lara simmons

" Do your best and leave the rest. " --Lord Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita   I have been thinking about this quote A LOT this week as I move through (another) time of confusion and uncertainty. It is from the Geeta Girl podcast , whose mission is to help their listeners use the wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita to improve their lives.    One of the things they point out specifically is that "the Geeta" is not only a holy book or a fabulous story, but is actually a practical handbook that we can use to increase our life skills and improve our actions, thereby improving our lives.    So often it can feel as though we are victims of circumstance or that the events in our lives are outside of our control, and often this is true (Hello Global Pandemic!), however, if we can learn to act more skillfully (notice they don't say "rightly" or "correctly"), we can improve our lives and the situations and lives of those around us, and have some control over h...

"Let it suck." --B.S. A few weeks ago I met a new friend for coffee. It was one of those amazing "first dates" where you immediately fall into conversation about important things and time seems to pass so quickly that before you know it hours have gone by and you both need to rush off, late for whatever it was you were supposed to be doing that afternoon. We talked about life and family, relationships and writing, and I told her that one of the most important things I have learned about writing is the importance of being willing to write a really shitty first draft. I learned this, of course, from Anne Lamott's book "Bird By Bird," but it took me years - YEARS - to be able to actually do it and it still makes me nervous and twitchy sometimes and I am still a LONG way off from enjoying it. We talked a bit more about our writing process and then she paused for a moment out of the blue and said, " Let it suck, " which was her way of re...

"You are the master of your own life; you are the master of your own future." -- Gautama the Buddha One of many quotes from the retreat whose basic message is: you create your reality. What the Buddha is saying here is that we decide each day, each moment what kind of life we want to live by HOW we live it. By how we act. By how we think. By how we treat others. By how we treat ourselves. Decide what kind of life you want to live and then plant the seeds of that life. At the retreat S.N. Goenka told a story during one of the nightly video-taped discourses , about a man who planted seeds from the Neem tree (known for its bitter fruit) on his land. When the tree grew and began to produce fruit he was very upset that the fruit it produced was bitter and not sweet like sugar cane. Of course we are meant to laugh at this man for his foolishness, but are we any different? We lie, we cheat, we steal (in large or in small ways), we give into anger and then we want life...

"Be present, be playful, be flexible, pay attention, be spontaneous, expect the unexpected, be inspired by the surprises, allow love, allow change, allow growth and allow deep healing!" -- The Power Path February Forecast 2013 by Lena Stevens Excellent advice for any time of the year, it appears these admonitions will be especially appropriate for February according to www.thepowerpath.com , my favorite new source for information about what is happening on an energetic level in our world. To learn more, click the link above and HANG ONTO YOUR HATS!