Tag: joy

How I Changed Everything in the Universe, Including Meditation

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This is a true story about how I changed my meditation practice and everything else in the universe in one simple step. Well, one simple jump, anyway. In an effort to overcome fear of something entirely different, I jumped out of an airplane because I thought skydiving would be scarier. As it turns out, I was wrong: skydiving was way less scary than the thing I was avoiding. But the point is that the overarching result wasn’t what I expected. Instead of overcoming fear, I instead learned first-hand about how everything becomes different when seen through the lens of infinite…

You Get A Gold Star for Positive Self-Talk

A spray of of 20 gold star shapes attached to a branch-shaped wire. The background appears to be wood painted dark blue and sparkly silver.

You get a gold star for positive self-talk! Perhaps you’ve practiced mindfulness today, even for just a few seconds. Maybe you’ve reminded yourself to treat others, or yourself, with compassion and kindness in the midst of a struggle. It could be that you were really starting to stress out, and instead you took a deep breath and refocused your thoughts to a happy memory. Perhaps you even simply took the time to notice that you’re feeling stressed out, which even just a few months ago you weren’t able to do yet. These are all versions of positive self-talk. And if…

Etiquette of the Soul

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A dreamy, soft-focus closeup of stems bearing lovely yellow and red flower buds and blossoms. The background is also yellow, with white and brown.

Have you ever considered the rare and beautiful value of expressing etiquette of the soul in your daily activities? Is there such a thing as “moral manners”, or “spiritual manners”? What would they looks like? How would they feel? Let’s consider social manners first, since that’s something we’re all pretty familiar with. And then we’ll move onto to spiritual manners. What Are Social Manners? Fundamentally, social manners consist of taking into account how people feel. Not in a scary, co-dependent way, but in a compassionate and inclusive way. Showing up on time, waiting your turn, please-and-thank-you…pretty basic stuff, really. But…

Picture Yourself Happy to Make Yourself Happy

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Not too long ago, a virtual stranger – a Twitter friend I’ve never met in person but have been interacting with for years – shared with me in private that she’d gotten married. Suddenly, unexpectedly. She found love where she least looked for it or anticipated finding it. It came into her life, she felt it, she embraced it, she claimed it. She was overflowing with happiness. And her happiness flooded into my mind, and my heart. It was the best I’d felt in months. This wasn’t a Buddhist mudita exercise. It was a core experience of being me, and…