I took this photo with a disposable camera – after accidentally frying the digital one I'd brought on the first day of the trip – and it's one of my all-time favorite shots. It's a reminder to me that holiness and human imperfection are inseparably tangled up together.
Read MoreBurn the scorecards, balance out the scales
We are one wind distracted by our different sails
Underneath what's detectable with eyes
Every particle's vibrating with the same life
"There's a lot more going on in your brain and your body than you can ever be aware of. And yet, most people identify themselves with this little flash-lit area of consciousness."
~ Rae Armantrout
Read More"Brains seek a balance between exploiting the knowledge we’ve earned and exploring new surprises. In developing over eons, brains have gotten this tension well balanced – an exploration/exploitation tradeoff that strikes the balance between flexibility and rigor. Too much predictability and we tune out; too much surprise and we become disoriented. We live in a constant tug-of-war between routine and novelty. Creativity lies within that tension."
~ David Eagleman
Read More"It’s a very difficult principle to grasp, this idea that actually, what I don’t know matters enormously, and what I can’t see matters enormously."
~ Daniel Kahneman
Read More"Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer."
~ Brad Aaron Modlin
Read More"I think mindfulness meditation is very well suited to becoming more aware of our how minds work and doing something about it."
~ Robert Wright
Read MoreThe real magic happens when we become intimately familiar with the moment-by-moment experience of being alive. Instead of trying to force complete experiences to happen. I focus on setting the stage for them to happen by exercising my attention.
When remembering to notice that we're alive becomes a habit, we begin to erode the internal friction that obscures our view of the richness we're swimming in every day.
Read MoreThere are many obstacles to establishing a consistent mindfulness routine. Three big ones are finding time to practice, being distracted by thoughts, and feeling bored.
I discovered an exercise that obliterates all three simultaneously, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to hate the idea of it.
As with any good attention exercise, it leverages an ordinary activity as an opportunity to build capacities that for responding more effectively to the challenges of ordinary life.
Read More"I will always hold you close,
But I will learn to let you go.
I promise I’ll do better."
Sleeping at Last
Read More"No matter how confident you are about your ability to read other people, your brain is always just guessing, and then it's checking those guesses against what's going on in the world and either correcting them or not."
~ Lisa Feldman Barrett
Read More"We're all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It's just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality."
~ Anil Seth
Read More"Right as rain, soft as snow,
It grows and grows and grows,
Our home sweet home."
~ Sleeping at Last
Read More"You're going to die, too! Someday. And how will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall."
~ Doctor Who
Read More"The trouble with the present is
that it's always in a state of vanishing.
Take the second it takes to end
this sentence with a period – already gone."
~ Billy Collins
Read More"There’s a tendency for us to think that to be a prophet or to do anything grand, you have to have a special gift, be someone called for. And I think ultimately what really matters is the resolve — to want to do it, to give your life to that which you consider important."
~ Enrique Martínez Celaya
Read More"What we’ve been doing for thousands of years is just trying to piece by piece get some understanding of where we came from, where the universe came from, and where it’s all going. So, to me, that is not distinct from what the poet does or what the philosopher does or what the great writer does or the composer does. They just do it in a different language."
~ Brian Greene
Read More"My life is an open book. It lies here
on a glass tabletop, its pages shamelessly exposed,
outspread like a bird with hundreds of thin paper wings.
It is a biography, needless to say,
and I am reading and writing it simultaneously
in a language troublesome and private."
~ Billy Collins
Read More"Do I think one minute is going to be the thing that changes your life? It could be really powerful, but...what I love about one minute is it's a very low-cost option. Very few barriers to entry.
Because if you start saying, Oh, I don't have a minute to meditate, we really got to start evaluating some things going on in your life, because you definitely need more than meditation if you make that argument.
It's hard to argue yourself out of it."
~ Cory Muscara
Read MoreBirds lack the words to get tangled up in the whys.
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