. But when it is fundamentally misinformed, it can also give rise to a considerable amount of delusion. Trouble arises when the constructed self becomes the main organizing principle, when it is unrealistically invested with qualities it does not innately possess, and, most importantly, when it becomes the node around which maladaptive behaviors coalesce. The self comes to be experienced as a central and dominant element of psychic life, mistaking what is a series of contingent patterns in constant flux for an enduring entity.