meditation //
“Creative expression is an act of self acceptance.”
That is, if it’s true creative work. How do you know?
Because it comes from the heart. You are expressing your heart’s truth. You are admitting your truth and submitting it to the conversation.
Art via Designspiration
MEDITATION //
What are you waiting for?
The state of non-waiting is different from feeling patience. It’s different than even acceptance. Are you waiting to feel like you are meditating? Are you waiting to reach a state of consciousness? Are you waiting to hear something inspiring? Is there any sense of delayed wholeness? If you were waiting for something, imagine what it would feel like to not have to wait at all. What if you weren’t waiting for anything? What if, it was all here already, within you.
In your life right now, think about all of the people you know. Think about all of the responsibilities you have. Think about all of the things you have to do. Think about all of the things you want to do. Now ask yourself… what are you waiting for?
Is there some event or deadline that is giving you a perceived sense of wholeness? Is there a person who you are giving some sense of control? Is there a question that you already have the answer to but are resisting the answer? Is there a decision that you’ve already made but are delaying acting on?
Now, elevate the concept of waiting, and see if there is anything on the spiritual or existential plane that you have a sense of waiting for? Something without a deadline or a physical element to it. Is it how you see yourself? Is it how you see another person? Is it how you see the world? Is it how you see your role in life and how you fit into the world? Is there something you want to change or see differently? If so… what are you waiting for?
What if you released all attachments to anything that feels like desire?
What if you released all expectations you may currently have?
What if you chose to set down, even if just for a minute, any sense of deserving or latent fulfillment, or any sense of needing something?
What does it feel like when nobody owes you anything?
What does it feel like when you don’t owe anything to yourself?
What does it feel like when god, or the universe, or spirit, or source, or whatever you call your higher power, or no higher power at all, doesn’t owe you anything because there is nothing to wait for?
What are you waiting for?
Art via ffffound
MANTRA //
What if you practiced gratitude as an action?
Gratitude is meant to be given.
Not just spoken. Or felt.
To show gratitude for that which you have been given, give it away.
Try this mantra:
I receive with gratitude
What I am given
I give with gratitude
What I receive
Art via YouTube
meditation //
Spirituality is a code for perception.
Choose your spirituality, choose your code, choose your perception.
Choose your perception, choose your experience.
Art via hiphopscriptures.com
meditation //
“You wanna talk about the real guru?
It’s your fucking vape addiction. It’s your over-drinking. That thing is teaching you better than any book or any person could. It’s in the moment demonstrating to you all the mystical truths — that you’re stuck in a loop of suffering called samsara. This endless loop of suffering that you are imposing on yourself.
The gates of hell are locked from the inside and any time you want out you can get the fuck out.”
— Duncan Trussell
Art via Designspiration
sutra //
When the body tries to move at the speed of the mind, both are lost.
When the mind slows and moves at the speed of the body, both are steady.
Art via tumblr
meditation //
When you get an idea , an entire concept is implanted into your mind and understood all at once — without a single word spoken.
The mind works fast. The suffering of the mind is that it has to wait for the body. Minds are described as being sharp. Minds are quick. Minds race.
The body is slower. The suffering of the body is that it’s always behind. Bodies get tired. Bodies need food. Bodies shit.
When you get an idea, be patient with your body. It takes time to make something good. It could take hours. Or days. Or years.You don’t know.
The mind can comprehend an entire world in a second but it takes an hour to explain it in spoken language. You might do what feels like an hour’s worth of mental processing but only three minutes have gone by in realtime.
Pay attention to this during a creative process — remember that time is relative.
Along the way, allow your body to catch up to where your mind is. Release any guilt that arises from feeling like you aren’t making progress. You are making progress. Your body is just slow.
To bring the mind and body together, don’t try to make the body catch up to the mind. It never will. Instead, go the opposite direction — slow down the body even more. When the body moves slow, the mind comes back to it and take it to the next stop. This is the way up the mountain.
Art via Brian Oldham
meditation //
Think of your earliest childhood memory.
What is the very first thing you can remember in your life?
Try to get as detailed as possible without committing confabulation — the memory error of producing fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories.
When you have that memory in mind, is the point of view from your eyes or outside of yourself?
