Tag Archives: Julie Daley

Something Good

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deadmanroaderic06

Dead Man Road, image by Eric

1. Please help Amy keep her belongings. Like I told Amy, every time I’m able to give, to help, my hope is that if I ever find myself in a similar situation, someone will reach their hand out to me. As Ram Dass says, “we are all just walking each other home.” If a lot of people give just a little, Amy won’t lose her things.

2. Green Juice Will Not Cure Your Cancer.

3. Second graders line up to get yearbook signed by janitor.

4. mother. nature. from Pia Jane Bijkerk.

5. Frankly Speaking: How I Found Purpose.

6. Free week of Daily Dharma Gathering. “The free one-week trial of the Daily Dharma Gathering goes live June 15-21! This is daily online live meditation sessions with some of the world’s most accomplished Buddhist teachers.”

7. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: Want to be an artist? Watch Groundhog Day, (which just so happens to be one of my favorite movies), and How to graciously say no to anyone.

8. In ‘Eating Lab,’ A Psychologist Spills Secrets On Why Diets Fail.

9. Before You Dismiss the Concept of Thin Privilege, First Ask Yourself These 4 Questions.

10. GLAAD responds.

11. The Moral Bucket List.

12. On Love from Lisa Congdon.

13. The Parting of the Veils from Laurie Wagner.

14. Good stuff from Chookooloonks: curiously strong, and 10,000 hours, and this shared on her this was a good week list,

15. Here’s How To Plan A Week Of Healthy Snacks on BuzzFeed. The two recipes I want to try are the 3 Ingredient No Bake Peanut Butter Oat Squares and the Crispy Kale Chips.

16. David Sedaris Talks About Surviving the Suicide of a Sibling.

17. Fleetwood Mac – Landslide (Robyn Sherwell Cover). I’m a sucker for every version of this song.

18. Good stuff on Lion’s Roar: Dharma gates are everywhere, says Melissa Blacker and A Day in the Life of the Dalai Lama.

19. A Brief Guide to Kick-Starting Your Memoir — Part 3: Where to Begin.

20. Dogs Steal the Show in This Time-Lapse Pregnancy Video.

21. Watch The Broadway Casts Of “The Lion King” And “Aladdin” In “Pitch Perfect”-Style Airport Sing-Off.

22. Amy Schumer: ‘I’m 160 Pounds, and I Can Catch a Dick Whenever I Want.’

23. A Letter from My Heart to Yours: Why Feminism Matters by Julie Daley.

24. After viral Caitlyn Jenner post, Salem man reconsiders — and sees some irony.

25. Wisdom from Bill Murray, “The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.”

26. Artist Hand-Cuts Insanely Intricate Paper Art From Single Sheets Of Paper.

27. Begin it now, wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook.

28. The Long Goodbye: Angelo Merendino photographed his parents waving farewell every time he left home.

29. The Perfect Thing My Doctor Said About My Life With Chronic Illness.

30. How Long You Can Freeze Everything, In One Chart.

31. saltine crack ice cream sandwiches recipe.

32. Parks & Recreation Final Gag Reel with Season 7 Gag Reel/Bloopers & Final Behind The Scenes Clips.

33. I Went Paleo and Now I Hate Everything.

34. Luscious Legacy Project Living Room Tour. “A gathering. A writing circle. A community of story keepers and recipe collectors daughters and wives and mothers.”

35. The Morning After: Then and Now.

36. Wisdom from Brave Girls’ Club:

Dear Insightful Girl, You already know the answers to the questions that are eating away at you…you just have to trust yourself enough to really listen and be brave with your decisions. You know oh-so-much-more than you give yourself credit for. You have a good heart and powerful intuition and you really do know the right way to go… That doesn’t mean it’s always the easiest way to go…but the easiest path never was the most fruitful path….and you are one of the courageous souls who seeks the best fruit. Trust your gut…it has never led you astray.

37. Losing Amy: The heartbreaking loss of my sister to mental illness.

38. Blah, blah, blah from Seth Godin. Such good advice.

39. Truthbomb #814 from Danielle LaPorte, “Make space in your life for the inevitable arrival of what you want.”

40. Modifications for Garudasana (eagle pose) in a larger body from Body Positive Yoga.

41. The Life-Changing Magic of Losing Shit.

42. Chapter 20: Happy New Year.

43. Unsplash Free Photos. What a great resource.

44. 8 Things to Remember When Your Relationship Gets Rough from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

45. The Moment I Learned To Live And Love In The Now.

46. Joy Williams on The Civil Wars and Her New Album, VENUS.

47. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

When someone harms us, they create the cause of their own suffering. They do this by strengthening habits that imprison them in a cycle of pain and confusion. It’s not that we are responsible for what someone else does, and certainly not that we should feel guilty. But when they harm us, we unintentionally become the means of their undoing. Had they looked on us with loving-kindness, however, we’d be the cause of their gathering virtue.

