February 2012
4 posts
in summary of 2011: the good, the bad, and the...
Last year was a good year for me, but I seriously over-extended myself. I worked as a care provider for 5 kids, co-facilitated a weekly neurodiversity meet-up (and a weekly open studio event), volunteered with 6 nonprofits, raised money for Project Grow and the IPRC, and spent my spare time acting as an advocate for friends with Asperger’s (and a friend with Borderline Personality Disorder)....
January 2012
5 posts
“Sometimes the way we see our ignorance is by getting feedback from the outside...”
– Pema Chodron “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times” (via wheredreamstakeplace)
beautiful sky series →
vast blue sky
Behind the hardness there is fear
And if you touch the heart of the fear
You find sadness (it sort of gets more and more tender)
And if you touch the sadness
You find the vast blue sky
(Rick Fields)
path full of mud in my face
Sometimes when you just get flying and it all feels so good and you think, ‘This is it, this is that path that has heart,’ you suddenly fall flat on your face. …You say to yourself, ‘What happened to that path that had heart? This feels like the path full of mud in my face.’ …It humbles you. It opens your heart.
(Pema Chodron)
widening the circle of compassion
Widening the circle of compassion: it’s daring not to shut anyone out of hearts, not to make anyone an enemy. If we begin to live like this, we’ll find that we actually can’t define someone as completely right or completely wrong anymore. Life is more slippery and playful than that. Trying to find absolute rights and wrongs is a trick we play on ourselves to feel secure and...
December 2011
3 posts
At one time you were a mountain, at one time you were a cloud. This is not poetry, this is science. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Smile, breathe and go slowly.
5 quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh:
In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
When we develop concentration on interbeing, on the interconnectedness of all things, we see that if we make them suffer they will make us suffer in return.
(Thich Nhat Hanh)
Life is both dreadful and wonderful. How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural—you need to...
November 2011
2 posts
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found. (Pema Chödrön)
I’ve been exposed to plenty of annihilation in my life: head injuries, physical assaults, accidents, relationship train wrecks, mental meltdowns, pervasive harassment. I’ve eaten pavement and stared down the barrel of a gun. TBI (Traumatic Brain...
August 2011
2 posts
When our attitude toward fear becomes more welcoming and inquisitive, there’s a fundamental shift that occurs. Instead of spending our lives tensing up, as if we were in the dentist’s chair, we learn that we can connect with the freshness of the moment and relax.
(Pema Chodron)
July 2011
2 posts
June 2011
4 posts
May 2011
3 posts
The people we exclude, marginalize, and pathologize—people who are differently-abled (disabled) or those who struggle with neuroses—might have been the most important members of a smaller community or tribe. In a different time, in a different culture, these folks were healers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, oracles. They were the secret ingredient in the sauce. I work as a...
Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the universe; your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing...
“Be yourself. I know that sounds cliche, but we all have seriously quirky things...”
– Idina Menzel (via quote-book)
April 2011
4 posts
5 Pema Chodron quotes
We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable...
March 2011
8 posts
Convert paper-scissor-rock to cynicism-aggression-compassion. Cynicism and aggression would win most of the time. If you define winning as “making yourself feel better by making other people feel worse.” But if you define winning as a raw happy heart that glows in the dark, then compassion wins. all. of. the. time.
The next rebels
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip...
February 2011
4 posts
People are not static, but often our view of them is. What if that bearded clown in the pink shirt and leather chaps riding a unicycle was a corporate lawyer for Fox TV two years ago? What if that person in khaki pants and a patagonia fleece riding the MAX downtown spent their teen years as a homeless street kid who got assaulted? When you see someone, you see one moment in their lives. And if we...
From this morning's dharma talk:
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
(Shams al-Din Hafiz)
January 2011
7 posts
http://sneezydog.tumblr.com/ →
I am working on creating a blog with my friend Jaz. She likes dogs and sneezes and yawns.
December 2010
5 posts
I’m at the bank. The woman at the window next to me presses a piece of paper against the bulletproof partition and makes the international gesture for writing. She’s asking for a pen to communicate. She wants to make a deposit. Now there’s two tellers. The first one is getting exasperated and the second teller is talking slow and loud like she is talking to a child. I finish my...