Hugh Byrne: 3 Questions

 Hugh Byrne 

Recorded guided meditation offered to his circle on September 7 Sunday only about 25 people there but the messaging was so helpful recorded voice of Hugh Byrne

The invitation is to meet our experience with a welcoming attitude. The Sufi poet, Rumi speaks of welcoming the guests. He says, "Even if there are a crowd of sorrows. "who sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight." So this attitude of welcoming, welcoming our experience. And Robert Bly said, "Whatever parts of you that you don't learn to love and accept will become hostile to you. Notice when your mind may reject or dislike what's present, and then invite a quality of acceptance. Can I meet this moment, this experience with acceptance? Can you meet this experience, this moment with kindness? It may be wishing yourself well, making space for what's here, or being kind to yourself as you would to a dear friend who's experiencing difficulty. If judgment or resistance comes up, can you meet this with kindness, with friendliness?. You could send yourself a wish. May I be happy? May I be peaceful? You could put your hand on your heart and express a wish for your own well being. And see if you can be interested curious about what you're experiencing. When we bring curiosity to our experience, something important can shift. 

Think of the way when we're angry, we're caught up in a mental story or narrative about what this person said or did, or what you want to say or do to them, and all the bodily tension that may be present. When we're caught up in a strong emotion, the emotion and the accompanying thoughts are what are in charge, in a way. They're leading the way. 

When we bring awareness to our anger, when we become curious about it, we can then notice, oh, there's tightness in the chest. My face is hot. I'm short of breath. I'm having loss of angry thoughts. And we can let go of the story and come back to the direct experience. So this quality of curiosity helps us to step out of identification with what we're caught up in. And just come into awareness. What am I aware of? What am I noticing? So sit for a few minutes and notice your attitude to your experience. How am I meeting this moment? How am I relating to this experience? Whatever you’re experiencing right now, can you accept this moment just as it is? This experience, just as it is? Can you meet it with an attitude of kindness, making space for it? Can you bring a quality of interest, of curiosity to your experience? 

So the first question is, what am I aware of right now? The second question is, how am I meeting this moment, this experience? 

And the third question is, what is a wise and kind response to this experience? What is a wise and kind response to this experience? Often bringing an attitude of kindness, acceptance, and curiosity to our experience will be enough for a wise and kind response. Nothing more may be needed, just simply to meet your experience with open hearted acceptance. But at times, an additional step, or steps may be called for. Let's say you're experiencing bodily pain or discomfort, and you've been practicing simply being aware of what you're feeling and meeting it with compassion and acceptance. But you might still find yourself experiencing resistance or frustration or judgment. You might be wanting to be present, but you're wanting to be present might make you feel more and more tight. You might kind of feel you're at war with yourself. Then you might ask, what is a wise and kind response? to this experience, to this moment? And it might be to consciously shift your posture. and to open to your experience in a new, more relaxed posture, say, moving from a cushion to a chair, for example. or stopping meditating if you're really tired, taking a short nap, with the intention of coming back to the meditation when you feel more rested and fresh. Or if you're dealing with a painful emotion and it's very intense, it might be wise to shift your attention to something more calm and peaceful. Not as a way of avoiding the difficulty, but to help you come back into balance and build resilience. So that then you can come back to the difficult feeling when you feel ready. Are a wise and kind response might be to send yourself a wish of loving kindness or compassion. May I be happy? May I live with ease? May I accept myself as I am. So you can sit for a while with this question. What is a wise and kind response to this moment, to this experience? And it may be simply to be aware of your experience and meet it with kindness and acceptance and interest. Or there may be a need, or a may be helpful to take a more active response. What am I aware of right now? How am I meeting this moment? What, if any, is a wise and kind response to this experience, to this moment. This third question will often be particularly important in daily life, where we typically can't simply be aware of our experience and meet it with kindness, if, for example, we're in the middle of a difficult conversation or in a meeting. In this situation, it will be important to be aware of what's present tightness in the body, anger, whatever, and to meet our response with kindness. But we may also need to respond to someone or to a situation. The question then is, what's a wise and kind response right now? What response will be supportive of freedom and well being? In the middle of a difficult conversation where we see ourselves being pulled into an angry reaction, a wise and kind response might be to ask the other person if you can come back and talk about it later." Talk about the issue that you're having some difficulty around. Or if you've just received an email that comes across as judgmental or overly critical, you might choose to put it aside and deal with it later. It's So bringing these three questions to your experience, at any time in meditation and in daily life. What am I aware of right now? How am I meeting this experience? And what is a wise and kind response? You might set for a few minutes with these questions as you open to your experience. We'll finish with Martha Poslethwaite's poem Clearing. Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is yours alone to sing falls into your open cupped hands, and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.

