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Via Daily Dharma: What’s Under the Darkness

Inner light is unceasing—forever luminous and clear. Even in the darkest of circumstances, you can trust that it is always there.

—Tenzin Wangyal, “The Light Is Always There”

From the Church I was raised in in Oregon this

All Are Welcome

Young, old, poor, inked, weak, rich, pierced, tourist, local, sick, seeker, powerful, doubter, brown skin, black skin, white skin any color skin, married, single, gay, straight, healthy, transgender, male, female…… you get the point. You are welcome here!

Church is community. Church is family. 

Join us as we continue to become this church.

We invite you to walk with us as we follow Jesus on a journey of love.

Make the jump here

Via Daily Dharma: Get Out of the Rut

It is only when accustomed routines are infused by vision that they become springboards to discovery rather than deadening ruts.

—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “Vision and Routine”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - March 20, 2019 💌

Krishna, Christ, Hanuman - all of them are the same. The ocean made manifest in different forms. Different strokes for different folks. Each a form we need, if we need form. 

- Ram Dass -

Via Equine Partners CIC / FB

AUM CHANTING ~ OM at 396 Hz | Universal Mantra ➤ Dissolves Negativity, Removes Fear

Via Meditative Mind: Choir Chants "Divine OM Mantra"

https://gumroad.com/l/OMChoir

Via Daily Dharma: The Sweetness of Awakening

Once you know how the poisons [of craving, aversion, and delusion] feel, you can recognize their absence through sensations rather than thinking abstractly about whether they are there or not. From there you can find a sweet spot, free from the poisons—a moment of awakening worthy of being savored.

—Hai An (Sister Ocean), “Inviting in the Wonder of Spring”

Via Tricycle: Walking Meditation—Anywhere

Two walking meditations for practicing in public (without looking weird)

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/walking-meditation-public/?utm_source=Tricycle&utm_campaign=f17e194c41-Newsletter_19_3_17_Subs&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1641abe55e-f17e194c41-307231789

 

Via Tricycle

https://tricycle.org/magazine/spring-meditation/?utm_source=Tricycle&utm_campaign=f17e194c41-Newsletter_19_3_17_Subs&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1641abe55e-f17e194c41-307231789

Via Daily Dharma: Lovingkindness To Go

It’s the willingness to put in the time through ordinary consciousness and develop your ability to practice deeply that allows you to access the mind of lovingkindness when you’re in traffic, or at the grocery store, or at the bank, or talking to your kids.

—Interview with Michele McDonald-Smith, “On the Front Lines”

Via Daily Dharma: No-Self Intelligence

What is the point of letting go of identity? Freedom from identity is what allows and enables us to be truly human—to be an ongoing response to the challenges, demands, and needs of life.

—Ken McLeod, “Forget About Being A Buddhist. Be A Human.”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - March 17, 2019 💌

 

Meditation helps other parts of your life become more simple. As you enter quieter spaces you will see how clinging to desires has made your life complicated. Your clinging drags you from desire to desire, whim to whim, creating more and more complex entanglements. Meditation helps you cut through this clinging.

If, for example, you run around filling your mind with this and that, you will discover that your entire meditation is spent letting go of the stuff you just finished collecting in the past few hours. You also notice that your meditations are clearer when you come into them from a simpler space. This encourages you to simplify your life.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The Mind’s Surprises

The mind can do wonderful and unexpected things. Meditators who are having a difficult time achieving a peaceful state of mind sometimes start thinking, “Here we go again, another hour of frustration.” But often something strange happens; although they are anticipating failure, they reach a very peaceful meditative state.

—Ajahn Brahm, “Stepping Towards Enlightenment”

Via Tricycle: Shimmering Zen

Artist and Las Vegas native James Stanford finds Zen in the neon lights of Sin City.

Click here to read the full article

Via Daily Dharma: Mindfulness Pause

Coming back to conscious breathing will give you a nourishing break. It will also make your mindfulness stronger, so when you want to look into your anxiety or other emotions you’ll have the calm and concentration to be able to do so.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, “Fear of Silence”

Via Them: Sober Queer Spaces Are Giving LGBTQ+ People a Place to Just Be

Across the country, queer cafés, mixers, and stores are providing options that aren't gay bars — and that's revolutionary.

On any given day in Los Angeles, LGBTQ+ locals and tourists have few choices when it comes to finding other queer and trans people — at least, in a space that’s not a bar. The go-tos, especially for cisgender gay men of legal drinking age, are gay bars, largely found in the tony city of West Hollywood. But for everyone else who identifies as LGBTQ+, such spaces are less than ideal, and for youth and those who are sober or in recovery, they aren’t an option at all.
That's one reason Virginia Bauman and her business partner Iris Bainum-Houle opened Cuties, a queer-owned, operated, and focused café in East Hollywood. 

Open daily from mornings into late afternoons, with events often hosted in the evenings, Cuties is an accessible, alcohol-free spot for LGBTQ+ people to just be — something Bauman says doesn't exist much elsewhere in the city.

"There's no comfort in loitering at the LGBT Center," Bauman says. "There's no reason that you need to have to be at Cuties; you don't. And that's one of the magic things about coffee — it's incredibly accessible."

Make the jump here to read the rest of the article and more

Via Daily Dharma: Open to It All

Become still, quiet the mind, sit like the mountain and sky—stable and undivided in the face of everything that comes up. Open to the unpleasant part, the down-in-the-dumps part, the making-mistakes part, the prolonged-aching-in-the-heart part. The not knowing and the bouts of joy. Become one in the same as yourself, or “one with” your life.

—Diane Musho Hamilton, “Practice Is the Way”