Author Archives: jillsalahub

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About jillsalahub

Writer & Contemplative Practice Guide holding space for people cultivating a foundation of a stable mind, embodied compassion and wisdom. CYT 500

Three Truths and One Wish

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heart-shaped petal with a heart-shaped hole

1. Truth: the work of my heart is gentle, quiet and simple yet fierce. Spreading love and kindness, cultivating courage and joy, generating a sense of wonder and gratitude, allowing for play and rest, offering encouragement and inspiration, creating safe and open space where natural wakefulness can manifest, showing up with an open heart even when it’s hard and even when it hurts–easing suffering feels like my true calling.

2. Truth: the work of my heart may never be directly paid in dollars. I’m okay with that. It doesn’t need to pay my bills. I will get paid in understanding and awareness, connection and compassion, love and gratitude, joy and tender-hearted sadness. I will see and be seen. I will notice what longs to be noticed. I will be amazed and tell about it. I will be awake and alive, with my heart wide open. In this way, I will be wealthy, will have everything I need, more than enough.

3. Truth: the work of my heart softens me, scares me, makes me tender as it terrifies me. Sometimes it feels too big, too much, too hard, overwhelming, and I shut down, numb out or hide or run away, attempt to deny it, to escape. And yet, when I resist it, I suffer. I try to remember what Katherine Center said, that “you have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.” I try to remember that this is what life is, both beautiful and brutal, and that to open my heart and experience all of it, pleasure and pain, is why I am here.

One wish: There is an aspiration, a mantra, a chant that Susan Piver has shared that I’d like to offer here as my one wish today, that we all know this to be true, practice it, embody it:

I possess basic goodness.
All beings possess such goodness.
Knowing this, my heart opens.
When my heart is open, the whole world changes.

P.S. Basic goodness is our fundamental, inherent, natural condition–awake, wise, and compassionate. “Our most basic qualities (those we were born with) are openness, intelligence, and warmth,” (Susan Piver, from her post You are Good).

Something Good

4 Replies

1. This quote: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” ~Ernest Hemingway

2. From Marc and Angel Hack Life, 10 Critical Questions You Must Ask Yourself and 10 Life Lessons People Learn Too Late.

3. Kindness in the Smallest of Things on Kind Over Matter by Erica Staab, in which she says “And I was reminded yet again that it is the littlest pieces of kindness that we can offer to another, to truly see each other, to be present to the moment and bear witness to their pain, their joy, their struggle, their celebration- it is these little pieces that are worth everything.” Amen.

4. I am absolutely over the elections, but this recap is pretty cool.

5. Authors Anne Lamott and Cheryl Strayed discuss life and writing.

6. Think insurance as an entrepreneur is a “bad bet”? Think again (aka My response to Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and his ridiculous advice) from the fierce Michelle Ward. I’ve said it before: it’s dangerous to think that just because you’ve decided something is right for you, works for you, makes sense to you, that makes it a BIG TRUE for everyone.

7. Happy Birthday to Me by Sunni Chapman on The Daily Breadcrumb. I linked to this yesterday, but it’s so good, I really want to be sure you didn’t miss it.

8. Instagram created user profiles. I was already using Instagrid for the same, but here’s mine on Instagram. There’s a rumor that I’m getting an iPhone for Christmas, so I might be using this a lot more.

9. In related news, Portrait: A Documentary About a Popular Instagrammer and a Pro Photographer.

10. The Zen of Dogs: On Mindfulness, Compassion, and Connection on Tiny Buddha.

11. In related news, this cuteness:

12. Digital Detox: Unplug For The Weekend on Be More with Less by Courtney Carver.

13. Blog Mood Boards from decor8. Can’t wait to do one of these.

14. This quote from the Dalai Lama: “It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help another, the least we can do is to desist from harming them. We must not cheat others or lie to them. We must be honest human beings, sincere human beings.”

15. An interview with Cheryl Strayed on The Happiness Project, I Challenge You to Walk for 20 Minutes and Not Feel Better by the End of It.

16. DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #92: Your Invisible Inner Terrible Someone, in which Cheryl Strayed advises “There’s a crazy lady living in your head. I hope you’ll be comforted to hear that you’re not alone. Most of us have an invisible inner terrible someone who says all sorts of nutty stuff that has no basis in truth.”

17. This video made me cry:

18. Choosing Joy from Corbae Café.

19. This quote: “When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.” ~Eve Ensler

20. My Inner Wonder Woman from Sas’ Magical Mystery Tour, in which Sas says:

There is a quiet solidity that comes from this turning inwards: what psychologists call a state of self-referral. This is when we identify primarily with our inner selves. In this state we have “an internal sense of joy regardless of what is happening around us because we aren’t identified with transient objects or events”. I read this and it felt like a clicking into place. Any fear of not being enough has dropped away, there is no compulsion to compare or compete, no struggle for approval or to have power over others. I have so much more to give, feel super-connected and my intuition is on fire right now.

She is on fire right now, about to launch her new project, (can’t wait!).