Sangha of Auspicious Companions

A Dying Boy’s Special Bond with a Rescue Dog

The most important thing in this world is to learn to give out love, and let it come in. — Morrie Schwartz

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Good News of the Day:
Every moment is extra precious for 4-yr-old Lucas Hembree. Suffering from Sanfilippo syndrome, he isn’t expected to live past 15. As the disease started to take a toll on Lucas’ joints, his father Chester looked into getting a service dog to keep Lucas steady when he walked. A combination of prayer and persistence led Chester to Juno. “I had the feeling in my gut that I had to go see this dog,” said Chester. But Juno herself was in bad shape: “She was emaciated, and was days away from being euthanized,” said Chester. Right away, there was something instinctive about the relationship between Lucas and Juno. One day, Chester noticed Juno circling Lucas while he was in his wheelchair. “She was whining and nudging him with her nose,” Chester says. “I checked his oxygen levels and they were very low.” After giving him oxygen, Lucas returned to normal and Juno greeted him with licks and affection. The full, heart-melting story:
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Be The Change:
Today, approach the day with a resolve to give out love, and let it in.

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Kindness Daily: A Secret Handshake Puts It Right

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A Secret Handshake Puts It Right February 7, 2012 – Posted by hasifa Yesterday was my step-mom’s birthday. I haven’t been home in a long time so I wanted to stop by the house to see her on this special day. I have been struggling financially so I was dreading the long trip. Gas is so expensive nowadays! Anyway, I filled my tank with gas and set off. I stopped at the shopping mall and found a present. It was the perfect gift and I knew she would love it. But when I got to the cashier my card was declined! I did not have enough money in my account to pay for the gift! So I pondered the issue for a few minutes. I could put it back and get something cheaper, but I knew there was nothing else in the store she would have liked as much. So, I got on my smart-phone and transferred some money from my savings account so I was able to pay for the gift. It took a big chunk of my savings but I wanted her to have something special. She loved the gift and I felt that even though I had spent almost all my money my step mom deserved the best and I was glad I gave her the best that I could. Before leaving my parents’ house my dad took me to one side and, with our secret handshake, he gave me some money. I had not said anything to him about my finances but I guess dad’s just know. When I got to the car, I saw the amount he gave me was three times what I had spent on the gas and the gift! It goes to show that doing the right thing always comes with great rewards. Add/View Comment >> About Newsletter Kindness Daily is an email that delivers today’s featured story from HelpOthers.org. If you’d rather not receive this email, you can also unsubscribe. Similar Stories Confronting Road Rage With Compassion, by Megan Like The Flowing River!, by bearhug I Bow to the Paint on my Walls, by Sukh Chugh A Carrot, an Egg or a Coffee Bean?, by Hafeez Be Vocal In Times Of Beauty, by singlestep Helpful Links Smile Cards: do an act of kindness and leave a card behind to keep the chain going. Smile Decks: 52 cards with a kindness idea on each! Smile Groups: share your own stories, make friends, spread the good. Smile Ideas: loads of ideas that can support your drive of kindness. Unsubscribe If you’d rather not receive these stories by email, you can remove yourself with two easy clicks. Community

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Money Can Buy Anything — Except Meaning

If great truth does not enter into our relation to money, it cannot enter our lives. — Jacob Needleman

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Inspiration of the Day:
“Money helps you do what you want to do. And what you want to do is something that will bring your life meaning. It helps to accomplish those things. On the other hand, the struggle wakes you up. That’s what it’s really all about: waking up. The money question: If it serves to wake me up to what I want, what I wish for, what I’m willing to sacrifice for, what I’m not going to compromise for, then I feel alive. I feel meaningful. That brings life. I don’t think it’s naive to say you can’t really fail, going in that direction. You might lose the deal here or there, but something in you has been nourished that’s truly human.” Noted philosopher Jacob Needleman explores how we come to a greater understanding of ourselves by understanding the true meaning of money.
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Be The Change:
Prof. Barry Schwartz shares an intriguing reflection on how a societal over-reliance on incentives can undermine virtues.
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Year of Dancing with Life – Week 18

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Week 18: Three Kinds of Craving To receive Phillip’s weekly teaching, click here: http://www.lifebalanceinstitute.com/ dharmawisdom/dancing-with-life/ teaching/three-kinds-craving May your study of this material deepen your meditation practice and inspire your dance with life. If you are interested in studying Dancing with Life in more depth, sign up to receive your on-line study guide and other supplemental materials.

InnerNet Weekly: The Power of Here

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. The Power of Here by Bill Plotkin [Listen to Audio!] Wisdom traditions worldwide say there’s no greater blessing than to live the life of your soul, the source of your deepest personal fulfillment and of your greatest service to others. It’s what you were born for. It’s the locus of authentic personal power – not power over people and things, but rather the power of partnership with others, the power to cocreate life and to cooperate with an evolving universe. Before you find your ultimate place, you are, in a sense, lost. You have a particular destiny but don’t know what it is. It’s like being lost in a forest…[…] You can begin or deepen your relationship to soul in the same way the poet advises you to commune with the forest. None of the nonhumans in the forest – or the world, more generally – are lost. Each one is precisely in its true place, and each one knows every place in the forest as a unique place. They are doing something you do not yet know how to do. You could apprentice yourself to them. The forest, the world, knows where you are and who you are. You must let it find you. lf you don’t yet have conscious knowledge of your soul, you haven’t yet learned the power of place – or the power of Here. To acquire this power, which is the goal in the first half of the Wheel of Life, you must first get to know more thoroughly the place in life you already inhabit. This place consists of your relationships and roles in both society and nature. This is the place in which you are lost, in which you find yourself to be, and from which you can, eventually, find your self. […] Your soul is your true home. ln the moment you finally arrive in this psycho-ecological niche, you feel fully available and present to the world, unlost. This particular place is profoundly familiar to you, more so than any geographical location or any mere dwelling has ever been or could be. You know immediately that this is the source, the marrow, of your true belonging. This is the identity no one could ever take from you. Inhabiting this place does not depend on having anyone else’s permission or approval or presence. It does not require having a particular job – or any at all. You can be neither hired for it nor fired from it. Acting from this place aligns you with your surest personal powers (your soul powers), your powers of nurturing, transforming, creating; your powers of presence and wonder. The first time you consciously inhabit your ultimate place and act from your soul is the first time you can say, "Here" and really know what it means. You’ve arrived, at last, at your own center. As long as you stay Here, everywhere you go, geographically or socially, feels like home. Every place becomes Here. This is the power of place, the power of Here. Before soul initiation, wherever you go, there you are. After soul initiation, wherever you go, Here you are.

