In association with hhdlstudycirclemontreal.org

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

How We Wrestle Is Who We Are

Weekly excerpt to help us remember the sacred.

Awakin.org
Weekly Reading Dec 5, 2022

How We Wrestle Is Who We Are

–Brian Doyle

Listen to Audio Translations RSVP for Awakin Circle
2566.jpgI remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that his operations would either work or not and he would either live or die. There was a certain clarity there; I used to crawl into that clarity at night to sleep. But nothing else was clear. I used to think, in those sleepless days and nights, what if they don’t fix him all the way and he’s a cripple all his life, a pale thin kid in a wheelchair who has Crises? What if his brain gets bent? What if he ends up alive but without his mind at all? What then? Who would he be? Would he always be what he might have been? Would I love him still? What if I couldn’t love him? What if he was so damaged that I prayed for him to die? Would those prayers be good or evil?

I don’t have anything sweet or wise to say about those thoughts. I can’t report that God gave me strength to face my fears, or that my wife’s love saved me, or anything cool and poetic like that. I just tell you that I had those thoughts, and they haunt me still. I can’t even push them across the page here and have them sit between you and me unattached to either of us, for they are bound to me always, like the dark fibers of my heart. For our hearts are not pure; our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. The wrestling is who we are. How we wrestle is who we are. What we want to be is never what we are. Not yet. Maybe that’s why we have these relentless engines in our chests, driving us forward toward what we might be.

Eventually my son will need a new heart, a transplant when he’s thirty or forty or so, though Liam said airily the other day that he’s decided to grow a new one from the old one, which I wouldn’t bet against him doing eventually, him being a really remarkable kid. But that made me think: if we could grow new hearts out of old ones, what might we be then? What might we be if we rise and evolve, if we come further down from the brooding trees and out onto the smiling plain, if we unclench the fist and drop the dagger, if we emerge blinking from the fort and the stockade and the prison, if we smash away the steel from around our hearts, if we peel the scales from our eyes, if we do what we say we will do, if we act as if our words really matter, if our words become muscled mercy, if we grow a fifth chamber in our hearts and a seventh and a ninth, and become as if new creatures arisen from our shucked skins, the creatures we are so patently and brilliantly and utterly and wholly and holy capable of becoming…

What then?

FB TW IN
How do you relate to the notion that how we wrestle is who we are? Can you share a personal story of a time you evolved after wrestling with your heart? What helps you grow a new heart out of the old one?

Add A Reflection

Awakin Archives

History

1,298

Awakin Readings

598

Awakin Interviews

101

Local Circles

Inspiring Links of the Week

Join:
Good: Recycling Our Cities, One Building at a Time
Watch: The Queen of Basketball
Good: A French Village’s Radical Vision of a Good…
Read: You Don’t Know What Your Future Self Wants
Good: Bison Relocation to Native Lands Revives a…
More: ServiceSpace News
ss_logo.png

About Awakin

Many moons ago, a couple friends got together to sit in silence for an hour, and share personal aha-moments. The ripples of that simple practice have now spread to millions over 20+ years, through local circles, weekly podcasts and more.

Join Community
To get involved, join ServiceSpace or subscribe to other newsletters.
Subscribe to this Awakin newsletter
Don’t want these emails?

Unsubscribe from this email

The Middle of Somewhere

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

December 5, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

The Middle of Somewhere

If we were not here…the show would play to an empty house, as do all those falling stars which fall in the daytime. That is why I take walks: to keep an eye on things.

– Annie Dillard –

The Middle of Somewhere

At Elizabeth Sproul Ross’s Shenandoah Valley farm, “she invites artists and art students to share her rustic studio for weeklong retreats. Her roots here reach back to the 1700s, when Scots-Irish ancestors settled this land. Now paintbrushes replace plows, as it’s become a getaway from city life for those seeking new skills. And with each group, this spry 70-plus-year-old still climbs the hill behind the barn, funky knee and all, camera strapped around her neck, to fulfill the ritual of visiting an ancient apple tree.” Suzanne Stryk is an artist who finds equal fascination in the natural world and the visual arts, she shares more in this evocative excerpt from her book, “The Middle of Somewhere.” { read more }

Be The Change

Check out a collection of Stryk’s nature drawings here. { more }

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

‘New Day’s Lyric’: Amanda Gorman

The Really Terrible Orchestra

Processing What Happened at the US Capitol

17 Things I Would Do Differently

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance

Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People

Death Doulas Provide End of Life Aid

For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing: A Meditative Poem

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,601 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

The Entangled Activist

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

December 4, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

The Entangled Activist

Out of the cross-grain of experience appears a voice that not only sums up the process we have gone through, but allows the soul to recognize in its timbre, the color, texture, and complicated entanglements of being alive.

