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

Big Magic Read-a-Long: Trust

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trustjustine

My friend and one of my favorite bloggers Justine is hosting a read-a-long for Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Justine provides prompts for each section of the book on her blog, and invites readers to respond in the comments or send her an email. I decided to blog my responses.

Justine’s prompts for the fifth section of the book are:

  • Do you love your work? Do you believe your work loves you in return? (What a radical notion.) Sidebar: I can get so confused when contemplating my “work.” It can feel like two separate things — what I do for someone else in exchange for money (as in my CSU job), and what I create and then offer to the world mostly just because I want to (teaching yoga, offering workshops, blogging, etc.). Most of the time, the second one feels more meaningful but doesn’t translate into much money, if any. So when I think about the work I love, absolutely I love it and I believe it loves me in return. I’ve said it here before, said it even though I know it might sound weird especially coming from a Buddhist, but I believe that work is “God’s work.” It feels like what I’ve been called to do, it feels like it matters deeply, it feels effortless, it feels like it has the potential to ease suffering and as such is so important.
  • How has emotional pain or trying times affected your work? Do you believe that you can create when things are good? I used to think my depression and anxiety were what made me creative, but that was confusion. If anything, the most fundamental quality of depression is an inability to do anything and the most basic feature of anxiety is being so distracted by it I can’t focus on anything. Nothing much gets created in those states. However, difficult times have absolutely affected my work by breaking me down to the bare essentials, opening me up to the fundamental truth of life. Struggle and suffering, if I allow it to, can make me more compassionate, and it’s from this state that a natural wisdom arises, in which a gentle curiosity resides. Being in this receptive state, the best stuff can manifest. Ultimately, I can create when things are good or bad because I have the foundation of my practices to support the process.
  • Choose your delusion: trusting an infinite force you can not see or trusting your suffering and pain? Infinite force I can’t see, for sure. My own stink and mess aren’t irrelevant, but when I trust them as fundamental truth there’s gonna be trouble.
  • Where does the martyr energy show up in your life? How does it (or doesn’t it) serve you? How can you invite more of the trickster into your day? Ugh. In my CSU work and my relationships, I default to martyr. It goes way back to old beliefs that the way to get what I want in life (love, safety, happiness) is to be a good girl. It absolutely doesn’t serve me. It leads directly to despair and dis-ease, the exact opposite of what I’m seeking. As Justine mentions in her post, “Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgression, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.” Being open, being curious, being relaxed and receptive are all qualities that I attempt to cultivate, even though I’m not so good at it. For me, the invitation comes in the moments I feel myself getting wound up, tight, angry or depressed, and asking myself “what is really going on right now? what do I really need?”
  • When it comes to passion vs. curiosity, where do you land? How does each one serve you? Where has a creative curiosity led you before? Passion has never been useful to me. It’s too unwieldy, too crazed, too messy. It wants to go too fast, act without thought. It rushes off without even knowing where it’s going. Passion is more likely to cause an accident than anything. It breaks trust, fosters disharmony. I’m saying all this as an intensely passionate person, but having been burned by it, having been hurt by its impulsive nature, I know that I need to be careful with it. Curiosity is much wiser. It’s like the minimalist form of passion, simpler and quieter and calmer. It doesn’t have to move so fast, and it can change it’s mind whenever it wants. Creative curiosity leads to an approach that is infused with ease, freedom, joy, crazy wisdom, and a particular kind of wildness. Curiosity means I’m not bound to one way of being or doing. I can evolve beyond my passion.
  • Ask your soul, “what is it you want, dear one?” and follow what it says. *sigh* It wants more rest, more space, more ease, and more joy. I feel glimmers of just that sometimes, but am still working out exactly how to allow more of it. Hang in there, Sugar.

Something Good

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Horsetooth Reservoir, image by Eric

Horsetooth Reservoir, image by Eric

So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. How Dare You (A lesson on defining your personal brand) from Paul Jarvis. I really think he has one of the most brilliant perspectives about marketing, branding, and blah, blah, blah. I think so because he says stuff like this, “As makers, we express who we are through what we make. That is, if we’re being honest about ourselves and what we stand for.”

2. Essena O’Neill – Why I REALLY am quitting social media. I share this with the disclaimer that I don’t believe (obviously) that social media is inherently bad. Just like every other technology or media, the way we use it manifests our own neurosis (and/or wisdom). We infuse it with who we are and what we believe. As such, every technology is also infused with our fundamental wisdom and compassion. It doesn’t exist on its own without us, isn’t inherently bad or good.

