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[Interlude] Compassion, Vulnerability & My Unexpected Plot Twist

1 May 2 Comments

“In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves,” wrote Tara Brach, psychologist, meditation teacher, speaker and author of True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. Reading these words, an uncomfortable chord struck, for despite my musings on […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Interludes 2 Comments

Mark Strand on Being in Creative Flow

25 April Leave a Comment

“[When] you’re right in the work, you lose your sense of time… You’re completely enraptured, You’re completely caught up in what you’re doing, and you’re sort of swayed by the possibilities you see in this work. If that becomes too powerful, then you get up, because the excitement is too great. You can’t continue to […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Artists, Authors, Create, Inspire, Poets, The Island Leave a Comment

George Saunders’ Short Animated Documentary on the Art of Storytelling

20 March

“A good story is one that says, at many different levels, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy situation called life, that we don’t really understand. Can we put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very high, non-bullshitty level?’ Then, all kinds of magic can happen.” ~ George Saunders […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Authors, Inspire, The Island

Pema Chödrön on Why to Meditate

25 November 2 Comments

We do not meditate in order to be comfortable. In other words, we don’t meditate in order to always, all the time, feel good. Meditation gives us the opportunity to have an open, compassionate attentiveness to whatever is going on. The meditative space is like the big sky— spacious, vast enough to accommodate anything that […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Awaken, Inspire, Meditate, Sages & Seekers, The Island, The Temple, Thinkers 2 Comments

Diane Ackerman on Truly Living Our Lives

20 October

“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat an unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Authors, Awaken, Dreamers, Thinkers, Vagabonds

Frida Kahlo on Being Just as Strange as You

28 September 2 Comments

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Activists, Artists, Inspire, The Island 2 Comments

Henry Miller on Art, Creation & Change

19 August

The artist is never defending art, but simply his own petty conception of art. Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. #Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. —Henry Miller Click To Tweet There is nothing but art, if you look at it properly. It is almost […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Artists, Authors, Inspire, The Island

Music | Happy Birthday Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong

4 August Leave a Comment

“The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.” ~ Louis Armstrong In honour of Louis “Satchmo” “Pops” “Ambassador Satch” Armstrong’s 114th birthday today, instead of sharing a poem, here’s a little musical interlude for you […]

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Tom Robbins on Writing and Making a Fool of Yourself

16 July Leave a Comment

“Never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. …the furthest out you can go is the best place to be, but pushing the envelope has to come naturally, you can’t force it. Always compare yourself to the best. Even if you never measure up, it can’t help but make you better. I look for […]

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Poetry | Call Me by My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh

9 July

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.   Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, […]

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Filed Under: Filed Under: Poetry, Poets, Read, The Island

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