– David Whyte –

The Entangled Activist

“An angry activist isn’t easy to listen to, and for years I made dinner table conversation unbearable. Like many other progressive activists I would preach tolerance of all diversity…except for those with whom I disagreed. And people felt that judgment, reacting against the person who made them feel bad: me, ‘the activist.’ Students of sociology and political psychology know that we are prone to form group identities in opposition to each other, so an activist, speaking as an activist, may close down the very conversations they want to have. This matters because activism matters.” Anthea Lawson is the author of The Entangled Activist, and a former hard-hitting campaigner who learned to view her work in a new light when she realized how activism is often entangled in the problems it seeks to solve, { read more }

Be The Change

Learn more about Lawson’s book in this interview. { more }

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

On the Road with Thomas Merton

Peace Is Every Step: Thich Nhat Hanh’s 95 Year Earthwalk

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

9 Rules for the Woke Birdwatcher

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

ThanksBeing with Rumi

Processing What Happened at the US Capitol

Death Doulas Provide End of Life Aid

Six Habits of Hope

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,609 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

You Don’t Know What Your Future Self Wants

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

December 3, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

You Don't Know What Your Future Self Wants

The great beauty of life is its mystery, the inability to know what course our life will take, and diligently work to transmute into our final form based upon a lifetime of constant discovery and enterprising effort.

– Kilroy J. Oldster –

You Don’t Know What Your Future Self Wants

“‘You are constantly becoming a new person,’ says journalist Shankar Vendantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the “illusion of continuity” — the belief that our future selves will share the same views, perspectives and hopes as our current selves — and shows how we can more proactively craft the people we are to become.” Science writer Shankar Vedantam shares more in this fascinating TED talk. { read more }

Be The Change

Experiment with Vedantam’s three pieces of advice: “Stay curious. Practice humility. Be brave.”

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

Words Can Change Your Brain

On the Road with Thomas Merton

Mary Oliver: I Happened to Be Standing

Matthew Fox: How Important is Truth?

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

17 Things I Would Do Differently

Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People

Death Doulas Provide End of Life Aid

My 94-Year-Old Dad Talks About COVID-19

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,615 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

The Queen of Basketball

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

December 2, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

The Queen of Basketball

No matter what life throws at you, or how unfair you think it is, never give up. Pick yourself up and go on.

– –

The Queen of Basketball

This amazing film, winner of the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary (short subject), shares the story of Lusia “Lucy” Harris, a pioneer of women’s basketball. Harris talks of her love of basketball from childhood with her characteristic good humor and humility. Criticized for her height, basketball helped her to view that as an asset. She led her college team to three national women’s basketball championships, competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and she was the first woman officially drafted by the National Basketball Association. Lusia Harris died in January 2022, but her legacy of helping to bring women’s basketball to the fore lives on. { read more }

Be The Change

Share this film and the story of Lucy’s life and legacy with young people in your circle of awareness. { more }

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

The Keys to Aging Well

Consciousness as the Ground of Being

Mary Oliver: I Happened to Be Standing

The Really Terrible Orchestra

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

Matthew Fox: How Important is Truth?

