Pamela Leavey

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Tag: Sorrow

Food For Thought: Find Joy

February 28, 2012

A short time after publishing my earlier post today, Live With Sorrow, I looked out of my desk window to check on my little yellow crocus that have been blooming sporadically for over a week now and found they had some companions… Some lovely white crocus had also bloomed.

As I hobbled down my driveway, camera in hand, I was filled with joy knowing that more of the crocus I had planted last fall were poking their pretty little petals out in the sun.

It’s true that the smallest and simplest things can fill our hearts with joy. For me flowers have always been a great source of joy. I spent 20 years working as a floral designer and although the long hours during the holiday seasons were rough, the work itself was always filled with joy. It never ceased to amaze me during those 20 years, that I could look at a bunch of white daises, or red roses, or pink carnations and find that one perfect flower that made me say, “wow.”

Joy is all around us… Even in times of deep sorrow, we must open our eyes to see, open our ears to hear and let it the joy flow into us every day.

(Photo: Crocus On The River ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

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Reflections: Live With Sorrow

I’ve reflected here, sometimes on a very personal level, in recent weeks some of what I have been going through in my life. There’s been a a lot of change, an injury that has kept me mostly house-bound for over 7 weeks and when I lump all the stuff that has happened together, I find my self at times slipping into sorrow.

The quote below from the great spiritual master J. Krishnamurti eloquently expresses how to… Live with sorrow:

We all have sorrow. Don’t you have sorrow in one form or another? And do you want to know about it? If you do, you can analyze it and explain why you suffer. You can read books on the subject, or go to the church, and you will soon know something about sorrow. But I am not talking about that; I am talking about the ending of sorrow. Knowledge does not end sorrow. The ending of sorrow begins with the facing of psychological facts within oneself and being totally aware of all the implications of those facts from moment to moment. This means never escaping from the fact that one is in sorrow, never rationalizing it, never offering an opinion about it, but living with that fact completely.

You know, to live with the beauty of those mountains and not get accustomed to it is very difficult. You have beheld those mountains, heard the stream, and seen the shadows creep across the valley, day after day; and have you not noticed how easily you get used to it all? You say, ‘Yes, it is quite beautiful,’ and you pass by. To live with beauty, or to live with an ugly thing, and not become habituated to it requires enormous energy,an awareness that does not allow your mind to grow dull. In the same way, sorrow dulls the mind if you merely get used to it,and most of us do get used to it. But you need not get used to sorrow. You can live with sorrow, understand it, go into it -but not in order to know about it. You know that sorrow is there; it is a fact, and there is nothing more to know. You have to live. ~~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The great lesson in living with sorrow, is that yes, “you have to live.” You must carry on… And learn to live your life through the suffering and sorrow…

(Photo: Two Swans at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey)

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Food For Thought

February 5, 2012

I was first introduced to the teaching of J. Krishnamurti while studying A Course In Miracles, with Tara Singh while living in Los Angeles. Since then I have found great comfort and wisdom from the teaching of J. Krishnamurti…

The center of suffering

When you see a most lovely thing, a beautiful mountain, a beautiful sunset, a ravishing smile, a ravishing face, that fact stuns you, and you are silent; hasn’t it ever happened to you? Then you hug the world in your arms. But that is something from outside which comes to your mind, but I am talking of the mind which is not stunned but which wants to look, to observe. Now, can you observe without all this upsurging of conditioning? To a person in sorrow, I explain in words; sorrow is inevitable, sorrow is the result of fulfillment. When all explanations have completely stopped, then only can you look -which means you are not looking from the center. When you look from a center, your faculties of observation are limited. If I hold to a post and want to be there, there is a strain, there is pain. When I look from the center into suffering, there is suffering. It is the incapacity to observe that creates pain. I cannot observe if I think, function, see from a center- as when I say, ‘I must have no pain, I must find out why I suffer, I must escape.’ When I observe from a center, whether the center is a conclusion, an idea, hope, despair, or anything else, that observation is very restricted, very narrow, very small, and that engenders sorrow. ~~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Let go of the suffering, I believe Krishnamurti is saying here. Release it. Sorrow is inevitable, we all go through it. We can’t get past it if we hold it at our center. It’s a hard lesson, but in time we must release the sorrow and suffering and move through it.

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Reflections: Trust

February 3, 2012

Sometimes the universe heaps so much unsavory matter in our lives, we feel swallowed up by the enormity of it all. It is there, we are in times of deepest despair and sorrow, brought to our knees. Some of us, come to know this time as the Dark Nights of the Soul.

It is here, we lay our troubles ahead of us like an unknown path to a destination that was not on our agenda. Crippled we find ourselves unable to walk the path and find the answers waiting in the light.

But trust we must, that the answers to our questions will be answered if we still our hearts and minds and listen.

It is there in the still of the dark night, that we cry out in anguish that life is so unfair. We weary of the thought of carrying on, because we have been worn down by so much grief.

And so in the darkness, we take one small step at a time, towards the light, with trust and faith that we will be encompassed with the ever glorious light of the universe.

Though the journey might be tough and and the process slower than we wished, we must all take this journey at times in our lives, because it is on this journey that we learn the lessons necessary and gain the strength to move forward in our lives.

The light is there… Trust we must.

(Photo: Parker River Sunset ~~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

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Food For Thought

January 22, 2012

It’s time for some Food For Thought once again… from the great master J. Krishnamurti:

What are you?

So what are you? Apart from a name, a form, perhaps if you are lucky a  bank account, perhaps a skill, apart from all that what are you? Are we  not suffering? Or suffering doesn’t exist in your life. Is there fear?  Is there anxiety? Greed? Envy? Worshipping some image which thought has  created? Frightened of death? Clinging to some concept? A contradiction,  saying one thing and doing another. So we are all that. Our habits, our  inanities, the endless chatter that goes on in the mind, all that is  what we are. And the content of consciousness makes consciousness, and  that consciousness has been evolving through time, through tremendous  experiences, pains, sorrow, anxiety, all that. Now we are asking: can  one be free of all that? Free from all sense of fear. Because where  there is fear there is no love.

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Food For Thought: This Pure Flame of Passion

June 10, 2011

J. Krishnamurti…

In most of us there is very little passion. We may be lustful, we may be longing for something, we may be wanting to escape from something, and all this does give one a certain intensity. But unless we awaken and feel our way into this flame of passion without a cause, we shall not be able to understand that which we call sorrow. To understand something you must have passion, the intensity of complete attention. Where there is the passion for something, which produces contradiction, conflict, this pure flame of passion cannot be; and this pure flame of passion must exist in order to end sorrow, dissipate it completely.  ~~ The Book of Life

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Musing and Rambling

Sometimes I muse and I ramble because I can... I muse about life and things that matter to me...

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