What I find helpful in this teaching is that what’s true for them is also true for me. The way I regard those who hurt me today will affect how I experience the world in the future. In any encounter, we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and empathy. We can widen the gap between ourselves and others or lessen it.

48. Your Most Frequently Asked Writing Questions, Answered! from Terrible Minds.

49. You Never Really Know What Others Are Going Through. The only thing I feel like I need to add here is that there’s no reason for the people who said they wanted to travel or get a job as a journalist in New York, etc., to feel bad about the things they want in light of the suffering of another. We all have the right to our particular experience. Even when others are suffering, we have the right to joy. We don’t have to be blind to or untouched by suffering to experience joy. There’s room for both, and it doesn’t have to be either/or.

50. Good stuff from Alexandra Franzen: The six types of motivation and The power of “I am.”

51. Wisdom from Friar Richard Rohr, (thanks to Christine Claire Reed for sharing),

Once we see truly what is trapping us and keeping us from freedom we should see the need to let it go. But in a consumer society most of us have had no training in that direction. Rather, more is supposed to be better. True liberation is letting go of our false self, letting go of our cultural biases, and letting go of our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things, and it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is even letting go of our need to know and our need to be right–which we only discover with maturity. We become free as we let go of our three primary energy centers: our need for power and control, our need for safety and security, and our need for affection and esteem.

52. Harlem Students Cultivate Emotional Intelligence, Lead Each Other in Meditation.

53. Why healthy eating may be the new eating disorder: Raw food and paleo dieters ‘at risk of a dangerous obsession with nutrition.’

54. The Daily Practice.

55. Yes, You Can Have That (Finding My Way Home to My Spirit) from Mara Glatzel.

Day of Rest

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fortuneloveIt has been raining every day for over a week now. Last night it turned to snow. My lilacs are frozen, broken lumps. It’s Mother’s Day and I know people who are sad today because they are children without mothers or mothers who have lost their children or women who want to be mothers but struggle with infertility. Three friends have lost dogs this past week. Yesterday morning, our friends’ beautiful, sweet black lab, only 5.5 years old and completely healthy, had a seizure and died instantly, most likely from an aneurysm. I’m so sad.

The first noble truth of Buddhism is life is suffering. No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try or how careful we are, change and loss come, sometimes suddenly and without warning. Earthquakes and floods will come, accidents happen. We will get sick and eventually die, and so will every being we ever love. This is life.

What we CAN do is stop generating more suffering. Wherever we are making things worse — with our confusion, our willful ignorance, our laziness, our anger, our jealousy, our judgment, our various cravings and addictions and distractions — we can stop. Even if we can’t yet do anything to help, we can stop adding to the difficulty, aggravating the situation. We can work to heal ourselves, to be sane, and in that way, at the very least, not make things worse.

It’s the most important thing we can do with our life — get our shit together. Only then is there a chance that we might free up the time and energy, be able to access the wisdom and love we need to help. It’s so simple, so important.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche gave a talk in Chicago this past week, “Making Peace Possible: the Shared Wisdom of the Human Heart.” He talked about how with all the awful things happening in the world and our personal lives, it can be easy to become overwhelmed, to lapse into apathy rather than turning towards the possibility of peace — peace as not just the absence or war or suffering, but a true engagement with life, the vitality of love, joy, and celebration. He suggests that this peace is our natural state, and can be our personal, lived, embodied experience. To find this peace in ourselves and cultivate the same in our world, we have to take love seriously.

Love is not weak. Kindness and love are what give us strength, allow for transformation. We don’t have to have all the answers or know what to do, we simply need to stop generating suffering, stay open and curious, see what might arise. We must nourish our conviction that our natural state is peace, love, basic goodness, and not give up. As the Sakyong said in his talk “when we connect with our own sense of who we are as a human being [worthy, whole, basically good], we then value others,” and with that “people naturally look out for each other.”

Peace and love are hard work. The are expensive — in energy, emotion, effort. And yet, we can take small steps, realizing that these steps add up. We can cultivate peace, return to our natural state. We can be peacemakers. We can be the helpers. We can manifest the power of love, encouraging and uplifting others, allowing our innate wisdom to arise, enabling transformation.

Every living thing is beautiful because it is, as it is. The only thing hiding this beauty is the belief that there is no light, no innate goodness and purity at the heart of one’s being. Touch the inherent goodness at the center of your own heart and beauty will radiate through you, as you. ~Julie Daley