Is this memory in first person experience or third person?
The memory itself isn’t important in this exercise, only the perspective.
Whichever it is — first person or third person — what do you think that means?
What does that say about you? What does that say about your life? Does it reveal anything about your caretakers? Does it reveal anything about how you view yourself now? If your first memory is happy, what’s your first sad memory? If the first thing that came to mind was sad, what’s your first happy memory?
Lastly, think about what you did yesterday. Walk back through your day… is the memory in your mind’s eye about yesterday from first or third person? Now ask all the above questions with that information.
Sit with this and don’t judge anything that comes up. Simply notice.
Art via Spotify
meditation //
Is the mind a prison?
Can you exist outside of your mind?
If no, then the mind is a prison.
If yes, what is that state of being called?
How do you know when you’re experiencing mindlessness if it happens in the mind?
The only way one can be in a state of non-awareness is to be unaware of it.
You have to be unaware that you are unaware.
It’s like falling asleep. You don’t know you’re asleep (with rare exception) until you wake up. You also can’t tell the body to fall asleep. It just happens. And that precious moment when you pass the threshold from conscious to unconscious, you aren’t there.
The state of unawareness — of “flow” or “the zone” — is non-objective reality. Because it can’t be seen, therefore no objective perspective of it exists.
We can only describe how it feels. And we describe non-objective reality as feeling like thoughtlessness, mindlessness, unawareness, unconsciousness, flow, etc.
Are these terms all describing true reality or a hallucination?
Through meditation, the more we clear the fog in our mind, the closer we get to non-objective reality.
What if existence is the hallucination and mindlessness is true reality?
Art via Olivia Bee
goods //
Imagine Lucifer
An angel without angelness
An apple
Plucked clear by will of taste, color,
Strength, beauty, roundness, seed
Absent of all God painted, present everything
An apple is.
Imagine Lucifer
An angel without angelness
A poem
That has revised itself out of sound
Imagine, rhyme, concordance
Absent of all God spoke of, present everything
A poem is.
The law I say, the Law
Is?
What is Lucifer
An emperor with no clothes
No skin, no flesh, no heart
An emperor!
— Jack Spicer
Available now in the SHOP
session //
Join us for a clinical yoga session on Monday, January 13th at the Interpersonal Therapy Clinic.
The theme for this month’s session is Power & Powerlessness. Or: Finding personal power through exploring personal powerlessness.
Examining your own relationship with the paradox of power will bring strength from the acceptance of weakness.
Click here, or visit the Clinical Yoga page above to register.
MEDITATION //
I am worthy.
I am loved.
I am blessed.
I am grateful.
Sit quietly and repeat this mantra to yourself for 10 minutes. See what happens next.
Art via David M. Smith
MEDITATION //
Everybody is full of shit.
You. Me. Everybody.
But the next time you think about calling someone on their shit, think about your own shit.
Accusation is admission.
If you see some shit, why did you see it? If it didn’t already exist in you, you’d never recognize it in someone else.
Shit recognize shit.
Accusation is admission.
We all project our shit onto others.
What would happen if you just kept your shit to yourself?
What would happen if you ate your own shit?
meditation //
“Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems.” — Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 42
Through the recovery process described in the Big Book, I have come to realize that the same instructions that work on my alcoholism, work on much more. Whenever I am angry or frustrated, I consider the matter a manifestation of the main problem within me, alcoholism. As I "walk" through the Steps, my difficulty is usually dealt with long before I reach the Twelfth "suggestion," and those difficulties that persist are remedied when I make an effort to carry the message to someone else. These principles do solve my problems! I have not encountered an exception, and I have been brought to a way of living which is satisfying and useful.
— From the book Daily Reflections
meditation //
Imagine that you are God for a day.
How would you see the world differently?
How would you talk to people? How would you listen?
Imagine you created the world and everything in it. And imagine you chose to experience everything that happens to you today. You chose you body and all of its aches and pains.
Pretend you chose to come here for a day and have your memory of omniscience temporarily suspended so that you can experience true mortality.
What does it feel like to imagine that this day is all just a game that you created and now you’re playing in it. It’s all just a game you made up just for fun.