Processing What Happened at the US Capitol

17 Things I Would Do Differently

My 94-Year-Old Dad Talks About COVID-19

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,621 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

The Queen of Basketball

This week’s inspiring video: The Queen of Basketball
Having trouble reading this mail? View it in your browser. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe
KarmaTube.org

Video of the Week

Dec 01, 2022
The Queen of Basketball

The Queen of Basketball

This amazing film, winner of the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary (short subject), shares the story of Lusia "Lucy" Harris, a pioneer of women’s basketball. Harris talks of her love of basketball from childhood with her characteristic good humor and humility. Criticized for her height, basketball helped her to view that as an asset. She led her college team to three national women’s basketball championships, competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and she was the first woman officially drafted by the National Basketball Association. Lusia Harris died in January 2022, but her legacy of helping to bring women’s basketball to the fore lives on.
Watch Video Now Share: Email Twitter FaceBook

Related KarmaTube Videos

Smile Big
Meditate
Live It Up
Serve All

Grateful: A Love Song to the World

The Koh Panyee Football Club

Kindness Boomerang

I Will Be a Hummingbird

About KarmaTube:
KarmaTube is a collection of inspiring videos accompanied by simple actions every viewer can take. We invite you to get involved.
Other ServiceSpace Projects:

DailyGood // Conversations // iJourney // HelpOthers

MovedByLove // CF Sites // Karma Kitchen // More

Thank you for helping us spread the good. This newsletter now reaches 45,404 subscribers.

Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

December 1, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

Don't Treat Your Life as a Project

Don’t let the lure of the dramatic arc distract you from the digressive amplitude of being alive.

– Kieran Setiya –

Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project

“The idea that we narrate our lives to ourselves, and that doing so is part of living well, is sufficiently commonplace that its most vocal critic, the philosopher Galen Strawson, could describe it as “a fallacy of our age.” He lists an impressive roster of advocates, including the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks (“Each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’…this narrative is us”), the psychologist Jerome Bruner (“We become the autobiographical narratives by which we ‘tell about’ our lives”)…It sounds appealing, in a way. Who doesn’t think they have a brilliant memoir in them? But the question isn’t rhetorical: Many of us don’t think that and a lot of the rest are kidding themselves. “I have absolutely no sense of my life as a narrative with form, or indeed as a narrative without form,” Strawson writes. And yet he seems to be living quite well.” In the following piece, Kieran Setiya, a philosopher at MIT, makes a case for resisting the tendency to see your life as a narrative journey. { read more }

Be The Change

If inspired, experiment this week with tuning in to, what Setiya calls, “the pure abundance of incident,” and notice what that opens up beyond your usual way of parsing your life and its happenings.

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

The Keys to Aging Well

Peace Is Every Step: Thich Nhat Hanh’s 95 Year Earthwalk

Mary Oliver: I Happened to Be Standing

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

‘New Day’s Lyric’: Amanda Gorman

The Really Terrible Orchestra

17 Things I Would Do Differently

Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,639 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

The Rights of the Land

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

November 30, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

The Rights of the Land

The Earth is generous with us — and forgiving. We can be the same with each other.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer –

The Rights of the Land

“Before first light we board a bus and at last light we return, just as the October hills of central New York shade to burgundy and the lights come on in dairy barns for evening chores. Teachers, students, clan mothers, chiefs, journalists, scientists, activists, and neighbors like me — I see all our faces reflected in the bus windows. For the Onondaga, this trip to federal court in Albany to defend their right to care for their land has been a long time coming, a journey of generations.” Robin Wall Kimmerer shares more. { read more }

Be The Change

Take a moment to consider where you might extend generosity and/or forgiveness in your own life today.

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

The Keys to Aging Well

On the Road with Thomas Merton

Peace Is Every Step: Thich Nhat Hanh’s 95 Year Earthwalk

Mary Oliver: I Happened to Be Standing

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

9 Rules for the Woke Birdwatcher

Matthew Fox: How Important is Truth?

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance

My 94-Year-Old Dad Talks About COVID-19

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,662 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

Danusha Lameris: Intimacy with the Marrow of Life

You’re receiving this email because you are a DailyGood subscriber.
Trouble Viewing? On a mobile? Just click here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
DailyGood News That Inspires

November 29, 2022

a project of ServiceSpace

Danusha Lameris: Intimacy with the Marrow of Life

I write because I am trying to get closer and closer to the marrow of it, whatever the It might be. I write to try and find order in chaos. And sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I do

