Category Archives: Good advice
HOW TO BE FEARLESS ~ Don’t try to be free from fear. Fear is not something you need to escape at all. It is a very natural energy that just wants to move in you, a beloved wave in the vast ocean of life. Fear is a friend. It reveals that you are still alive, willing to feel powerful energies. You are close to your raw edge, exploring, dancing with the unknown, opening to possibilities. Fear will always be nearby. Just don’t use it as an excuse for inaction. Fear can never block you, or knock you off your path, or stop you from doing anything, when you commit to meeting it on its own terms. So many of our fears are about something that will or will not happen in the future. So many of our fears are never, ever realized. But remember, whatever happens in the future, you’ll be able to forge on with courage, you’ll be able to handle it all, because you know how to be present. However powerfully the storm of life rages, you will be able to come out of your story, release your tight grip on past and future, find your breath (it is always close), and remember your presence, your anchor, your root, your Home. You will never be overwhelmed by events because you will remember to slow down, to focus, to breathe, to connect with yourself in the deepest way. You will remember to say YES to where you are, and so you will never be a victim of circumstance, but a courageous co-creator, an ally of life. You cannot go wrong, friend, because even if you go wrong, and you find yourself walking down a strange path on a strange day, you can become curious, follow your breath, explore bodily sensation. You can allow whatever energies need to be allowed in you. You can stop calling the moment ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and embrace its suchness, its unique flavours. You can learn from your mistakes, get more clear about what you want or don’t want, find gratitude for where you are, find something worth living for, find beauty in your lostness. So make mistakes! There is nothing to fear when you know that you cannot go wrong. Fail. Fall to your knees. It doesn’t matter, because you know that life will hold you, fearlessly. ~ Jeff Foster
TODAY IS NOT DECISION DAY ~ If you are trying to choose, if you are confused now about what to do, think, say or feel, and unable to come to a restful conclusion, wonderful! Celebrate how alive you feel; honour the sacred mess of this moment, how it does not match any image of how it ‘should’ be. Today is not Decision Day. Today is Curiosity Day. Today is a day of staying close to the moment, breathing, feeling all sensations in your body, watching the mind spinning, trying to be the one in control, trying to know the future. Stop. Breathe. Come out of the story “I have to choose right now”. Take away all pressure. Remove time. Don’t label this ‘indecision’. Your stress is your attempt to fast-forward from the current scene of the movie of your life (this present scene of ‘uncertainty’) to a future scene of certainty and rest. The invitation? Find rest where you are. Be here. Turn towards the present scene, this very alive moment. Befriend uncertainty, not-knowing, wonderment. Allow all the images, thoughts, memories, suggestions, voices of the mind, to arise, stay awhile, and pass when they are ready. Know they are not who you are. Know that it is not the mind that will get you to the real answers. At some point, you will just know what to do. Or you will find yourself just doing it, without effort. At some point, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, the confusion will drop, and action will occur. It has always been this way. It always will. The biggest illusion is that you are in control. ‘When there is no confusion, there is no choice.’ From a deep embrace of where you are, from a love of uncertainty and impermanence, great certainty can grow. Trust your way towards decisions. Don’t fight the moment. You cannot get ‘there’ from here. Sometimes true answers emerge when our questions are given space to breathe. ~Jeff Foster
“When there is freedom… when one is very clear in one’s capacity to think subjectively, impersonally, very precisely, not sentimentally… there is no need for choice. When there is no confusion, then there is no choice.” – J. Krishnamurti
“It’s been a rough few weeks, watching what’s happening in Ferguson, in Gaza, in Iraq, at our borders. It can be very disheartening. So every Wednesday I get together with some friends and we sing for a couple of hours. We’re not performing; we’re not jamming; we just go around the circle and everyone gets a chance to pick a song for the group to sing. It’s extraordinarily uplifting.” ~ Worley Dervish
Love this so much! Thanks to the awesome Worley Dervish for this post.
The Rwandan prescription for Depression: Sun, drum, dance, community. “We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.” ~A Rwandan talking to a western writer, Andrew Solomon, about his experience with western mental health and depression.
From The Moth podcast, Notes on an Exorcism. http://themoth.org/stories
“Begin to think of yourself as a Divine limitless being rather than a person who doesn’t have choice when it comes to your thoughts. Think of yourself as an observer, contemplating and selecting thoughts that you choose from that never-ending stream of thoughts on your inner screen, 24/7/365. I’m encouraging you to initiate a habit of choosing thoughts and ideas that support feeling good and powerful, and that elevate you to a higher level of consciousness where your self-concept welcomes your higher self.” ~Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” ~ Jim Morrison
“We need radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.” ~Rob Brezsny
“I think it’s really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It’s such an absurdity to take anything really seriously … I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what’s the story here? Being alive is so weird.” ~ Frank Zappa
“To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done — this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.” ~Thomas Dekker
Under The Blue Door 