11.20.23

Thought

This incredible exchange of energy goes on onstage, where you’re almost transported. For me, the spark comes, very emotional, from the shared experience of what I’m singing about. It’s the band when we really lock in and the audience knows you’re locking in. I wish I could lose myself more when I play by myself. It’s easy to do with an audience, but I tend to be too self-conscious and judgmental when I’m alone. The audience is more unconditional, as if the channel is more open.

— Bonnie Raitt

Quote 

Activist Malala Yousafzai on the importance of action:

"Do not wait for someone else to come and speak for you. It's you who can change the world."

Moment of Gratitude

I’m grateful for the help and support of friends and family.

What are you grateful for? 

Happy Monday,

Val

11.13.23

Thought

The best thing about writing is not the actual labour of putting word I against word, brick upon brick, but the preliminaries, the spade work, which is done in silence, under any circumstances, in dream as well as in the waking state. In short, the period of gestation. No man ever puts down what he intended to say: the original creation, which is taking place all the time, whether one writes or doesn’t write, belongs to the primal flux: it has no dimensions, no form, no time element. In this preliminary state, which is creation and not birth, what disappears suffers no destruction.

— Henry Miller. Why Don’t You Try to Write? – Creators on Creating.

Quote 

Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein on creativity:  

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Moment of Gratitude

I’m grateful that I got to take my newborn niece for her first swim lesson this weekend.  

What are you grateful for?

Happy Monday,

Val

11.6.23

Thought

Awareness is observation without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding, because there is no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as a non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. There is no end in view but awareness of everything as it arises.

— Vernon Howard. Mystic Path to Cosmic Power.

Quote

Poet Robert Frost on perseverance:

The best way out is always through.

Gratitude Practice

Gratitude Jar: keep a jar with some scraps of paper and a pencil next to it. Three times a day, stop by the paper and jot down something you are grateful for and drop the paper in the jar. After a while you'll have a treasure trove of things you are grateful for.

Happy Monday,

Val

10.30.23

Thought

Wandering is the best way I know to feed that flame, to answer those questions. Wandering – but with a conscious step, an openness to experience. “Wandering” may sound aimless, a flotsam and jetsam drift, but it is as purposeful in its way as the migration of monarchs each fall. Like their erratic, drifting flight, it only looks aimless taken each step at a time. In the larger picture a good wander is a search for questions, for the answers that lead inevitably – and happily – to more questions. I may not see the pattern if I look only at individual shards in their cryptic, broken makings, turning them over in my mind, but from the perspective of time my wandering is as intentional as the butterfly’s and as necessary. It is taking me where I most need to go, allowing room for growth and time for learning.

— Cathy Johnson. Lost in the Woods - Creators on Creating.

Quote

Polymath Albert Schweitzer on priorities:

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

 Intention of the Day

My intention today is to be willing to release anything that no longer serves me.

Happy Monday,

Val

10.23.23

Thought

Anguish is then an illusion since its causes are illusory. Besides this theoretical demonstration we can obtain a practical demonstration of it: we can prove directly, intuitively, the illusory character of anguish. If in fact at a moment at which I suffer... I shift my attention from my thinking to my feeling, if, leaving aside all my mental images, I apply myself to perceiving in myself the famous moral suffering in order to savour it and to find out at last what it is—I do not succeed of suffering itself I do not find a scrap. The more I pay attention to the act of feeling, withdrawing thereby my attention from my imaginative film, the less I feel. And I prove then the unreality of anguish.

— Hubert Benoit. The Supreme Doctrine.

Quote 

Host, author and media proprietor Oprah Winfrey on perspective:

"If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough."

Gratitude Practice

Gratitude Rock: I’ve done this one for a few years now. Find a small rock that you really like and carry it around with you. Whenever you feel or see the rock, use it as a reminder to think of something that you’re grateful for.  

Happy Monday,

Val

10.16.23

Thought

In each moment, we are immersed in a field of undifferentiated matter from which our senses gather bits of information. The outside universe we perceive doesn’t exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions we generate a reality internally. We create forests and oceans, warmth and cold. We read words, hear voices and form interpretations. Then, in an instant, we produce a response. All of this in a world of our own creation.

— Rick Rubin. The Creative Act.

Quote

Theologian and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin on existence:

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Moment of Gratitude

I’m grateful watching the fall colors change.

What are you grateful for?

Happy Monday,

Val

10.9.23

Thought

nobody is going anywhere

nobody is coming from anywhere

we’re all here…

dance after

dance

in one body

in another body

& we’re all here

we’re all staying right here

— Ram Dass. Be Here Now.

Quote 

Author Trina Paulus on growth:

"How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

Moment of Meditation

A quick Pranayama exercise - breath in for 5 seconds, hold your breath for 5 seconds, and release for 5 seconds. Repeat for a few cycles and enjoy a bit of relaxation.

Happy Monday,

Val

10.2.23

Thought

Whenever we have the feeling of being able to dominate ourselves, master ourselves, or become the lords of nature, what happens is that we do not really succeed in getting outside of nature or of ourselves at all. Instead we have forced our way of seeing these things to conform to an illusion that makes us think they are controlled objects, and in doing this we invariably set up a conflict inside the system. We soon find that the tension between our idea of things and things as they are puts us out of accord with the way of things.

— Alan Watts. What is Tao?

Quote

Poet Rumi on the nature of existence:  

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop."

Moment of Gratitude 

I’m grateful for the wonderful fall weather we had this weekend. 

What are you grateful for?

Happy Monday,

Val