The past four hours weren’t just about book writing, but also about book making and book reading and book research. I showed up, kept my heart open, and trusted my innate wisdom about where to focus my attention, where to put my hands, where to place my heart.
I started with writing about simplicity and the tiny sacred moments of our lives, about fear and story, about making space for magic to unfold.
Then I read from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening and Brene’ Brown’s Daring Greatly, and I wrote some more. I poked around Austin Kleon’s website. I looked at Christina Rosalie’s A Field Guide to Now, flipping through the pages and looking at the artwork. This is the kind of research I do when I’m writing. I had a silent, one sided, but very real conversation with each author, asking questions and offering gratitude.
After that, I moved to book making, working on a belated birthday present for a friend who I’ll be meeting for lunch later. I scissored, printed, and glue sticked images and wrote lines of poetry, quotes, and writing prompts in a journal whose cover I had painted earlier this summer.
What the above picture can’t show are the tears, the big idea I got, the glue that’s dried on my fingers, the hunger in my belly, the sound of Greg Laswell singing in the background, and the tenderness, the surrender, the letting go.
2. Andrea Scher’s new website, Superhero Life. If you haven’t taken a look yet, you totally should. Her tagline is “no capes, just courage.” It’s beautiful and she has so much to offer, creative magic and other good stuff. It has my head spinning with ideas and my heart pounding with love. Her Creative Superhero interview series is soooo good. Here’s one with Rachel Cole. You know I love that well-fed woman.
You have done such wonderful things, you really have. You have made differences that you don’t even know about, and you have touched lives that you have forgotten about, but that will never be forgotten by the lives you have touched. You have inspired others that you didn’t even know were watching and you have taught lessons to others that you didn’t even know you were teaching.
Please be kind to yourself, dear friend. Please take this day to see what is right about you instead of being distracted by what you think is wrong with you. Please thank your body for carrying you through your life, and thank your soul for making everything so meaningful. Please see yourself, even if just for a moment, in the absolutely cherished way that you are seen by those who love you, and especially by the One who created you.
You are far too hard on yourself. It’s time to treat yourself with the kindness that you deserve. You are just right, you are beautiful. You are capable and you are strong. Your life matters and YOU matter.
Please believe it. You are so loved.
xoxo
And, more wisdom from the same source:
Life is as crazy and harried as we allow it to be. When we want to make things special for those we love, we need to remember that what they want most is US. They want time with us. They want us to feel good and to be in a good mood and to be present. They want happy memories that include us. Sometimes this means that we must simplify so that we do not fall apart. Some times this means we need to let go of our idea of perfection and just show up AS IS.
7. A good reason to meditate. In fact, the best reason.
Meditation practice takes place on a personal level. It involves an intimate relationship with ourselves. Great intimacy is involved. It has nothing to do with achieving perfection, achieving some absolute state or other. It is purely getting into what we are, really examining our actual psychological process without being ashamed of it. It is just friendship with ourselves. ~Chögyam Trungpa
And this quote, also from Chögyam Trungpa:
We have a fear of facing ourselves. That is the obstacle. Experiencing the innermost core of our existence is very embarrassing to a lot of people. A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible. We can’t do that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts. We have to see them. That is the foundation of warriorship, basically speaking. Whatever is there, we have to face it, we have to look at it, study it, work with it and practice meditation with it.
8. Feel Your Pain: mini-mission from Courtney Carver at Be More With Less. Again, the Universe seems to be sending me the very things I need to read right now.
Food, pills, shopping, or your drug of choice will not heal your brokenness. You might look put together. You may even feel better, but your pain will continue to do damage. Your pain will be evident in the way you treat yourself and others, and in how you let people treat you.
11. This quote from Brene’ Brown: “Courage has a ripple effect. Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better & the world a little braver.”
12. More (super) power to ya! by Sherry Richert Belul on Cherry Blossom Soup. I loved this so much, so appreciate Sherry’s writing, and especially adore this line, “Laurie grabbed my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said: ‘I want you to know that this is who you are. You are the girl who can scrape the fallen pie off the ground and turn it into something delightful.’ ”
13. Brene’ Brown went on the Katie Couric show to talk about her new book. She’s so real and funny, like the best, smartest, kindest girlfriend you ever had. I could listen to her talk and tell stories for hours (and have!).
16. This quote, from Geneen Roth: When we don’t allow ourselves to have what we already have, to be who we actually are, to taste what’s in our mouths, we walk around with anorexia of the soul. Always deprived, always starving for more, never able to get enough.
18. This quote from Cheri Huber: What we’re seeing here is how the layers of self-hate keep us from experiencing our intrinsic, inherent enlightenment. It’s simply a matter of realizing what already is. It’s not necessary for us to DO anything. What we’re seeking is available to us when we stop DOING everything else.
20. Nervous Christopher Maloney sings “The Rose” on XFactor.This is why things like Andrea Scher’s Cultivating Courage class and Brene’ Brown’s Daring Greatly book are so important, why the work that those women and so many others are doing, the encouragement they are giving people is so important, because without it, these sorts of voices are kept forever silent.
21. Sleepwalk with Me trailer. I really, really want to see this movie.
22. Susan Piver telling a storyabout the blues (as in the music), ecstasy (as in the drug), and the Buddhadharma at How I Learned It’s Complicated.
23. This quote, from Mark Nepo: How easy it is to be cruel when afraid, and how difficult it is to accept that we are all capable of terrible things, and how cleansing it is to realize that true kindness breathes just beneath this acceptance.
The past four hours weren’t just about book writing, but also about book making and book reading and book research. I showed up, kept my heart open, and trusted my innate wisdom about where to focus my attention, where to put my hands, where to place my heart.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 