Class Notes & Quotes

Let’s Talk About Your Comeback

August 19, 2023

“Let’s talk about your comeback. All the times you fell and got back up. Let’s talk about the lessons. All the hurt you turned into healing. Let’s talk about the version of you that you haven’t met yet and all the versions of you that helped get you where you are now. Let’s talk about your survival, all the things sent to break you, and you barely flinched. Let’s talk about all of the times you doubted yourself—how you used the pieces of those moments to build yourself back up into the most certain thing you’ve ever known. You dove straight into the chaos and came out holding nothing—but peace. You—unbreakable, beautiful, strong, fierce, and brave, I see you and every version of you that carried you here. I see all of you. Let’s talk about how far you’ve come and how you’re still standing.” —Stephanie B. Henry

Chossing Again & Again

July 20, 2022

“You only have your mind. It’s the basis of everything you experience. It is YOU in each moment. To understand it deeply, not as a matter of theory, but to directly recognize how consciousness is, prior to thinking, reacting, or trying to change your experience in any way at all, can be the most important thing you ever learn to do. It is the most important thing I’ve ever learned in my life. There is only a choice of noticing what is arising in your mind in each moment and not noticing. And to not notice is to be merely lived by these thoughts, intentions, moods, and assumptions. And this, in turn, determines your behavior in the world, the goals to which you aspire, and the quality of your relationships. Your mind affects not only your life but those of everyone around you. Each of us affects far many more people than we tend to realize.” —Sam Harris

Choosing Joy

August 16, 2021

Gathering

July 22, 2021

Gratitude

April 26, 2021

“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. …Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”  Oliver Sacks

The Five Remmbrances

March 13, 2021

“The world is a beautiful place”, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

March 1, 2021

                The world is a beautiful place 
                                                           to be born into 
if you don’t mind happiness 
                                             not always being 
                                                                        so very much fun 
       if you don’t mind a touch of hell
                                                       now and then
                just when everything is fine
                                                             because even in heaven
                                they don’t sing 
                                                        all the time
             The world is a beautiful place
                                                           to be born into
       if you don’t mind some people dying
                                                                  all the time
                        or maybe only starving
                                                           some of the time
                 which isn’t half so bad
                                                      if it isn’t you
      Oh the world is a beautiful place
                                                          to be born into
               if you don’t much mind
                                                   a few dead minds
                    in the higher places
                                                    or a bomb or two
                            now and then
                                                  in your upturned faces
         or such other improprieties
                                                    as our Name Brand society
                                  is prey to
                                              with its men of distinction
             and its men of extinction
                                                   and its priests
                         and other patrolmen
                                                         and its various segregations
         and congressional investigations
                                                             and other constipations
                        that our fool flesh
                                                     is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
                                                           for a lot of such things as
         making the fun scene
                                                and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
                                         and singing low songs of having 
                                                                                      inspirations
and walking around 
                                looking at everything
                                                                  and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
                              and even thinking 
                                                         and kissing people and
     making babies and wearing pants
                                                         and waving hats and
                                     dancing
                                                and going swimming in rivers
                              on picnics
                                       in the middle of the summer
and just generally
                            ‘living it up’
Yes
   but then right in the middle of it
                                                    comes the smiling
                                                                                 mortician
                                           

 

On Being The Universe

January 24, 2021

“It all boils down to this: That all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. 

We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of reality.” Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I was no longer needing to be special because I was no longer so caught in my puny separateness that had to keep proving I was something. I was part of the universe like a tree is, or like grass is, or like water is. Like storms, like roses, I was just part of it all.”  Ram Dass

The Posture of Royal Ease

January 24, 2021

Pose of The Week:

The Buddhist goddess Kuan Yin is the perfection of compassion, mercy and kindness and is often shown sitting in the “Posture of Royal Ease.” This posture is more of a “bhava” than asana and brings about an immediate state of grace, dignity and confidence. While there are many different spellings for the world Kuan (Guan, Kwan) Yin is always spelt the same and in this context means one who hears, who observes the cries of humanity. This week we did the Posture of Royal ease as a means for getting into Anantasana (Vishnu’s Couch Pose.) Kuan Yin was originally depicted as a man in China but later morphed into a female goddess. Most images of Kuan Yin are actually gender-neutral.

Chrysalis

January 11, 2021

 

 

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