A Survivor’s Sunrise Ritual

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. — Anais Nin

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Good News of the Day:
No two sunrises are ever the same. Debbie Wagner knows this better than almost anyone else. With earnest devotion, she has risen in the darkness more than 2,200 times so she could observe and paint the sunrise. She’s rarely missed a morning since December 2005; for Wagner, the daily ritual is sustaining. “As a brain-tumor survivor, I lost so many of the loves I had, like reading and writing and mathematics,” said Wagner. And increasingly, Wagner’s artwork is taking on personal significance for others as well. Three weeks ago, the family of Justin Tyler Berry reached out to Wagner: “My 24-year-old nephew was killed in a car accident December 12th, 2011 — the day of his last sunrise here with us,” Cox wrote. “I would like to purchase that day’s painting, if it is available, and also December 13th, 2011. Both unframed please.” A touching story of beauty and connection.
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Be The Change:
Renew your perception of beauty within the familiar — and share what you discover with someone today.

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Smile Newsletter: Be Open. Be Ready.

Feb 5, 2012 “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”– William James “I go to one of those “everything’s a dollar” stores and purchase several umbrellas to keep in my car. When I am driving somewhere in the rain and see someone stranded without any shelter I pull up by the roadside and hand them an umbrella. It brings out a smile every time!”–debbiewright [ share your story >> ] You can also contribute comments on each story! Be Open. Be Ready. Look for Opportunities to be Kind. >> A Tail Waggin Way Of A Blessing >> Life Is Baeutiful. >> More Stories >> “Never get tired of doing little things for others; Sometimes those little things occupy the biggest part of their hearts”–wdeanna48 What is a “smile card”? It’s a game of kindness — do something nice for someone and leave a card behind asking them to pay it forward. To date, 1,005,070 cards have been shipped without any charge. The ‘Smiles’ newsletter is emailed to 87,745 subscribers with the intent of spreading more smiles in the world. You can unsubscribe anytime. get smile cards | donate | write to us

A Guide to Finding Your Passion

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. — Arnold Toynbee

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Tip of the Day:
“Following your passion can be a tough thing. But figuring out what that passion is can be even more elusive. I’m lucky — I’ve found my passion, and I’m living it. I can testify that it’s the most wonderful thing, to be able to make a living doing what you love. And so, in this little guide, I’d like to help you get started figuring out what you’d love doing. This will be the thing that will get you motivated to get out of bed in the morning, to cry out, ‘I’m alive! I’m feeling this, baby!’. This guide won’t be comprehensive, and it won’t find your passion for you. But it will help you in your journey to find it.” Leo Babauta shares his personal story about finding his passion, and shares ten tips that helped him get there.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A5453:C3009629A010612C7895A8B68ABE83E4B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
YES! Magazine shares this article: “Need a Job? Create Your Own — 5 Entrepreneurs Who Said No to Corporate Jobs”
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The Green School in Bali

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come. — Chinese proverb

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Inspiration of the Day:
With natural light and a breeze that passes through, John Hardy’s dream of building a green school comes alive in Bali. Created with bamboo architecture, no walls and a diverse range of teachers, this school not only teaches reading, writing, and arithmetic but also teaches how to reconnect to nature, endeavoring to develop future green leaders from 25 different countries. This 14 minute TED talk shares Hardy’s amazing journey from being lit up by a small idea to the culmination of a beautiful model with these principles at its core: be local, let the environment lead, and think about how your grandchildren might build.
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Be The Change:
Reflect on this short passage on “True Education” by Albert Einstein.
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Dalai Lama Quote

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week External circumstances are not what draw us into suffering. Suffering is caused and permitted by an untamed mind. The appearance of self-defeating emotions in our minds leads us to faulty actions. The naturally pure mind is covered over by these emotions and troubling conceptions. The force of their deceit pushes us into faulty actions, which leads inevitably to suffering. We need, with great awareness and care, to extinguish these problematic attitudes, the way gathering clouds dissolve back into the sphere of the sky. When our self-defeating attitudes, emotions, and conceptions cease, so will the harmful actions arising from them. As the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa says, “When arising, arising within space itself; when dissolving, dissolving back into space.” We need to become familiar with the state of our own minds to understand how to dissolve ill-founded ideas and impulses back into the deeper sphere of reality. The sky was there before the clouds gathered, and it will be after they have gone. It is also present when the clouds seem to cover every inch of the sky we can see.(p.22) –from How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships by H.H. the Dalai Lama, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins How to Expand Love • Now at 2O% off! (Good until February 10th).