“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
“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
“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 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
“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
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.
