Christina Rosalie | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Wisdom from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche,

Compassion is the spontaneous wisdom of the heart. It’s always with us. It always has been and always will be. When it arises in us, we’ve simply learned to see how strong and safe we really are.

2. Forgive yourself, and Turning passion on its head, from Seth Godin.

3. Note from the Universe,

When you understand, Jill, that what most people really, really want is simply to feel good about themselves, and when you realize that with just a few well-chosen words you can help virtually anyone on the planet instantly achieve this, you begin to realize just how simple life is, how powerful you are, and that love is the key.

4. Good stuff on Medium: The Price of Modern Life Is Depression And Loneliness?, and The Micro-Dwellings of Hong Kong, and Navigating By the Stars, and Seat 21A: A window seat reminder of humanity.

5. Heroes (Vocal Mix) by Cazzette.

6. Call Me Cupcake. Warning, this blog will make you swoon with 14 kinds of hunger.

7. Effective marketing for introverts from Paul Jarvis.

8. Of curtains and climate change and compromise on This (Sorta) Old Life. If everyone made choices so thoughtfully, so compassionately, we’d come much closer to easing suffering, in ourselves and in the world.

9. Bridging the gap from Life is Limitless. I’ve been following Caroline’s journey for a long time, since back when she quit her job, sold all her things, and started traveling. I am so loving the things she’s creating right now.

10. Hello, Wonderful with Mara Glatzel. I just got my first email this morning — so good. And there’s still time to sign up, 12 days of love notes. Even if you don’t sign up, you really should subscribe to her newsletter, because this: In Celebration of Your Quiet Revolutions and this: In Full Bloom.

11. You do not have to be good on Writing Our Way Home.

12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön. She’s talking about meditation here, but I think it applies to all types of practice.

We’re encouraged to meditate every day, even for a short time, in order to cultivate steadfastness with ourselves. We sit under all kinds of circumstances—whether we are feeling healthy or sick, whether we’re in a good mood or depressed, whether we feel our meditation is going well or is completely falling apart. As we continue to sit we see that meditation isn’t about getting it right or attaining some ideal state. It’s about being able to stay present with ourselves. It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.

13. Why I’m Done With Dreaming Big on Create as Folk. Amen, Laura.

14. Yoga, Meditation in Action, a podcast interview with Seane Corn at OnBeing, (thanks for sharing this, Tammy). “Breathe, and everything changes.”

15. Wisdom from Shanti, “At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.” (Thanks for sharing, Dani).

16. Why We Tell Stories from Laurie Wagner. This, “The biggest boogy man was always you.” Oh how I adore her…

17. Good stuff from Viral Nova: Puppy Approves Of Her Soon-To-Be Baby Sister and This Loving Couple Built The Home Of Their Dreams…And Ours.

18. I Quit Eating Only Salad or Eating Only Cake — Because I am Worthy, Loved & Beautiful on Rebelle Society.

19. Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam on Mother Jones.

20. On the Private Heart from Dani Shapiro.

21. “Authentic” versus “Cool.” (Thanks to Mary Anne for sharing).

22. Redeemed, Amitava Kumar interviews Cheryl Strayed.

23. Wisdom from Geneen Roth on Facebook,

Words like should, shouldn’t, right, wrong, good, bad, they don’t work. They don’t work, because that’s not enough of a heart inspiration. Because, unless you know what you want, you will flip and flop from one to the other.

So ask yourself: What do you want? Who do you want to be? What matters to do? And move towards. In order to truly change, it takes moving towards, not moving away, because moving away is not good enough.

24. On loving an addict.

25. Wisdom from Cassandra Clare. (thanks to Pixie Campbell for sharing).

Whatever you are physically…male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy — all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but YOU are the light inside.

26. It’s a mitzvah for others to help, a voice memo from Andrea Scher.

27. This Rescued Elephant Playing with Ribbon is the Best Thing You’ll See Today on Twisted Sifter.

28. 9 Rules Every Yoga Teacher Should Follow on Elephant Journal.

29. Tiny Home in the Woods. I want to go to there.

30. The hours become like a dream, the days like liquid one swelling towards the next from Christina Rosalie, truly one of my favorite writers.

31. 11 Ways to Solve Rape Better than Nail Polish.

32. 20 Vivid Hummingbird Close-ups Reveal Their Incredible Beauty on Bored Panda.

33. Fig Tart with Goat Cheese and Pistachios. Holy yum.

34. Zen garden kitty, on Reddit.

35. Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass. This song gets stuck in my head.

