Let the Right Things In...

Stillness...

By teaching stillness we create moments

for our children to rebalance.

Stillness is a natural response

when we observe nature.

Silence falls upon us,

our breath slows,

and

our heart opens.

As we enter the frequency of nature,

we experience inner harmony.

These moments of stillness

become the pauses

within our children’s days

that allow them to momentarily reset

and once again find inner balance.

Stillness is a natural response

as we observe nature.

And for this reason,

the easiest and most natural way

to teach stillness

is by taking the time to observe

the natural world around us.

Take a moment

to think of how we find ourselves

completely still and quiet

as we watch a rabbit nibble

on a patch of grass.

As soon as the words,

‘Look over there!’ are uttered

in reference to some fauna or flora,

silence falls upon us.

We stop talking and look.

Not only does our mind become quiet,

but our body becomes still.

Why is this?

Is this simply old programming

that our modern world has not yet erased?

Or is it something deeper?

Have we awakened our primordial spirit

as we find ourselves once again

in tune with

the rhythms of the natural world?

- Ardel, K & Wilds, E. R., Teaching Mindfulness to Children & Teens, A Brighter Light in the World, 2011

2014//Words of Wisdom

2014//To Thine Own Self Be True

Existentialists agree that human beings must have an accurate awareness of themselves and live meaningful—they say “authentic”—lives in order to be psychologically well adjusted. These theorists do not believe, however,that people are naturally inclined to live positively. They believe that from birth we have total freedom, either to face up to our existence and give meaning to our lives or to shrink from that responsibility. Those who choose to “hide” from responsibility and choice will view themselves as helpless and may live empty, inauthentic, and dysfunctional lives as a result.

Words of Wisdom//Jada Pinkett Smith

"The question why I would LET Willow cut her hair, first the LET must be challenged. This is a world where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don't belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and her mind are HER domain... It's also a statement that claims that even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother's deepest insecurities, hopes and desires."  (source)

Brenda Shaughnessy//Me in Paradise

Oh, to be ready for it, unfucked, ever-fucked.
To have only one critical eye that never
divides a flaw from its lesson.

To play without shame. To be a woman
who feels only the pleasure of being used
and who reanimates the user's

anguished release in a land
for the future to relish, to buy
new tights for, to parade in fishboats.

To scare up hope without fear of hope,
not holding the hole, I will catch
the superbullet in my throat

and feel its astounding force
with admiration. Absorbing its kind
of glory. I must be someone

with very short arms to have lost you,
to be checking the windows
of the pawnshop renting space in my head,

which pounds with all the clarity
of a policeman on my southernmost door.
To wish and not jinx it: to wish

and not fish for it: to wish and forget it.
To ratchet myself up with hot liquid
and find a true surprise.

Prowling the living room for the lightning,
just one more shock,
to bring my slow purity back.

To miss you without being so damn cold
all the time. To hold you without dying otherwise.
To die without losing death as an alternative.

To explode with flesh, without collapse.
To feel sick in my skeleton, in all the serious
confetti of my cells, and know why.

Loving you has made me so scandalously
beautiful. To give myself to everyone but you.
To luck out of you. To make any other mistake.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy.

Wallace Stevens//Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Amy King//Death, Is Always

Death, Is Always

Turning my hair inside out, I only see
Emma Bee making sense of excess,
making something of it online, via high fashion,
which shouldn’t be but is,
along with every other thing,
both uber- and central- Pacific—
Turns out the world is a big one. So,
This is where I am tonight:
between bourbon and eggnog,
thinking in laps about the exquisite gap
of macro to micro evolutions, that is,
relativity to quantum mechanics,
and I don’t know if string theory will tie us together
as shuffled and promised,
or if we ever will truly transport, Spock-like,
but I like the guy who keeps going at it,
hacking away at the “only game in town,”
not mine. I’m in the wilderness, undoing math
from mechanics. Michio Kaku and Richard Dawkins
should probably sit down
over drinks, not coffee, in the inebriation way
and have at it. Symbiosis ensues, hatchets in and out,
and we all get rowdy in their afterglow.
Somehow I think this type of fire query,
this instigation of what gets roughed
up —not in the bar-brawl fashion—
in the fray of how we go next
to each other without any truth or absolute
might be Beauty too. Picasso and Da Vinci
and Kahlo and Tanning ventured other routes,
as did many others and still. The boat rocks
on and gets moored, even sinks—but it all floats up
in outer space, these giant rocks of glowing stars
and asteroids exploding wormholes.
The calculations look back at us
too, making out with the abyss
that is also mute with questions,
and laughs a guttural song that sounds
not unlike Britney Spears mouthing
“Till the World Ends” in the background.
Even the theorists lean back to wonder what
it’s like to be the difference
between what is heralded by prophecy versus
what settles the corners
of their own bedroom cushions.
Not usually concerned with mass appeal
or content, they admit to the occasional
wilderness call, as easy as passing
water or making more humans to live through.
Much comes to those who can displace
the public lust and place it back in their beds,
though, even in that, we’re uncertain as to just what.
Which artist is it that explores
exactly how bodies intersect
and which ones attract in their distance?
In this equation, we meet with other equations
that resemble tattoos to astronauts
looking up close from the distance of personal planets.
Until our moons collide, when we speak
the languages of foreign entities, we remain in orbit,
camped up in our own gear, walking separate runways,
lipsticked and watching others turn on high heel,
as we spin about, toe to toe, quiet on our own.

