Category Archives: Austin Kleon

Something Good

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1. Meanwhile: An Illustrated Love Letter to the Living Fabric of a City and Our Shared Human Longing to Be Understood on Brain Pickings. I might need this book.

2. 14 Benefits of Mindfulness. {Infographic} on Elephant Journal.

3. Wisdom from Ringu Tulku,

A feeling has arisen in the mind, like a cloud. Like a cloud, it appears and then it disappears, and that’s all there is to it. This time it is sadness arising, the next time it may be happiness, the next time it may be anger, and later it may be kindness. All sorts of things arise, like wildflowers in a spring meadow. All sorts of flowers grow; all sorts of thoughts and emotions arise. They are all okay; they’re nothing special. When we understand what our thoughts and feelings are, and we experience them in this way, we are able to let them come and let them go.

4. In his most recent newsletter, Austin Kleon shared some really good articles about the problematic nature of the assertion that we should all “do what you love”: In the Name of Love, and The Ploughshares Round-Down: Why “Do What You Love” Is Bad Advice, and Do What You Love.

5. Good stuff on Bored Panda: The Winners Of The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, and Intimate And Playful Dog Portraits By Elke Vogelsang, and The 30 Happiest Animals In The World That Will Make You Smile, and Japanese Photographer Takes Beautiful Sun-Kissed Photos Of Cats.

6. Wisdom from Rainer Maria Rilke,

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

7. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: 5 Things I Miss About Weighing More Than 300 Pounds, and 10 Things That Will Happen When You Start Pursuing Your Dreams, and 10 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Therapy. Also Why I Hate “Bikini Body” Pressure + How To Get Over It For Good, which says “Deprivation has no place in long-term well-being.”

8. More good stuff from Elephant Journal: How to be Productive (an infographic), and 5 Ways You Can Make a Living as a Yoga Teacher.

9. Wow…This 3200 Year Old Tree Is So Huge It’s Never Been Captured In A Single Image. Until Now.

10. How to Get Out of Bed.

11. Nobody Expected This From a Little Girl. What She Was Caught on Video Doing Shocked The World.

12. Good stuff on Viral Nova: A Kindergartner Wrote And Drew The Most Genius ‘How To’ Guide Ever. The Drawings Are Hilarious. and A 31 Year Old Was Sick Of Expensive Rent And High Costs. What He Did Took Guts… But Look Inside. and This Guy Started With Nothing. What He Had Just 6 Weeks Later Made Me Ridiculously Jealous.

13. Garbage Piece from Jeff Oaks. Even his garbage is beautiful.

14. Two beautiful shares from Jessica Patterson,

Boundaries, by Lynn Ungar

The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?

You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.
Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?

Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?

And

Self-Portrait
by David Whyte

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eye,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

15. 10 Things Highly Intuitive People Do Differently on Huffington Post. I haven’t checked, but this seems like the almost exact same list that was about Highly Creative People.

16. Wisdom from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We do not become healers. We came as healers. We are. Some of us are still catching up to what we are.

We do not become storytellers. We came as carriers of the stories we and our ancestors actually lived. We are. Some of us are still catching up to what we are.

We do not become artists. We came as artists. We are. Some of us are still catching up to what we are.

We do not become writers, dancers, musicians, helpers, peacemakers. We came as such. We are. Some of us are still catching up to what we are.

We do not learn to love in this sense. We came as Love. We are Love. Some of us are still catching up to who we truly are.

17. Happy – Pentatonix (Pharrell Cover). I have a soft spot for acapella groups.

18. How I earned my white belt in desire on Superhero Life. I love how Andrea sees everything in her life as an opportunity to learn, to practice, to transform.

19. Orphaned Baby Rhino Loves To Run With Her Rescuers on Huffington Post. You must watch the video.

20. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert, “If you are looking for your home in the world, here is a clue: It’s whatever you love more than you love yourself. (Addiction and infatuation don’t count! Unsafe neighborhoods in which to build a home!) Identify that worthy thing to love, and abide there.”

21. Wisdom from Richard Bach, “There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.”

22.  Wisdom from David Whyte, “You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.”

23. Apple and Poppy Seed Coleslaw recipe. Looks yummy.

24. 10 Things I No Longer Believe About Having a Creative Career (and Being an Entrepreneur) from Michelle Ward.

25. When gratitude is harmful from Danielle LaPorte.

26. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

With the commitment to not cause harm, we move away from reacting in ways that cause us to suffer, but we haven’t yet arrived at a place that feels entirely relaxed and free. We first have to go through a growing-up process, a getting-used-to process. That process, that transition, is one of becoming comfortable with exactly what we’re feeling as we feel it. The key practice to support us in this is mindfulness—being fully present right here, right now. Meditation is one form of mindfulness, but mindfulness is called by many names: attentiveness, nowness, and presence are just a few. Essentially, mindfulness means wakefulness—fully present wakefulness. Chögyam Trungpa called it paying attention to all the details of your life.

27. Wisdom from Joseph Campbell,

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

28. 7 Simple Truths about Dressing with Less on Be More With Less.

29. When You Want to Call It Quits Do This Instead… from Dawn Dalili, in which she says,

The escape is temporary. The comfort in going numb is fleeting and often followed by a pain more unbearable than breathing through my fear – it is the pain of living a life that is disconnected from my spirit, my soul, my God, my truth (choose the word that suits you.)

As challenging as it may ever seem to move forward through challenge, I dare say that it’s more challenging to give up. When we give up, our body contracts, our shoulders slouch which closes our hearts, and our energy fades.

