Seeing The Shape

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.

~ Albert Huffstickler

Feel In, EquanimityDaron LarsonDecember 12, 2015Albert Huffstickler, poetry, broken heart, self, grief, pain, discomfort, story, narrative Comments

Feeling It for Yourself

"If I could explain what the one biggest shift has been from when I was 17 and suicidal to today and 22 and a lot healthier place, it's just that before I used to try to run away from my pain and tell no one about it, and now I try and run right into it and tell the people closest to me about it."

~ Kevin Breel

Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonSeptember 30, 2015Kevin Breel, depression, egocide, suicide, vulnerability, mental illness, mental health, shame, discomfort, waking up, TEDComment

It Ain't Easy

"I'll never be the fastest teenager, and I'm okay with that. It doesn't matter if I'm better or worse than someone. It just matters that in a year from now, I'm stronger, I'm faster, and I'm a better person."

~ Cole Cooper

Equanimity, MagnanimityDaron LarsonSeptember 14, 2015Cloud Cult, hope, time, uncertainty, medicine, illnessComment

Focus on Emotionally Neutral Spots

"Although emotional sensations can arise anywhere in the body, they are much more likely to arise in the belly, chest, throat, or face. These are the emotional hotspots in the body, the regions where emotional sensations can get huge. That means that other areas are much less likely to host gigantic emotional sensations, which turns out to be a useful and convenient thing."

~ Michael Taft

Is This What Being Vulnerable Feels Like?

i’ll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness.

~ Sleeping At Last

Beginning, EquanimityDaron LarsonAugust 19, 2015Sleeping At Last, music, musicians, self, memory, growing up, struggle, risk, intimacy, hope, vulnerability, equanimity, liberation, Martin KlimasComment

The Taste of Embarrassment

One of the things I’ve found so remarkable about the approach to mindfulness I practice and teach, is the way it has gradually, yet significantly changed the way I relate to the physicality of my emotions—including the unpleasant ones.

Love Loves It All

All I have is all I need
And all I need is here now

Friendliness Resistance, Feel In, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJune 14, 2015music, Damien Rice, broken heart, self, paradox, present, loveComment

An Obesity of Grief

when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?

~ Ellen Bass

Equanimity, Feel In, GoneDaron LarsonJune 8, 2015poetry, Ellen Bass, grief, resilienceComment

180°

"When you feel the sting of separation inside, simply turn inwardly and intuitively around one hundred and eighty degrees and there will be your innocence, your beauty, your completeness. It may seem impossible, but give it a try until you reconnect with what in truth you never lost."

~ Adyashanti

The Mighty Strings of Pleasure and Pain

"The universal war is not limited to the relation between different states, but takes place between villages, between households, and between individuals, and that it takes place even between the different parts of each individual soul."

~ T. K. Seung

If You Embrace It, It Will Teach You

"Healing comes in many guises. We're healed by just the touch of a friend. We're healed by the hug of a child. And healing does not imply that your life is suddenly going to lose all of the struggle, all of the challenge. What it does instead is it strengthens us for what is next. But to be open to healing means to be vulnerable. And I think if you look at me, you know I'm what they would call a vulnerable adult. The cat doesn't even listen to me here. I have no real sense of control anymore."

~ Bruce Kramer

Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 25, 2015Bruce Kramer, life, death, body, illness, medicine, On Being, frustration, struggle, suffering, yoga, relationshipsComment

We Don't Want to Want

"We cannot receive love, however, if we are not open to the raw and tender experience of wanting it. Suppressing or denying desire shuts down our openness to receiving nourishment, and thus only intensifies our hunger."

~ John Welwood

Tired of Yourself

"A lot of the poetic discipline boils down to getting tired of yourself, and I really believe that. When you get tired of yourself, then you change."

~ David Whyte

Feel In, Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 21, 2015David Whyte, freedom, poets, poetry, writing, thinking, feeling, suffering, confusion, Mark Levy, creativity, selfComment

Bless with Attention

"Whatever is newly born needs a name and when we are more and more welcomed by the silence, naming becomes our job. We have to notice, to bless with attention the beasts before us, both the rough and the smooth."

~ John Tarrant

Clarity, Equanimity, Feel In, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 4, 2015John Tarrant, feeling, emotions, emotional intelligence, identity, attentionComment

Already Arrived

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

~ Erica Jong

Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonMarch 9, 2015poetry, Erica Jong, certainty, uncertainty, home, rest, Adirondack MountainsComment

The Beautiful Fragility

Let it come closer, let it engulf you if it must.
Until there is no division between self and sadness.
Until you cannot call it sadness at all.
Until there is only intimacy.

~ Jeff Foster

Feel In, Equanimity, Practice in Stillness, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonDecember 31, 2014sadness, feelings, emotions, equanimity, discomfort, joy, self, intimacy, vulnerabilityComment

Finally Paying Attention to All of Myself

"How do I understand that I am enough for the mere fact that I exist?"

~ Jennifer Moon

Think Differently with Gratitude

"Gratitude encounters interruptions as invitations, deepens and expands horizons for re-envisioning reality, and cultivates depth perception for how we see other people."

~ Laura Russell

Practice in Life, Clarity, Equanimity, MagnanimityDaron LarsonNovember 19, 2014Laura Russell, gratitude, TED, reality, complexity, paying attention, self/otherComment

This Primal Commitment

What happens when, just for a moment, we stay with our pain, our fear, our doubt, our discomfort, our grief, our broken heart, even our numbness, without trying to change it, or fix it, or numb ourselves to it, or get rid of it in any way? What happens when, even when we feel like leaving, abandoning the moment for the promise of a future salvation, we stay, sitting with the raw, unfiltered, boundlessly alive life-energy that is simply trying to express right now?

~ Jeff Foster

Feel In, Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 18, 2014Jeff Foster, suffering, emotions, feeling, life, resistance, uncertainty, grief, death, doubt, discomfortComment

Two Inches Away

"The only way I've found to try to keep my balance in a globe permanently on the move—and ever more cluttered with stuff—is to step out of the world on a regular basis, and to step back from my life, so as to see what's truly inside them. Otherwise, I can feel I'm standing two inches away from a vast and constantly shifting canvas, terminally unable to make out the larger picture."

~ Pico Iyer

Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in Stillness, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 7, 2014Pico Iyer, stillness, paying attention, present, lifeComment

Blog Archive