Insights for January 2019

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Awakening:“Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than a problem, we could see it as karma ripening. That gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaken our propensities. But it’s hard to do so.  Pg. 10

Not only do we have a precious human life, but that precious human life is made up of precious human days, and those precious human days are made up of precious human moments. How we spend them is really important.” Pg. 12

In any moment, you can put your full attention on the immediacy of your experience. You can look at your hand resting on your leg or feel your bottom sitting on the chair. You can just be here. Instead of not being here. Pg. 13

When you are completely wound up about something and you pause, your natural intelligence clicks in and you have a sense of the right thing to do. This is part of the magic: our natural intelligence is always there to inform us, as long as we allow a gap.  Pg. 14. “The Most Important Thing in Life,” Pema Chödrön, Awaken Your Heart and Mind, page 10, Lion’s Roar Special Edition.

“The way you’re wired is not an accident.” Tom Jacobs, tdjacobs.com

“Intuition:If you’re not getting a strong ‘yes’, you’re really getting a ‘no.’If you’re getting a vague “no”, it’s really a ‘no.’” Margaret Gervais, December 2018

“Living life is a messy endeavor. A human one. An imperfect one. One that reveals our gifts through our struggles, our truth through our misunderstandings, and our purpose through our pain; one that is made so much more painful when we are in a constant state of self-critique.Mistakes are one of life’s great teaching tools. Through them we get to see where we have work to do, room to grow, and lessons to learn. Misjudgments humble us. Knock us off our high-horses. Grounded, we get in touch with something deeper. The feelings that our personalities want to reject. Disassociate from. Deny.

What lies below the surface of our personalities might be daunting to deal with. Unbearable sometimes to unpack, seemingly impossible to make peace with. But doing so is the only way to develop a sustainable kind of growth throughout our lives. Being aware of our inner lives is what connects us to others. It’s what makes deep and satisfying connections with others possible. It’s what taps us into the transformational power of compassion, for ourselves and everyone else.When we understand the inner workings of our more problematic personality traits, we can not only develop the strength to be accountable for them, but we are also better able to recognize the same struggle in others. When we work on being conscious of our own arrogance, impatience, and self-importance, we are more able to hold that part of ourselves, reducing the harm we might otherwise inflict upon the world.

The personality can only get us so far when disconnected from the depth that our soul craves.

Developing our consciousness requires a constant commitment, a deep and abiding sense of humor about our process, and acceptance of our flaws as well as an understanding of how imperative they are for our growth and development.” Chani Nicholas, www.chaninicholas.com, “Sunday’s New Moon in Virgo.” Newsletter, September, 2018.

“The truth has a higher vibration.” Margaret Gervais, December, 2018

“You wanting a sign is a sign.” Spiritualmovement instagram

"We have so many ideas about how we should be and how the world should be, yet none of these is the way things are.  Human life is tainted glory - messy, paradoxical, filled with contradictions.  The cloak of the world is woven with magnificence and limitation, triumph and disappointment, loss and eternal re-creation.  To seek some ideal of perfection puts us in conflict with the world.

"There is a difference between an archetype or ideal and our humanity.To have compassion for your human vulnerability is a blessed, tender practice.

"Feel the joy and sorrow that make up your incarnation.'You know, sometimes it is your task in life to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.'” Itzhak Perlman, Jack Kornfield, No Time Like the Present. 

Grief:

HOW IT SEEMS TO MEUrsula K. Le GuinIn the vast abyss before time, self is not, and soul commingles with mist, and rock, and light. In time, soul brings the misty self to be.Then slow time hardens self to stone while ever lightening the soul, till soul can loose its hold of self and both are free and can return to vastness and dissolve in light, the long light after time.“Our Universe is one of motion, everything is always changing even when we cannot perceive the subtlety of it – movement is always happening at the atomic level.

Change is one of the best things about our reality, it means tough times can’t last, better things are possible and new scenarios are always on the horizon.Change is also one of the most difficult things about our reality, because our minds are inclined toward attaching themselves to the things we enjoy, meaning we try to keep things the same even if it mean refusing the inherent flow of nature.Attachment, the carving for things to exist in a particular way, hurt because sooner or later the flow of change will reveal that what we want can only exist for a temporary amount of time. The craving that creates attachment opens the door to misery.To live in a way that change is no longer our enemy is the essence of inner peace. When we accept the fact that things are bound to change we can live with the clarity needed to enjoy the present moment. When we know that change is essential to life we can embrace the beauty of how things come together to create the moments we cherish.” yung pueblo

“To the moon,Who loves so selflessly,

That it wakes up to the darkness every night.

For the waves that rely on its pull

And the mad Dreamers who rely on its light.” Author unknown to me

Relationships:

“No one can fill the emptiness within – that is our job alone – but a healthy relationship can be incredibly good company along our healing journey. If and when it is built for such growth.” Chani Nicholas

“A strong self love helps you find a balance between giving selflessly and protecting yourself from harm.”  Yung pueblo

“Stop letting people who are unaware of their toxicity play with your emotions. The right energies will make you feel loved in the purest way; you’ll never have to question their intentions. Nothing and no one is worth sabotaging your mental stability, especially those people who aren’t genuine. Make a clean break from people who leave lingering stains on your heart. You deserve much better than that.” Ester T., spiritualmovemement Instagram.

Healing:

“Sometimes the biggest storms happen after the healing has started. yung pueblo“

In order to emerge from our pain, we have to enter it . . . when we thus relate to our pain, cultivating intimacy with it, we start liberating ourselves from our pain and fro the painful consequences of avoiding our pain.” Robert Augustus Master, “A Painless Present”, Tricycle Magazine.

“The most reckless thing we can do is refuse the healing we are ready for. Our wounds left untreated threaten the existence of every good thing in our lives.” Chani Nicholas, Instagram

“Much healing work is the back and forth movement between moments of discomfort and moments of new happiness, going inward to release the dense patterns of hurt and old programming that do not serve your freedom and then feeling the joyful clarity that comes with letting go.” yung pueblo

“reveal to release.” sensate_me instagram