30. Sacred Ground from Rachel Cole.

31. Dream Tree from Soul Pancake.

32. ColorHexa. Confession: I have a thing for color tools.

33. From Preacher To Grass Cutter To Earth-Shaking Soul Singer from NPR Music. Watch the video. You won’t believe what comes out of this guy’s mouth.

34. Guy Impressively Sings Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ In 20 Different Styles (Video) from Huffington Post. The final one, the John Mayer version, is worth the watch.

35. Funny Husky tries to talk other dog into giving her a toy (VIDEO) on Dog Heirs.

36. 5 Steps to Declutter Your Schedule and Live Your Desired Life from Becoming Minimalist.

37. Shared on Positively Present Picks: 17 Things You Suddenly Start Doing When You Get An Office Job, and Canva (another cool graphics tool I can’t wait to try), and 15 powerful side-benefits to living in the present moment, and 25 Bold Ways to Avoid the Trap of Overwhelm.

38. Shared by Susannah Conway on her Something for the Weekend list: her “My Country Home” Pinterest board (I want to go to there), and Porn Burger (warning: if you eat cow, this will make you hungry).

39. How to Put a Toddler to Bed in 100 Easy Steps on Huffington Post.

40. Watch dogs respond to a magic trick.

Life Rehab Resource: Practice, Part Three

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liferehabresourcesAfter writing the first two posts about practice, I started thinking about what practice actually means to me. What is it? Here’s what I came up with, in no particular order.

  • Regular, ongoing, routine. Working with the same thing repeatedly over time, coming back to it again and again. Compulsory, something you show up for no matter what. I’ve heard it described as digging a well — you don’t dig for a bit in one area and then move to another spot of ground and start to dig again, but rather you keep digging in the same spot until you hit water.
  • Without agenda. Cultivating an attitude of nonjudgement and nonattachement, you drop criticism and striving. You stop comparison with other or self — past, present, or future. Let go of both fear and hope. Show up with an attitude of open curiosity, without evaluation, dropping any story you have about what’s occurring.
  • “Only don’t know.” Have a beginner’s mind, again that sense of open curiosity, like a wobbly, awkward toddler learning to walk. As Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”
  • Skillful means. The intention to learn, to transform, to develop mastery and wisdom.
  • Mindfulness of the present moment. Connection to and curiosity of your immediate experience. Your mind and body in the same place, at the same time.
  • Done from love, in pursuit of joy. In Austin Kleon’s new book, Show Your Work, he defines being an amateur, a state we cultivate in practice, this way, “the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love…regardless of the potential for fame, money or career.”
  • “Not too loose, not too tight.” Learning to continually balance your effort with ease. “Wobble turns to sway and sway turns to balance. Never get too comfortable, relax where you are.” Pema Chödrön describes it this way,

    My middle way and your middle way are not the same middle way. For instance, my style is to be casual and soft-edged and laid-back. For me to do what usually would be called a strict practice is still pretty relaxed, because I do it in a relaxed way. So strict practice is good for me. But perhaps you are much more militant and precise. Maybe you tend toward being tight, so you might need to find out what it means to practice in a relaxed, loose way. Everyone practices in order to find out for him- or herself personally how to be balanced, how to be not too tight and not too loose. No one else can tell you. You just have to find out for yourself.

  • Making friends with yourself. Spending time with, being gentle and present, observing without judgement, showing up no matter what. My friend and meditation instructor Susan Piver describes it, in the context of meditation, this way,

    I encourage you to relax self-judgment, especially when it comes to your meditation practice. Our practice, rather than trying to get meditation “right,” is about relaxing with ourselves just as we are. Instead of critiquing our every move, we extend the hand of friendship. This, it turns out, is the way to find our innate, pre-existing wisdom which is always there.

  • Obstacles are path, are practice. They aren’t simply something to be removed. “What stands in the way becomes the way,” (Marcus Aurelius). What arises is what you work with.
  • Post practice is also practice. What you learn, what you are working with, who you are follows you off the cushion, mat, page, leash. Eventually you realize it’s all practice.
  • All dharma (truth), all practice instruction can be distilled into one word, a single concept: relax. Soften, be gentle, slow down. Go ahead and try to stump this one, disprove it — so far, I’ve failed.
  • Keep your heart open, no matter what. Beautiful or brutal, tender or terrible.
  • Practice is clearing a space, experiencing spaciousness and clarity.
  • Transforming habitual patterns and discursive thinking, changing or removing that which no longer serves.
  • Preparing for death. Cultivating an awareness of impermanence, peace with this state, practicing nonattachment, letting go, surrender.
  • Seeing reality naked, stripped of it’s storyline, of our agenda.
  • Cultivating confidence and courage. As Susan Piver defines it, “Confidence is the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”
  • Surrender. Giving up perceived control and habitual resistance, awareness and acceptance of “this is what is, now.”
  • Being in relationship. With ourselves, with our suffering and that of others, with our shared experience, with reality, with basic goodness — fundamental wisdom and compassion.
  • Showing up is essential. Stop waiting for something to happen and just happen. Take your seat. Begin. Let go and begin again. Start over. Take the “half step that will change your life.” According to Susan Piver, the number of fresh starts available to you is infinite.
  • What you practice is your choice, specific to you. For me it’s yoga, meditation, writing, and dog. For others it’s running or ikebana or parenting. As long as it embodies the qualities of practice, it is practice.

Do you see, kind and gentle reader, why I said I could write a whole book about practice? ♥