Now think about the attributes of God… in many spiritual practices the Almighty is described as being loving, eternally patient, creative, and a host of other positive qualities.
Pretend it’s just your secret today that you are all these things and nobody else knows. You are an immortal, all-knowing creator who’s playing human for a day.
If that were the case, how would you treat people?
How would you view yourself?
Maybe everything would be more amusing. Everything you see today was created by one of your creations. You are the eternal paternal figure and every one of your children here on this plane is doing their best with what you’ve given them.
Maybe you would respond to everything you see today like a parent whose child just gave them a picture they drew. You would marvel. You would praise. You would love unconditionally. You might fall into a state of constant awe.
You would simply observe with tremendous curiosity.
Nothing would bother you. The concept of being bothered by anything seems silly because you are God and you’ll go back to being God tomorrow. This is a temporary trip and you just wanted to see what this “life” thing was like from a human being’s perspective.
sutra //
When you lose an emotional attachment to someone you realize how ordinary they are. It was your love that made them seem so special. Love has this way of transforming the people we care about. It’s like a lens. It makes them shine brighter and feel bigger than life.
But when that love fades, and when you step back and see them for who they are — just human — you see the lens. And maybe that’s the beauty of it; realizing that it was you who gave them that love. It was you who made it special all along. That’s your power.
— Keanu Reeves
meditation //
Are you allowed to have compassion for yourself?
What would that look like?
What would happen if you forgave yourself for that thing?
What changes?
Does something old fall away and get replaced by something new?
If some new feeling or belief comes in when you allow compassion for the self, is it comfortable or uncomfortable?
If it’s uncomfortable, for how long can you let it stay?
Can the newness move past discomfort and be allowed to settle there?
Now what?
Art via Yvon Lambert
sutra //
How can you be consciously unconscious?
The concentrated mind has no room for thinking about what or how well the body is doing.
The ability to approach this state is the goal of the inner game.
When we begin to focus our attention on how to trust in ourself, mastering the art of effortless concentration is invaluable.
— The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
MEDITATION //
Is balance ideal?
Or is there an evolution of balance to something with a deeper understanding and broader application?
What if the evolution of balance were harmony?
What if, instead of seeking balance, we sought harmony. Integration.
What if, rather than allowing equal opposites on either side of a scale to exist we sought to bring both sides together. Interwoven. Accepted. Unionized.
What would that be like?
Art from Colossal via Giuseppe Randazzo
SUTRA //
My source is the source of all creation Her discourse is that we all don’t survey The skies right before, right before they go grey My horse is a shackled old man His, his remorse, was that he couldn't survey The skies, right before, right before they went grey
Art via Designspiration
MEDITATION //
Sit. Take a few deep breaths. Then contemplate the following:
What are you avoiding?
What is something you are avoiding right now?
Think about the thing… a task, a person, a conversation.
Something you know you should do, because it feels like the right thing to do.
Now think about the resistance to doing that thing. Not the thing itself — the feeling of resistance that is standing in front of the thing.
You are not avoiding the thing, you are avoiding the feeling of doing the thing. Or, the feeling you think doing the thing will make you feel.
Practice using the body to train the mind.
Practice feeling discomfort in the body, so that you can experience overcoming that discomfort when it’s not practice.
One day, that discomfort will end.
Art from tumblr via Lux Luxembourg
goods //
If you buy this bag, you can fill it with free stuff at the grocery store. Think of it as an investment. The custom-printed tote bag is perfect for everyday use, quick shopping trips, and stealing shit. Made with spun polyester, features double-stitched seams, cotton webbing straps, and nonwoven laminate lining for high-end durability.
SUTRA //
Ancient wisdom contextualized in modern understanding.
Spirituality rooted in awareness, not control.
A mindfulness practice with kinesthetic application.
In other words: If your body or your mind is fucked up, yoga will help.
SUTRA //
The deeper you go the clearer it gets. Facing yourself is the journey to discovering who you truly are. Embrace the process of self-exploration and watch how much more of yourself you can find.
ART & CULTURE //
Sofia Parazi is an LA based photographer, cinematographer and art director. Her juxtaposition between light and shadow punctuates her signature style. Sofia believes photos are metaphors, making the abstract concrete and mystifying the mundane.