A year of streaming my weekday morning meditation practice during the pandemic.
Read More“I think a lot of the work comes out of that—turning what starts as claustrophobia or containment into something that is releasing and infinite, the paradox that we live within a body that has a skin that is our bounding condition and yet have this faculty of imaginative extension into endless space.”
~ Antony Gormley
Read More“Almost every cognitive bias and flawed heuristic and logical fallacy I've written about for more than decade plummets in its impact on decision-making when people reason in groups, but only if those groups are allowed to argue freely without social costs for dissent or subversion.
A lot of arguing on the internet doesn't work that way. People retreat into like-minded enclaves where it seems like they are arguing, but it's mostly just people affirming one another that they chose the right group. What usually happens in those communities is that people who think of themselves as moderates will realize that the extreme is much farther along the spectrum than they thought, so to be a true moderate, they must shift their attitudes in the direction of the extreme, dragging their beliefs with them. If everyone is doing that in turn, after a few rounds, the whole group radicalizes.
This is how cults and political and conspiracy theory communities get catalyzed by the internet. It seems to them like they are arguing together while alone, but they are really arguing alone while together. It's a community of people arguing with themselves, coming up with reasons for their own feelings without contest, and when you argue with yourself, you win.”
~ David McRaney
Read More“Mindfulness is about stepping outside yourself, looking at yourself, and knowing that it’s going to be okay.
So it may be Buddhism, but maybe Buddhists just discovered something that mothers have known all along.”
Dr. Jeffrey Smith
Read MoreMindfulness doesn’t provide some kind of magical exemption from discomfort. Not at all. It's actually the opposite.
It means when practiced consistently — with or without meditation — we can sometimes change the degree to which we fight against some present discomfort.
Read More“Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?”
~ Tony Hoagland
Read More“a little broken, a little new.
we are the impact and the glue.
capable more than we know
to call this fixer upper home.”
~ Sleeping at Last
Read More“I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.”
~ Stephen Dunn
Read MoreLife is a beautiful thing.
Just take it all in and breathe,
breathe, breathe.
~ Creola Johnson
Read More“Linguists say that language comes after music
and we sang nonsense syllables
before we invented a rational speech
to order our days.”
~ Jim Harrison
Read More“An open question people are asking about meditation apps is: If you’re outsourcing attention to the technology itself, is it really attention that you’re developing as a skill for yourself?”
~ Rebecca Jablonsky
Read More“When people go to the gym, for example, they know pretty much what’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen. Lifting weights causes muscles to stretch and even tear a little, causing lactic acid to build up, causing the muscles to rebuild themselves bigger and with more capacity than they had before. It’s a physical process, and while trainers will debate the best methods until the end of time, the basic operation is clearly understood.
Meditation is similar. If you do the work, predictable changes in the mind and the brain tend to result, in a fairly reliable way. This, in a sense, is the very opposite of spirituality—and it’s certainly not religion either. It’s more like working out: Each time I come back to the breath, I’m strengthening very specific neural networks.”
~ Jay Michaelson
Read More“Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.”
~ Pablo Neruda
Read More“Can we tell ourselves when we need to walk away from chatter, turn it off entirely for half a day, or a full day, or a whole weekend, ease into a realm of something slower, but more tangible?
Can we go outside and listen?"
~ Naomi Shihab Nye
Read More“Meditation, so I've heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?”
~ Mary Oliver
Read More“I’m slowly learning how to bring anthropology and mindfulness together. I think they complement each other beautifully, but how to talk about it is a whole other thing. I think it comes down to excavation – what you do physically to understand where people come from. That’s a process of discovery and insight.”
Dr. Michael J. Kimball
Read More“There usually isn’t a quick fix to what makes our lives so challenging, and that’s okay. A meditation practice, even as brief as a couple of minutes a day, can teach us how to accept the discomfort instead of trying to calm it down.”
~ Jinger Moore
Read More“I don't wish to be seen as regretting the life I could have had if I'd not been mentally ill, nor am I asking anyone for their pity. What I rather wish to say is that the humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not.”
~ Elyn Saks
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