psychology
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Plants and Animals
If I were a plant, I might arrive at silence and stillness a little more gracefully. I might meditate with greater success. If I were a plant, I think you would find that – impossible as it seems – I am both an annual and a perennial. Both evergreen and deciduous, succulent and garden flower, Continue reading
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To Train In Rejoicing
“We can train in rejoicing in even the smallest blessings our life holds. It’s easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice. It’s like the cartoon I saw of an astonished-looking man saying What was that?! The caption below read ‘Bob experiences a moment of well-being’. The Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part Three
Western medicine couldn’t heal my body. This realization – and my acceptance of it – slowly sunk into my bones. A couple of months after my last cortisone injection, I tried a “medical yoga” class, a synthesis of restorative yoga and physical therapy intended for injured people, taught by a nurse from the local hospital. Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part One
The ego-mind lives in fear of so much that cannot be avoided or controlled: change, failure, loss, weakness, judgment, shame, pain, and death. My ego-mind, for instance, does not want you to know that I have a son who I was never there for, because my life was a mess, and I was a mess. Continue reading
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Dharma Wonderland
Kennedy, King and Lennon. Public squalor, private wealth. What is this strange country, the United States of America? It is the dog that – when left unattended – discovers everything on the table is within reach, the pleasure and the poison, and devours both. There are times I feel socially homeless among some of my Continue reading
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Excerpt from The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
From The Way of Zen by Alan Watts ~ “All one’s intentional acts, desires, ideals, stratagems, are in vain. In the whole universe, within and without, there is nothing whereon to lay any hold, and no one to lay any hold on anything. This has been discovered through clear awareness of everything that seems to Continue reading
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Making Use of Heat
Originally posted on C.M. Rivers: Then you come to that place of burning through the atmospheric fabric of consciousness. You learn how to make use of the intensity of heat, and you use it to burn through thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, to purify and transform. Because you are not your thoughts, emotions. … Continue reading
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Making Use of Heat
Then you come to that place of burning through the atmospheric fabric of consciousness. You learn how to make use of the intensity of heat, and you use it to burn through thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, to purify and transform. Because you are not your thoughts, emotions. You are not the sum of Continue reading
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Weather Report
To better understand nature you need to spend some time in it alone, observing. The more you do this, the more quietly aware you’ll become of what is happening there – the order, science, art, survival. The same applies to one’s body and mind, habits, tendencies, perpetual states, thoughts that come and go, emotions that change and pass. The solid and fluid. The Continue reading
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Say Yes
Originally posted on C.M. Rivers: Say yes to storms, stillness, success, failure, silence, noise. Yes to high winds, bitter cold, sweltering heat, crushing loneliness, joyful connection, isolation, liberation. Yes to the broken and the unbreakable. Yes to the shaken and the unshakeable. Say yes to danger, safety, pain, pleasure, exhaustion, energy. Yes to the suffering you’ve… Continue reading
C.M. Rivers 