– Danusha Lameris –

Danusha Lameris: Intimacy with the Marrow of Life

Danusha Lameris’s poems have been called “wise, direct, and fearless” (American poet Dorianne Laux). She began writing poetry, as she believes many people do, from a place of heartbreak, and not knowing what to do with it. Her first book of poems, The Moons of August, came on the heels of a rapid succession of deep losses in her early 30s. “I’ve buried a lover, a brother, a son,” she writes early on in the collection. Poetry allowed her to become intimate with world and life, down to the marrow. In the process, it enabled her to lay to bed some of the grief, freeing her to go to the edge of discovering joy and pleasure once again — at the place where grief and pleasure live together, in the body. More in this profile piece. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, join an Awakin Call with Danusha Lameris this Saturday. More details and RSVP info here. { more }

COMMENT | RATE Email Twitter FaceBook

Related Good News

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

Thich Nhat Hanh: Ten Love Letters to the Earth

On the Road with Thomas Merton

Mary Oliver: I Happened to Be Standing

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

Smile Big
Love Freely
Meditate
Give Back

‘New Day’s Lyric’: Amanda Gorman

The Really Terrible Orchestra

Processing What Happened at the US Capitol

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 160,683 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More

Appearance As A Gift

Weekly excerpt to help us remember the sacred.

Awakin.org
Weekly Reading Nov 28, 2022

Appearance As A Gift

–Isira

Listen to Audio Translations RSVP for Awakin Circle
2593.jpgOur whole experience of life is a relationship. Every single moment is centered in the way we relate to what is happening.

To understand this more deeply it helps us to recognize core issues that manifest due to the misperception of separation. Our perceived disconnection from spirit/source is at the root of all our conflicts.

This sense of disconnection underlies EVERY issue we endure as individuals and as a human race. As a result we feel dislocated in ourselves and in life. We have a distorted perception of everything we encounter – which in turn influences our whole experience. Because, simply put – all that we experience is filtered through our perceptions.

These perceptions then lead us to experience what we think. As we experience what we think we make it our belief system. From our belief system, we continue to think and act in ways that shape our entire experience of life.

The first symptom to come out of our (perceived) disconnection with spirit is the belief of separation. This manifests in our ideas and mental constructs of ‘other’. We develop an experience of something ‘other’ than source, soul, eternal life. AND other than everything else we see.

This sense of separation extends beyond a split from source and one’s own self, into a sense of separation from every other part of creation. Every person we meet (who really is a part of our infinite Self), is encountered as other. Not only is there a sense of ‘other’, there is also a sense of ‘opposite’. Our experience is one of duality; me and you, this and that, right and wrong.

Whatever is seen as outside or ‘other’ than our self is seen either as a threat or as desirable. We seek to either reject in order to protect ourselves or to possess in order to feel more complete. Our experience becomes one of dualistic relating — which ultimately results in a never-ending struggle. […]

When we see our Self in ‘other’ it is no longer possible to form a relationship based in fear. It is no longer an encounter of competition, protection or an effort to possess. It is a deeply encountered state of relating — centered in love. It is seen as an expression that is alive and centered only and forever in the now. It is seen as an opportunity to express our authentic Self and to feel and witness our Self as Love through the reflection of what appears as other. This appearance is seen as a gift; a multi-dimensional mirror, to know our infinite Self in and through endless forms.

In essence: the more connected you are in your Self, the more connected your experience will be with life.

FB TW IN
How do you relate to the notion that this appearance can be seen as a gift? Can you share a personal story of a time you were able to move beyond dualistic relating and instead center in love? What helps you see everything you encounter as your own infinite Self in and through endless forms?

Add A Reflection

Awakin Archives

History

1,297

Awakin Readings

597

Awakin Interviews

101

Local Circles

Inspiring Links of the Week

Join: Interview with Danusha Laméris
Good: Car-Sized Turtle Fossil Unearthed in Spain
Watch: Thanksgiving Address
Good: Inside An Airbnb Cofounder’s Latest Venture:…
Read: The Man Who Planted Trees
Good: Viral Friends Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton Are…
More: ServiceSpace News
ss_logo.png

About Awakin

Many moons ago, a couple friends got together to sit in silence for an hour, and share personal aha-moments. The ripples of that simple practice have now spread to millions over 20+ years, through local circles, weekly podcasts and more.

Join Community
To get involved, join ServiceSpace or subscribe to other newsletters.
Subscribe to this Awakin newsletter
Don’t want these emails?

Unsubscribe from this email

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started