It Better Be...

Words of Wisdom...



Words of Wisdom//Kimberly Wilson

1. know that change is part of life's process. we are constantly evolving, growing, pruning, shedding. it's a good thing even though it can be painful.

2. give yourself space to truly turn within and see what is or isn't working. a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. whatever you can muster. your soul requires it. autopilot is sad and overrated.

3. sit with what comes up. listen to your gut. write about your feelings. when you have the answer, take action. don't rush the process. bask in it.

4. serve up support. indulge in self-care and offer support to those around you. nothing is permanent. the pain will lessen and the storm will pass. let's learn to ride these continuous waves sans attachment.

5. be gentle. have patience with yourself and the process. feel your feelings. be open to the journey. explore opportunities and give yourself wiggle room. you're human and doing the best you can.

for more from Kimberly, visit here

Amy King//Starry Night

I fell asleep and asleep again.
I was asleep in sleep, the empty bladder
of sleep swaying
a hammock of truth, which was not the truth.
My body burned a landing strip,
a field of moths gathered
as pigskin kites with low wing wisps,
the littered light of communion.
The body of Christ fell upon me in pieces,
sails of Icarus scallops
with air like lungs below the crucifix
bleating starry night.
I fought that kiss,
a torture that raises epidermal hairs,
antennae turning dream’s
correspondence into the same
human-shaped faces
that look back into us.
The iris, the lips.
We barter with shadows an inner abyss,
our deep-nosed roses diving
to cradle the taste of fire,
the falling into an empty bladder of sleep.
I am jealous of life.
I am life’s custodial emission.
If you listen,
an avocado tastes like time
has survived the telegram and corresponds
with sands that build
technical vertebrae between us;
we’re shaped the same as spinal grenades.
The material sign of safety pins
fastens survival as an open mouth gash,
a tiny blood seed of beneficial
numbness unto all that exists.
Awake, the artist blooms at the Hotel du Day:
we rose and moved around
a room painted midnight
with food from our resting hymns.
Every body rends his own
fairytale in fault lines.
We sketch such horizons, bodies with moths
mossing life on heated surfaces,
lips that line space where our inner eyes
green and hollow the skies
for the bruise of purple destruction.
Pull the cord now, re-live atomic bomb hues
as photograph, not landscape,
the world exclaims. And so we exist next –
I could touch the entire blue earth
with my mind’s swinging wings,
if by fragility our suspended sky
blew into the bulb of the surviving universe.

Anne Sexton//Knee Song

Being kissed on the back
of the knee is a moth

at the windowscreen and
yes my darling a dot
on the fathometer is
tinkerbelle with her cough
and twice I will give up my
honor and stars will stick
like tacks in the night
yes oh yes yes yes two
little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires something like eye-
lashes something two zippos
striking yes yes yes small
and me maker.

Note To Self//20 Things You Shouldn't Tolerate...

o People who bring you down
o A work environment or career field you hate
o Your own negativity
o Unnecessary miscommunication
o A disorganized living and working space
o Your own tardiness
o Pressure to fit in with the crowd
o An unhealthy body
o Fear of change
o All work and no play
o People or beauty ads that make you feel inadequate
o Not getting enough sleep
o Doing the same exact thing over and over again
o Personal greed
o A mounting pile of debt
o Dishonesty
o Infidelity
o An unsafe home
o Being unprepared
o Inaction

reposted via//mindbodygreen

Rosanna Warren//Man In Stream

You stand in the brook, mud smearing
your forearms, a bloody misquito on your brow,
your yellow t'shirt dampened to your chest
as the current flees between your legs,
amber, verdigris, unravelling,
today's story, last night's trevail...

You stare at the father beaver, eye to eye,
but he outstares you - you who trespass in his world,
you have, however unwilling, yanked out his fort,
stick by tooth-gnarled, mud-clabbered stick,
though you whistle vespers to the wood thrush
and trace flame-flicker in the grain of yellow birch.

Death outpaces us. Upended roots
of fallen trees still cling to moss-furred granite.
Lichen smolders on wood rot, fungus trails in wisps.
I wanted a day with cracks, to let the godlight in.
The forrest is always a nocturne, but it gleams,
the birch tree tosses its change from palm to palm,

and we who unmake are ourselves unmade
if we know, if only we know
how to give ourselves in this untendered light.

Kay Ryan//Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

Words of Wisdom//Rumi

Rainer Maria Rilke//Again and Again

Sylvia Plath//Lorelei

It is no night to drown in:
A full  moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness.  Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
of quiet.  From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble.  They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be.  Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler
Deranged by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitcheds reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetube, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drfting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

William Butler Yeats//The Cat And The Moon

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet.
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.