3. What if you didn’t give up? from Alexandra Franzen. Her superpower is a crazy fierce mix of motivation and inspiration, and this post is all the proof you need. In it, she says,”You can quit right now. Un-enroll. Hand in your notice. Shut down the website. Pack up your case and go home. Never play a note again. Fuck it. Or you can decide that following that persistent longing in your heart — the longing to create, to write, to make a difference in the unique way that you feel called to do it — is worth just a little more patience.”

4. Proud (Diet) Quitter from Dances with Fat.

5. Variations on stupid from Seth Godin, a great list of all the various ways we can be stupid.

6. Good stuff from Susannah’s Something for the Weekend list: A Writer’s Manifesto by Joanne Harris: The National Conversation, and The Life-Changing Magic of Intentional Ignorance, and Top 16 Ways I Connect with God-presence from Alanis Morissette, and Rae Morris – Skin [Official Video].

7. 10 Behaviors of Genuine People, a list, a way of being worth aspiring to — actual, real, sincere, honest.

8. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter: “I’ve been working on this weird deck of cards (inspired by Oblique Strategies) to help me out when I get creatively stuck, so I thought I’d share a virtual version for y’all. More cards will be posted soon…”, and C.S. Lewis on how to be original, and “November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but I have no interest in writing novels, so I started National Novel Reading Month (NaNoReadMo).”

9. Why being weird is your best creative trait. What a relief…

10. Out of Control Salted Caramel Cinnamon Rolls, recipe and pictures that just might make your head explode.

11. And then that one time on twitter we all just became human and I laughed until I gave myself a headache from The Bloggess. If you are having a bad day, read these tweets and I guarantee you’ll feel better, and you’ll have a good laugh so it’s a win/win.

12. How to Decolonize your Yoga practice.

13. What Weight Gain Really Means. With the holidays comes a slew of content focused on how not to gain weight, how to lose weight, blah blah blah. Read this as the antidote.

14. Adele: Inside Her Private Life and Triumphant Return from Rolling Stone.

15. 20+ Cats Who Immediately Regretted Their Poor Life Choices on Bored Panda.

16. Songs that Crack my Heart right Open (in the Best possible Way) on Elephant Journal.

17. A Washington couple took a paternity test for their child. The man wasn’t the father. His unborn twin was. Science is weird.

18. Ruth Oosterman’s “Collaborations with my toddler.”. She takes her toddler daughter’s drawings and turns them into amazing pieces of art.

19. Elizabeth Duvivier is blogging every day for the month of November. Two of my favorite posts so far are this island of tranquility and season of bittersweet, in which she shares this quote from Daniell Koepke,

Despite what you may believe, you can disappoint people and still be good enough. You can make mistakes and still be capable and talented. You can let people down and still be worthwhile and deserving of love. Everyone has disappointed someone they care about. Everyone messes up, lets people down, and makes mistakes. Not because we’re inadequate or fundamentally inept, but because we’re imperfect and fundamentally human. Expecting anything different is setting yourself up for failure.

20. Tig Notaro’s Amazon Pilot Is Wonderful. And, you can watch it right now on Amazon, for FREE.

21. We just found out that Winnie the Pooh is actually a girl. Awesome. Agreed — awesome.

22. In no particular order: Some things I have learned so far in my 9ish months as a nomad.

23. What you won’t read on social media about living the dream from Life is Limitless. Life is tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal — keep your heart open.

24. Writing Advice Is Bullshit from Terrible Minds.

25. Joyful and Exuberant, inspiration from Marc Johns. Trust me, go read it now.

26. Start with what you know on A Design So Vast. I appreciate Lindsey’s perspective so much, her willingness to look at herself and her life closely, directly, honestly.

27. Jamie Greenwood on Working For Yourself and Getting To The Heart of What’s True, a really great podcast.

28. Dieting is a Violent Act from Rachel Cole. Amen.

29. Two older posts from Susan Piver, which are just as relevant now as when she first published them, Self-Employment: Three Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me and The pain of pricing.

30. Two good pieces from Joanna Schroeder on Ravishly: Why I Stopped Weighing Myself and Why I Stopped Dieting And I Couldn’t Be Happier.

31. Thanksgiving Dinner Rolls With Surprise Gratitude Notes. I’d replace the notes with wishes, but yum!

32. Wisdom from Justine Musk, “Maybe you’re tired because you’re repressing so much of yourself.”

33. Mashed Potato Casserole recipe.

34. It’s Not The Dog, It’s You! A Simple Way to Stop Leash Reactivity.

35. Christians and Coffee Cups, which suggests, “And maybe this year we can stop yelling at others to ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ and instead focus on being Christlike ourselves.” A-fucking-men!

36. High school student absolutely kills a simple cover of Adele’s “Hello.”

37. The Self-Hatred Within Us by Sharon Salzberg.