Quotes, art, questions, videos, podcasts, music, and whatever else inspires.
Do you also have a ‘stop doing’ list?
Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding ‘to do’ lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing—and doing more. It rarely works. Those who built the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of ‘stop doing’ lists as ‘to do’ lists. They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.”
— Jim Collins, as excerpted from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t
And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests and sometimes one positively ought (that is my idea).”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Found this collage piece from one of my favorite artists, preschooldr0pout, just after writing my last journal post and thought I’d add it here as a reminder. I don’t believe in astrology but I am an Aries and this piece definitely resonated with me and what I’ve been going through.
I’m also suddenly inspired to take up creating cut-and-paste word art collages again as a means of mediation and self-expression.
“Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction. Break the habit. Talk about your joys.”
— via swissmiss)
Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg are icons of American Buddhism, and they are joyful, longtime friends. They challenge us to reframe our anger by seeing love for our enemies as an act of self-compassion.
Robert Thurman: There’s a word in Buddhism called “kleshas”—or “klesa” in Pali, “kleshas” in Sanskrit—which comes from a verb root that means “to twist, something to be twisted.” And it’s translated “defilement” or “affliction” by some people. I used to translate it “affliction.”
But the best word for it actually is “addiction.” So anger and obsession, lust, these things are said to be addictions. And that immediately gets the point across. In other words, it’s something that people think is helping them because it gives them a momentary relief from something else. But actually, it’s leading them into a worse and worse place where they’re getting more and more dependent and less and less free.
Krista Tippett: Dependent because the way you’re handling it is then all entangled with the other person?
Robert Thurman: Yes, right. And partly because you believe when anger comes to you, meaning in the form of an impulse that you have internally—“This is intolerable; that person did this; this is like something.” It’s the inner thought that comes, and it seems to come in a way that is undeniable. You have to act on it. So in other words, it takes you over. And that’s where mindfulness can interfere with that by being aware of how your mind works and realizing that it’s just one impulse and it’s one voice within you. And there’s another questioning voice and an awareness voice that can say, “Well, actually, would this be a good idea to blow your top now?”
I always like to say it’s like—otherwise you’re like a TV set that has one channel only and no clicker. If you have the horror show rising up from your solar plexus, then you’re going to have a horror show. Whereas, you can click to the nature show. You can watch the minnows frolicking in the lake in the summer. So I’m saying we are very clickable. We’re very switchable in our moods and minds.
And then the key is, the hopeful thing for some people who like their anger—and some people do like their anger. The hopeful thing is that that energy of heat, kind of like a heat—and actually in Buddhist psychology, anger is connected to intelligence, to analytic and critical intelligence. So that energy—a strong, powerful energy of heat, force—can be ridden in a different way and can be used to heal yourself. It can be used to develop inner strength and determination. And that is really something much to be ambitious for. That is a great, great goal.
More information and the full transcript can be found at OnBeing.org
“Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.”
— Toni Morrison, Sula (via @missberlyreads)
There is something I ‘know,’ which is that spatial dimensions beyond the Big 3 exist. I can even construct a tesseract or hypercube out of cardboard. A weird sort of cube-within-a-cube, a tesseract is a 3D projection of a 4D object in the same way that 
is a 2D projection of a 3D object. The trick is imagining the tesseract’s relevant lines and planes at 90 degrees to each other (it’s the same with and a real cube) because the 4th spatial dimension is one that somehow exists at perfect right angle to the length, width, and depth of our regular visual field. I ‘know’ all this just as you probably do…but now try to really picture it. Concretely. You can feel, almost immediately, a strain at the very root of yourself, the first popped threads of a mind starting to give at the seams.”
— David Foster Wallace, Everything and More
Lisa Marie Blair 