image by eric

1. A sweet middle path from sweet Rachel Cole. (hey look, Rachel, you’re #1!)

2. Are you hanging by a thread? from Danielle LaPorte. Oh my, did I ever need to hear this today. Also, Curatives for judgement. (Please read before you interact with other humans.)

3. A Photo Essay: Winter Happenings on Rowdy Kittens. I adore Tammy’s photo essays.

4. Type Rider II: The Tandem Poetry Tour by Maya Stein, yet another really great Kickstarter Project, from one of my favorite poets.

5. Philip Seymour Hoffman died. This is not something good, in fact it’s absolutely awful, but some of the things written about his passing have offered a sort of grace. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman from Guinevere Gets Sober, and this from The New York Times, and The Open Letter to Philip Seymour Hoffman I Wish I Sent.

6. 6 Videos That’ll Open Your Heart And Inspire Art from Jonathan Fields. Also, Selling Ignorance.

7. My One Nightstand: A Story of Cancer, Addiction, and Furniture on Huffington Post.

8. Idiot Compassion and the Power of Sorrow, Susan Piver on Huffington Post, in which she says, brilliant and true,

Someone once said to me that compassion is the ability to hold pain and love in your heart simultaneously and I have never heard a better, more intimate definition…Thus compassion takes tremendous courage. It is an act of fearlessness and power. You can totally do it. All you have to do is allow your heart to break to the sorrow and beauty of this world.

9. Is it good or bad to have a big ego? also from Susan Piver, (she’s kind of on fire right now).

10. your daily rock : detach from being right and your daily rock : focus your attention.

11. On letting go: Letting Go from Vivienne McMaster and on letting go (a confession) from Leonie Wise and The Practice of Letting It Go from Amy Palko.

12. British Man Reunites With Good Samaritan Who Talked Him Out Of Suicide Attempt In 2008 on Huffington Post.

13. 10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

14. 7 Reasons Yogis Should Learn The Basics Of Anatomy on MindBodyGreen.

15. Wisdom from Jeff Foster,

Depression
is the realization that
nothing can make you happy.

Causeless joy
is the realization that
nothing CAN make you happy.

16. An interesting thought from Vine Deloria Jr., “Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”

17. Truthbomb from Danielle LaPorte, “Wish someone well as if you had the power to make their greatest dreams come true.”

18. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Taking refuge in the Buddha means that we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake. Every time we feel like taking refuge in a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality. We’re not trying to be something we aren’t; rather, we’re reconnecting with who we are. So when we say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” that means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. I am awake; I will spend my life taking this armor off. Nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it’s sewed up tight, where it’s going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied. You have to do it alone.

19. 50 Insanely Gorgeous Nature Tattoos on BuzzFeed.

20. The High Cost Of Multitasking on Huffington Post.

21. What does “normal” eating even mean? from Isabel Foxen Duke.

22. Sanctuary on Just Lara.

23. How To Assemble Furniture from Brittany, Herself.

24. 37 Life Lessons in 37 Years on Huffington Post.