Tree leaves and ocean drops

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.  ~ Rumi

Also…

Rumi once said, "Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop." I think about that often—how trees don't fight to hold on to what no longer serves them. They don't question the wind or mourn what falls away. 

Maybe that's the secret. Maybe we, too, are meant to shed, to let go without fear, to trust that new leaves will come, and we will not be less for what we've lost.

On compassionate curiosity

Live Session Summary, Sunday, October 13, 2024: It was good to be with you today for our Live session. The focus of the session was ‘Cultivating compassionate curiosity as a way of being in the world.’ 

Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from today’s Live session:

I began by talking about attitudes and their role in our happiness, well-being, and freedom and shared the reflection that when you change your attitude, you change your experience and your world. 

I gave the example of how different it is to practice meditation with, on one hand, an attitude of accepting with kindness our changing bodily sensations, emotions, mind states and thoughts, and on the other, meeting these different experiences with clinging, resistance, or judgment. 

Our experience in each case is (in my experience) fundamentally different—the first, when practiced wholeheartedly, tends to lead to greater ease, well-being, and freedom, and the latter, to feelings of contraction, unpleasantness, or suffering. As the Buddha said, ‘see for yourself.’ Test it in your own experience.

To exemplify the importance of our attitudes, I shared the story of two different people asking a wise person what their town was like to live in. Different versions of this story can be found by googling ‘moving to a new city (a parable)’.

Choosing how we meet our experience is key to our happiness and freedom. It’s what Viktor Frankl called ‘the last of the human freedoms’: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Frankl, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’)

One of the important things we can say about attitudes is that they can be cultivated. One person might appear to be more kind, generous, compassionate, accepting, etc., than another. But all of us can cultivate these and other wholesome qualities and bring them into our life.

We can think of ourselves as all having seeds of anger, cruelty, greed, etc., within us, and also having seeds of generosity, gratitude, peace, loving-kindness, and other skillful qualities. As humans, we all have the capacity to do great good in the world—and also to do great harm. What we become in our lives and how we live in the world depends greatly on whether we train our mind and which seeds we nurture.

There are many wholesome qualities that we can cultivate. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed the training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and wrote ‘Full-Catastrophe Living,’ highlighted seven key attitudes of mindfulness; 1) Non-judging; 2) Patience; 3) Beginner’s mind; 4) Trust; 5) Non-striving; 6) Acceptance; and 7) Letting go. (Kabat-Zinn, ‘Full-Catastrophe Living’)

In my first book on mindfulness and habit change, ‘The Here-and-Now Habit,’ I stressed three key qualities or attitudes that help us find greater freedom in our lives: 1) Kindness; 2) Acceptance; and 3) Curiosity. We can bring these qualities actively into our meditation and our lives by cultivating compassionate curiosity as an attitude and a way of being in the world.

When we meet our experience with curiosity, we are opening ourselves to life as it is. We are not in a conflict with life. We can, of course, respond to whatever is coming up and when we do so with kindness and wisdom we are in alignment with life. When we respond with blame, judgment, resistance, or clinging, we suffer. 

I shared a quote from the spiritual teacher Adyashanti: Arguing with reality—"thinking, for example, that ‘so and so shouldn’t have said that to me’ but the reality is that they did… is a sure way to suffer, a perfect prescription for suffering… Arguing with reality imprisons us… it ties us to whatever it is that we are arguing with...” (Adyashanti, ‘The End of Your World’, p143-144)

Meeting our experience with curiosity can lead to liberating insights into the truth of impermanence and change; and help us see that nothing can be clung to as ‘I’ or ‘mine’—and if we cling, we suffer. Curiosity opens us to life and to infinite possibilities. As the renowned Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said, ‘In the beginner’s mind [a mind embodying curiosity and openness] there are many possibilities; in the expert’s there are few.’ (Suzuki, ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’)

Meeting our experience with compassion allows us to bring kindness and the wish to alleviate suffering to ourselves, to others, and to all beings and experiences. With an attitude of compassion, we see the suffering that is everywhere and don’t put anyone out of our hearts. 

Compassion connects us to all beings and all of life. Joining compassion with curiosity brings together the ‘two wings of the bird’—the wing of insight/understanding (curiosity) and the wing of compassion—that we need in our practice and in our lives. How would it be to consciously invite an attitude of compassionate curiosity to all that arises in meditation and in daily life? Does it make a difference when you bring this quality of openness and receptivity supported by kindness and care to your experiences? 

Poems I shared include ‘The Way It Is’ by Lynn Ungar; ‘There was a time I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Al Arabi; and quotes from ‘The Guest House’ by Rumi; and ‘Peace is this moment without judgment’ by Dorothy Hunt.