Kind and gentle reader, this will be my last Something Good post until Monday, July 21st, and that first one back might be a little light. We are going on vacation, and while I love curating these lists for you, they are a lot of work, and I’d like to make this trip without my computer, so I’m going to take a bit of a sabbatical. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll be posting at all while I’m away, but Eric will have his computer with him, and I love it here so much that I can’t promise I’ll be able to stay away entirely. I’ll miss it, but I also haven’t taken a real break since I started (my very first post was Beginning, posted on September 16, 2011), and for long stretches, I’ve posted something every day — it might be time to rest a little.

1. 100 Day Promise, a new offering from Sandi Amorim. Would you like to make an important promise to yourself and have the support and guidance to follow it through? Sandi is launching a new project that offers just that. I’ve taken part in her communities before, and I am telling you the truth: there is no better guide than Sandi. Her programs have helped me make significant transformations, and, a disclaimer: I adore her. Here’s a post she wrote about the process of the launch of her new project and new site, Lessons from the Birth Canal. P.S. if you sign up before June 13 you’ll also receive a bonus 1-1 session with Sandi!

2. Light Gets In: Living Well With Mental Illness from Esme Wang.

3. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing and, The 5/5 Creative Challenge from Christina Rosalie. Make sure to keep up with her 5/5 posts. They’ve been beautiful so far. She’s an amazing writer.

4. Just the right words. Just the right time. Three stories to inspire you to SAY them. from Alexandra Franzen.

5. The Mindful Leader: The Wisdom of Mindfulness in the 21st Century Workplace with Michael Carroll, a live event at the Fort Collins Shambhala Center, July 12th. I am so sad I’m going to miss it (we’ll still be in Oregon) because I adore Michael Carroll and think he’s doing some of the most important work of our time.

6. Indie Kindred is available for rent online. Like I told Jen Lee, the filmmaker, I was more excited about this than the new season of Orange is the New Black. So good.

7. Leaf art by Lorenzo Manuel Durán. So delicate, so beautiful, so amazing.

8. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön, about having the courage to wait,

When you’re like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point—just pausing—instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don’t fuel the rage with your thoughts, you can be very honest about the fact that you long for revenge; nevertheless you keep interrupting the torturous story line and stay with the underlying vulnerability. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability, is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Still, just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless, hot energy—knowing that it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world.

And this, (thanks for sharing, Erin).

The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.

9. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel, in the form of her latest newsletter. If you aren’t signed up yet, you really should.

10. The one simple question that keeps me focused on achieving my dreams from Life is Limitless.

11. A Little Guide to Lighten Your Life and Make Love: mini-mission on Be More With Less.

12. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

There is something wonderful and strange and difficult and painful and amazing about becoming more of who we are. When we stop squeezing our actual soul shape into the shapes of everything else around us just to fit it…and we let ourselves look and feel and BE who we actually are….we feel relieved, but sometimes we also feel profoundly lonely for a while. This is normal, dear girl…and so worth sticking through…

It becomes quite a habit to work so hard at fitting into places where we thought we were supposed to be like everyone else. We work so hard at for so long and sometimes it has been sooooo long that we forgot what we were like before we started doing it. Our soul knows, though.

There comes a day when our soul has just had enough of the squeezing and coloring and carving and polishing we keep trying to do to change it (or hide it!)….and our soul just wants to be authentic and raw and whole and FREE. Our soul wants us to hold hands with it and BE WHO WE ARE. Our soul just wants to be the light that it is…without having to wear a mask or a cape or a shiny veneer of anything at all. It just wants to shine.

Sometimes we feel a bit like a freak when we stop trying to fit in…..don’t let that stop you, dear soul. The more layers we peel off….the brighter we can shine…that stuff is just covering up our light….and the world needs more light. The world needs YOU. YOU need YOU.

You are amazing and unique and wonderful….keep peeling off anything that is covering up all of the you-ness of you. It will be worth it…

13. Someone Put A Camera On A Bird’s Nest… And I’m So Glad Because Watch What It Caught! on Viral Nova.

14. Melissa McCarthy can dress herself on Salon.

“Trying to find stuff that’s still fashion-forward in my size is damn near impossible,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “It’s either for like a 98-year-old woman or a 14-year-old hooker, and there is nothing in the middle.”

Amen.

15. Amazing Resonance Experiment! This totally freaks me out, in the best kind of way. Thanks for sharing it, Susan Piver.