Sangha of Auspicious Companions

July 9, 2022

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How We Wrestle is Who We Are

“My son Liam was born ten years ago. He looked like a cucumber on steroids. He was fat and bald and round as a cucumber on steroids. He looked healthy as a horse. He wasn’t. He was missing a chamber in his heart. You need four rooms in your heart for smooth conduct through this vale of fears and tears, and he only had three, so pretty soon doctors cut him open and iced down his heart and shut it down for an hour while they made repairs, and then when he was about eighteen months old he had another surgery, during which they did more tinkering, and all this slicing and dicing worked, and now he’s ten…” Brian Doyle shares more in this brief and moving piece. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out this powerful TED talk on, “How Emotions Change the Shape of Our Hearts.” { more }

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July 8, 2022

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Grateful Voices

“Grateful Voices is a video project highlighting the stories of seven individuals with seven different life stories, each of whom finds gratefulness amidst pain, suffering and all of life’s challenges. For one participant, gratefulness is “like a friend sitting next to me.” Whether it be through loss or the acceptance of a disability, they express the gift that it is to be alive in any given moment and a recognition that “there’s always another way to go,” if an old way is no longer possible. Gratefulness is a path to what is possible.” { read more }

Be The Change

Consider keeping a daily gratefulness journal to incorporate gratefulness into your life.

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July 7, 2022

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The Paradoxes of Healing

Lissa Rankin, MD, describes herself as a skeptic. She is a Western-trained ob-gyn, linear thinker, and evidence-informed scientist. In the same breath, however, she also describes herself as a mystic an open-hearted, spiritually alive, empathic healer who has witnessed countless miracles of healing and has also experienced them firsthand herself. What follows is an excerpt from her book, “Sacred Medicine: A Doctor’s Quest to Unravel the Mysteries of Healing.” { read more }

Be The Change

Join this Saturday’s Awakin Call with Lissa Rankin! More details and RSVP info here. { more }

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July 6, 2022

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Anatomy of a Wave: A Triptych

“We like to imagine –in our humanness– waves as traveling water bodies. But that isn’t quite accurate. Waves are kinetic energy from vibrating water particles interacting through seawater. The particles move perpendicularly back and forth to create energy, the water forms a circular motion in relation to the seafloor and wind, an orbital rotation is born. The water itself doesn’t travel very far at all. The wave is not a body of water. Waves bear energy, not water, across the sea. When we look out at waves coming toward us on the shore, we imagine they are coming to us. We long for it, I think. Sometimes I wonder if our longing is memory. A desire to return to that breathable aquamarine past.” More in this evocative essay from Orion Magazine. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, check out this interview with Betsy Damon, “Living Water.” { more }

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July 5, 2022

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Mozart’s Starling

“When beginning a new writing project, naturalist and author Lyanda Lynn Haupt takes her research seriously. For her book, Mozart’s Starling, Haupt dutifully traveled to Austria, to see Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthplace and the famed composer’s grave. But then she took one big step further. Because her book is inspired by the little-known fact that Mozart kept a pet starling, Haupt decided to adopt one of her own. She rescued a 5-day-old nestling, named it Carmen and embarked on an adventure — the likes of which she never could have imagined.” { read more }

Be The Change

Check out this beautiful article on ‘The Transfixing Beauty of Starling Murmurations.’ { more }

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July 4, 2022

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Zainika Jagasia: Mumbai’s Inspiring 19-Year-Old Model & Baker

“Zainika Jagasia’s mother, Reshma Jagasia, says she had a gut feeling throughout her pregnancy that ‘there was something wrong’. “It was almost like my child was talking to me all the time,” she told The Quint. She stayed conscious during her C-section surgery and when the baby was born, the doctors confirmed that she had Down syndrome. The ever-supportive parents then spent 8 to 10 hours a day with their child in occupational, physical and speech therapy when Zainika was just months old.” Zainika is now a part-time model and full-time baker with a thriving social media following. More on her inspiring journey here. { read more }

Be The Change

Check out this utterly captivating short film on Zainika and her family, “Shining Against the Odds.” { more }

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July 3, 2022

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Letters from Two Gardens

“In the late July swelter and dragonfly buzz of summer, poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay began a correspondence of poems — sent the old-fashioned way, through the mail. Aimee wrote from her flower garden in Fredonia, New York, Ross from his fruit and vegetable garden in Bloomington, Indiana. Here, then, is how they made sense and record of a full year in their respective gardens. “It is our hope that some of the pleasure and anxiety of tending these gardens — which is to say, tending to ourselves, our relationships, our earth — comes through in these poems,” says Ross. Theres bounty, yes. But there’s loss and sorrow too: like a garden, like a life.” { read more }

Be The Change

In his “Book of Delights,”Ross Gay shares a series of daily essays on the things that delight him. You can learn more about it here. { more }

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July 2, 2022

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The Divided Brain

In this RSA produced video, the world of today is explained by Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. He came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. The words of McGilchrist, and the illustrative and clever graphics accompanying the audio, describe how the two hemispheres of the brain operate and affect the way we interact with and see the world. He says that modern culture has developed a machine model of the brain that relies heavily on our left hemisphere and determines our perception of reality. While the rational perceptions of the left hemisphere offer much that is helpful and needed, the tendency is to sacrifice the intuitive and feeling experience of the right hemisphere – which limits our ability to relate humanely with others. We are not, of course, machines but we have been educated to think this rigidly rational and narrow focused view of life is how we should function to succeed in the world. In fact, we need both the broad intuitive focus and the narrow rational focus offered by the two hemispheres of the brain, otherwise we become lopsided and out of balance, lacking in empathy and appreciation for the subtle and beautiful aspects of reality that may be outside of rational explanation or experience. As humans, we do violence to ourselves in the way that we split off from our intuitive and feeling selves and overvalue our rational minds. In fact, the balancing of the brains perceptions offers hope for both a rational and feeling society that would be better for all. { read more }

Be The Change

Try to listen to the wholeness of yourself in a situation today-both the rational and the intuitive parts of yourself. Notice how multilayered our perception of reality can be and honor the value that a “whole brain” perception can offer.

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