Category Archives: Justine Musk

Something Good

miniaturepeonies1. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “Let yourself be a perfectly imperfect human being. Let yourself feel what you need to feel and process your life the way you need to process it. Let yourself BE in all your beautifully imperfect human-ness. And give everyone else the same grace.”

2. Don’t be original; be obvious.

3. 33 thoughts on reading (A manifesto of sorts) from Austin Kleon.

4. Dear Homeless Guy: I Don’t Care If You Buy Crack With The Dollar I Gave You on Medium. The last line of this really has me thinking.

5. Write from a full cup from Alexandra Franzen.

6. Truthbomb #648 from Danielle LaPorte, “I don’t want to change the world. I want to love it.”

7. Permission from Glenda Burgess, (thanks for sharing, Lindsey).

8. reasons for my leaving from lists and letters.

9. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more from Claws Carefully Sheathed.

10. Wisdom from Rachael Maddox, “Maybe the magic that was missing all along was the will to be all the way true to the call of your brilliant heart.”

11. Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss on The New York Times, Modern Love.

12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön

Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace — disappointment in all its many forms — and let it open me?” This is the trick.

13. 33 Mantras to Quickly Calm Your Stress Response: Because you deserve to live with ease. Sandra Pawula on Medium.

14. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook: Ultimate Forgiveness and Preach.

15. Wisdom from Phillip Moffitt,

The truth is that you will never be absolutely safe. All things change constantly, even what is most precious. You know that you and those you love will die, but not when or how. This is the angst of life, the price of being a conscious human being. It is not a flaw, although many people cannot let loose of seeing it in such a manner. It is just the way life is constructed. When your awareness of this vulnerability is triggered, you can be swept into panic, collapse into depression, or desperately try to distract yourself. One of the values of spiritual practice is that you are able to come to terms with this anxiety in a conscious manner. Your life becomes more integrated because you are no longer trying to deny or avoid what is true.

16. It Happened to Me: I Taught Fitness and Failed a Fat Test from Sadie Chanlett-Avery.

17. Wisdom from Rebecca Lindenberg, “I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you ‘have something to say.’ I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say.”

18. If People Were Honest About Women’s Bodies from BuzzFeed Video.

19. What Happens When Cross-Species Best Friends Reunite After Five Years? Hint: someone makes a video, I watch it and sob.

20. Wisdom from Adrienne Rich, “All new learning looks at first like chaos.”

21. Wisdom from Geneen Roth, “When you stop shaming and blaming and feeding the desire to be someone else with a different life, the war with food ends as well.”

22. a ghost’s schedule from Marc Johns. I love this so much.

23. Dear Body: I’m sorry for mistreating you on Hello Giggles.

24. 28 Teeny Tiny Wild Mice on Bored Panda.

25. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “Is it time to simplify? Instead of being spread in a too-thin layer all over the place, maybe it’s time to pare your life down to the handful of things that mean the most to you. Then let the rest go so that you can give the very best of yourself to the very best things.”

26. An Itty Bitty White Lie from Rachel Cole. Reason #238 why I love her.

27. Awake in the World: Waking Up Without Words — Ikebana by Alexandra Shenpen.

27. Wisdom from Hafiz,

I should not make any promises right now,
But I know if you
Pray
Somewhere in this world –
Something good will happen.

Satya Robyn shared this on Facebook today, and followed it with some wisdom of her own, “Pray, give thanks, ask for help, admit something to yourself or another human being, listen carefully, be kind, eat chocolate, stop blaming, love everything. It all works.”

28. To Hear the Falling World by Jane Hirshfield. (Thanks for sharing, Jessica).

Only if I move my arm a certain way,
it comes back.
Or the way the light bends in the trees
this time of year,
so a scrap of sorrow, like a bird, lights on the heart.
I carry this in my body, seed
in an unswept corner, husk-encowled and seeming safe.
But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.

29. There’s A New “Marcel The Shell” Video And It’s Freaking Adorable.

30. Wisdom from Sogyal Rinpoche, “Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the path to freedom.”

31. you are your own damn permission slip from Justine Musk. Word.

Something Good

1. Creating a Lovely Morning on Zen Habits.

2. Wisdom from Fr. Alfred D’Souza, a quote shared by Courtney Carver,

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last in dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

3. Also from Courtney, on Be More With Less, 3 Simple Ways to Be More Creative (and why it’s important).

4. Eight ways to be (more) here and (more) happy on A Design So Vast.

5. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

In my experience, one of the greatest litmus tests of spiritual maturation –that is, how well your practice is working–comes when we bump up against the challenges. Embodying–in thought, word, and deed–what it is you profess to practice/study is easy when life goes according to your plan. But the real measure–and arguably, the greatest teacher–arises from our responses to life’s inevitable disappointments, frustrations, and obstacles. If your response to difficult times is to react (re-act, reproduce) with the same old habitual behavior, based on worn out, old narratives about yourself (or others), then your practice becomes that much more vital; your practice can be what creates space and awareness between the feelings we have and the conclusion we draw about them. If you can remain consciously committed to your center, your Self, when the rug gets pulled up beneath you…and you can be kind and spacious and patient when things don’t go “your way,” you will come to know your progress more honestly than any other time.

6. What in the world is a “blog hop”? from Two Poppies Creative.

7. Green in May on SouleMama.

8. What Happens When You Sing An 800 Year Old Icelandic Hymn In A Train Station? THIS.

9. Wisdom from Maya Angelou, “In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”

10. the (sacred) art of breaking yourself open from Justine Musk.

11. Baby’s first LOL.

12. Wisdom from Lao Tzu, “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

13. These 7 Simple Photos Reduced Me To Heartbroken Tears. I Never Saw It Coming. on Viral Nova.

14. Wisdom from Geneen Roth, “Forgiving yourself expresses a willingness to learn from your fragility and your fallibility instead of pretending that they are not there,” and,

Of this I am certain: Something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are. Something happens to every one of my students when they stop running their familiar programs about fear and deficiency and emptiness. I don’t know what to call this turn of events or the freshness that follows it but I know what it feels like: it feels like relief. It feels like infinite goodness. Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every astonishing beauty and every haunting melody you’ve ever heard . It feels like the essence of tenderness compassion joy peace dark starry night dazzling day. Like love itself. And in the moment you feel it you recognize that you are it and that you’ve been here all along, waiting for your return.

15. What hill running, meditation and achieving your dreams have in common from Life is Limitless.

16. A man, a photo and the long search to find the person in it, a story on Sports Illustrated about a picture from Humans of New York.

17. How to Not Go Insane Being an Artist on Indie Kindred.

18. How To Get A Whole Lot Of Sh*t Done In A Day on MindBodyGreen.

19. A Talk with Patrick McDonnell, coauthor of Guardians of Being, (and one of my favorite cartoonists).

20. Yoga with Adriene. I really like her teaching style, and she’s got some great free videos, if you are interested in practicing alone but with instruction.

21. Got Blogger’s Block? Here Are 50 Ways To Kick Its Ass! from Gala Darling, (shared by Britt Bravo on Facebook).

22. 13 Famous Writers on Overcoming Writer’s Block on Flavorwire, (shared by Britt Bravo on Facebook).

23. This is a commercial for Chevy, and it’s pretty sweet.