Category Archives: Meditation

Something Good

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1. Rueben Is Just Right, a sweet rescue story.

2. This quote: Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
~Zora Neale Hurston

3. My 3 Fave Ways to Celebrate in under 10 Minutes by Sherry Richert Belul on Cherry Blossom Soup. And also from Sherry, The NEW Black Friday: Make Love Lists Not Shopping Lists!

4. A Dog’s Lessons on Mindfulness on Positively Present.

5. Two from Justine Musk, You Were Born to Be a Badass in which she says “But the first step, as Greene points out, is inward: a turning away from the voices that urge conformity, toward the truth of who you are at core,” and How to Start Creating Your Blog Community, which really has me thinking about what great work we could do together, kind and gentle reader.

6. Some Thoughts and Musings about Making Things for the Web from the Oatmeal.

7. This Black Friday video from The Story of Stuff should explain why I’ll be staying home.

8. Least Likely to be Adopted Dog Pound Portraits, so good that they were all adopted.

9. Jive at the Age of 2, this kid has mad skills.

10. Las Palmas the movie is finally available, only $1.99 to download.

11. The Wonder of Thresholds from Jen Louden, with the extra special bonus of an audio chat with Rachel Cole.

12. The Soul-Shaking Practice of Surrender by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less. Anybody remember a something good list that didn’t have something from Courtney on it?! Yeah, me neither.

13. Get Campie, online vintage camper parade.

14. Judy Clement Wall’s new site is done!!!!!! More doodles, even more love! Reason #115 why I love her.

15. Be More by Doing Less: Removing the Distraction of Busyness and When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed: Create a To-Live List on Tiny Buddha.

16. Wicked Awesome Quotes, a new site from Cigdem Kobu. I pretty much love everything she does, because she’s completely amazing.

17. And yet, the morning comes, the most amazing post from Lisa Bonchek Adams, who recently discovered her breast cancer was back, had metastasized. She ends this post with “I’m still processing. Reeling. But while I’m doing that I’m living.” She is so amazing.

18. This quote from Tulku Thondup:

For healing, it is important to have inspiration. A hopeful and inspired feeling generates enthusiasm, trust, and openness and makes it easier for us to meditate. However, we should not obsess about the meditation experience or have rigid expectations about what should happen. Grasping after results will only become a tourniquet that tightens our mental and physical energies.

19. This quote from Tara Brach, her new book True Refuge:

In the Buddhist teachings, the conscious recognition of our heart’s deepest longing is called wise aspiration. Yours might be for spiritual realization, for loving more fully, for knowing truth, for finding peace. Whatever its flavor, the awareness of what you care about energizes and guides your practice.

20. SoulPancake: Find Peace in the Zen Den. I love the looks on these people’s faces as they step inside, and the woman who says “I’m not finished yet. I can keep going.”

21. Eleanor Roosevelt on Happiness, Conformity, and Integrity on Brain Pickings. My favorite part is this:

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: “A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.”

But there is another basic requirement, and I can’t understand now how I forgot it at the time: that is the feeling that you are, in some way, useful. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive. And it is its own reward, as well, for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self-pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery.

22. Cupcakes for control—A healthy strategy for weight management, from Drop It and Eat: Drop the Diet, Manage Your Weight. This makes so much sense to me.

23. This:

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

24. Don’t Wait from Julia on Painted Path. If you have it to spare, send sweet Julia some love and comfort.

25. I’ve started telling my daughters I’m beautiful. Even those of us who aren’t moms should start doing this, start believing this, for the daughters of the world, for ourselves.

26. This quote, from Cheri Huber:

Those of us who have the awareness, the sensitivity, the great privilege–all the things necessary to awaken and end suffering in this lifetime–need to take that opportunity very, very seriously. As the Buddha pointed out, we never know when such an opportunity will arise again.

27. Stay in the Moment with the TAP Method by Dani, the author of the Positively Present blog.

NaBloPoMo Prompt: If You Could Have Any Job

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Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt is: If you could have any job (and instantly have the training and qualifications to do it) which job would you want? This will come as no surprise to most of you, but the job I would want, the work I’d like to do and get paid for, is writing and teaching.

This in so many ways is what I already do, but the current context, the specific manifestation isn’t an exact fit for how I imagine it, isn’t perfect, is not quite what my heart longs for, what I dream of. I’m not paid for most of the writing I do, and as I am teaching on behalf of a larger entity that doesn’t necessarily share my core values, that activity is restricted and contorted in ways that in turn limit and confuse what I do.

I want to teach what I know, what I love, what I’m trying to learn myself to people who chose to learn with me, are there because of a personal choice, interest, desire, and while I would offer them feedback, I’d never again assign another grade (and if I did, it would be an A for showing up and trying).

Through writing and teaching, in this ideal job, I would help people heal, ease suffering, encourage and inspire health and wellness, wholeheartedness. Together, my students and I would cultivate compassion, courage, and confidence. We would do good work together, work that would center us and then ripple out into the larger world, making things better on a bigger scale.

The training I still want to do this work is to be certified as a yoga and meditation instructor. I might also might train to be a life coach or some other therapeutic practice. In this “job,” this heart/life work, I’d blog, write books and essays, give readings and workshops, offer ecourses, facilitate retreats, make art, and work one on one with people. I’m imagining these people as mostly women who are either attempting to recover, heal, reconnect with their creativity, their heart’s longing and hunger, or those healing from, dealing with grief, loss, change, trauma.

But for now, I continue on with my current paid work, where I’m feeling so overwhelmed I’m considering going in on Saturday to try and catch up, even though I’m coming down with a cold, but where I also get to hang out with some really awesome people.