It was good to be with you all today. I wish you a peaceful week ahead and look forward to seeing you next Sunday, October 20 at 9am eastern for our next live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

The Way it Is

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.

And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—
persistently, abundantly, miraculously—
exactly the way it is.

by Lynn Ungar 11/28/15

Praising Manners

 https://wordsfortheyear.com/tag/rumi/

PRAISING MANNERS

We should ask God
To help us toward manners. Inner gifts
Do not find their way
To creatures without just respect.

If a man or woman flails about, he not only
Smashes his house,
He burns the whole world down.

Your depression is connected to your insolence
And your refusal to praise. If a man or woman is
On the path, and refuses to praise — that man or woman
Steals from others every day — in fact is a shoplifter!

The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.
Angels began shining when they achieved discipline.
The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes near.
The moment that foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.

“Praising Manners” by Rumi, translated by Robert Bly, from The Winged Energy of Delight. © Harper Collins Publishers

Rumi on quiet

No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower.

So the nightbirds will start singing.

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Night and Sleep

More verse by Rumi

 ——— —— ——--——--

Be empty of worrying

Think of who created thought

Why do you stay in prison

When the door is wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

Widening rings of being.

~Rumi 🤍

Fiery lust - Rumi

Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,

but inevitably by leaving it ungratified.

As long as you are laying logs on the fire,

the fire will burn.

When you withhold the wood, the fire dies,

and God carries the water.

~Rumi💦

Verse by Rumi

I prayed for change, so I changed my mind.

I prayed for guidance and learned to trust myself.

I prayed for happiness and realized I am not my ego.

I prayed for peace and learned to accept others unconditionally.

I prayed for abundance and realized my doubt kept it out.

I prayed for wealth and realized it is my health.

I prayed for a miracle and realized I am the miracle.

I prayed for a soul mate and realized I am the One.

I prayed for love and realized it’s always knocking, but I have to allow it in.

~Rumi 💕

Passion and intention

Rilke on acceptance, courage, letting go,

https://mind-springs.org/library/rilke-on-acceptance/ 

Letter to a Young Poet

We have no reason to harbour any mistrust against our world,
for it is not against us.
If it has terrors, they are our terrors.
If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.
If there are dangers, we must try to love them,
and only if we could arrange our lives,
in accordance with the principle that tells us
that we must always trust in the difficult,
then what now appears to us to be alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience.
How could we forget those ancient myths
that stand at the beginning of all races –
the myths of dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses?
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses
waiting for us to act, just once,
with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is,
in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you
larger than any you’ve ever seen,
if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows
moves over your hands and everything that you do.
Life has not forgotten you.
It holds you in its hands and will not yet you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life
any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions?
For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

https://mind-springs.org/library/rilke-on-acceptance/

Rachelle Megan on Gratitude practice

Rachelle Megan

https://www.infocounselling.com/9-unexpected-health-benefits-of-gratitude-practice/

Commentary by Rachelle on The Guest House poem by Rumi

The Guest House poem by Rumi - The Guest House Rumi Poem

 

The Guest House Poem

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi, Sufi poet
translation by Coleman Barks

There is a community of spirit - Rumi

 

 

Rumi: Community Of The Spirit

Oct 19, 2016

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepard’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

Rumi - The Sunrise Ruby

 The Sunrise Ruby

In the early morning hour,

just before dawn, lover and beloved wake

and take a drink of water.
     

She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell the absolute truth."
   
 He says, "There is nothing left of me.
 I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
 Is it still a stone, or a world
 made of redness? It has no resistance
 to sunlight."
    
 This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
 and told the truth!
     

The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.
   
 Completely become hearing and ear,
 and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
   
 Work. Keep digging your well.
 Don’t think about getting off from work.
 Water is there somewhere.
   
 Submit to a daily practice.
 Your loyalty to that
 is a ring on the door.
   
 Keep knocking, and the joy inside
 will eventually open a window
 and look out to see who’s there.

Rumi poetry

 Link to rumi poetry site  https://rumi-poem.blogspot.com/2013/02/take-my-hand.html

Life as Dancing - 'Birdwings' by Rumi

 

Birdwings

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding.
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.

~ Rumi

Poem of the Week: Clearing by Martha Postlewaite | Condofire

Poem of the Week: Clearing by Martha Postlewaite | Condofire

self-regulation, procrastination, and negative emotions

Understanding the relationship between self-regulation, procrastination, and negative emotions. Poetry, verse to help stimulate self-awareness.

Staying with negative emotions.

Rumi's poem 'The Guest House'

The Guest House Poem

The Guest House Poem

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi, Sufi poet
translation by Coleman Barks

https://www.infocounselling.com/guest-house-mindfulness-poem/

Guest House

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks