lara simmons

"It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness." -- Haruki Murakami Taking a break from posting happy, happy posts about manifesting. There seems to be so much darkness in the world right now. Just going to let that speak for itself. Feel it. Not to let it take over or to overwhelm, but to have its voice. Maybe the darkness just needs to speak and be spoken and be heard and be shared and be felt by all of us in order to dissipate and be replaced by the light. I don't know, but I do know I can't just post happy, happy today. I just can't do it. ...

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  He who is devoid of the power to forgive  is devoid of the power to love."   -- Martin Luther King, Jr.  As I mentioned yesterday, RELEASING can take many forms, and one form is forgiveness . Who do you need to forgive in order to move forward in your life?  Try using the Violet Flame Meditation today for forgiveness. As you ask that the Violet Flame be sent from the center of the Earth, place an image of the person you need to forgive in your heart chakra. Allow the Violet Flame to burn away any hurt, any resentment, any attachment, any negative energy you may feel. Release and let it go.  If you find that you want to do more forgiveness work, click here for Day 1 of my 30 Days of Forgiveness challenge from 2014 or above on the word forgiveness for the 2015 challenge. 

"It is not what we carry with us, but what we let go that defines us." -- Charlie Crews , " Life ," S2 E9 The focus for this week (Week 3) is on RELEASING.  Releasing can take many forms: letting go of something that is not working, moving on from a relationship that no longer feeds us, forgiving someone who has hurt us, detoxifying our bodies and minds from that which we consume that somehow damages us, etc.  One of my favorite tools for releasing is The Violet Flame Meditation. If you are a long-time reader you have almost surely heard me talk about this before. It is one of my favorite tools for forgiveness and is also great for RELEASING. In fact, I have a whole page on my website devoted to it . If you would like to learn more about this meditation, I encourage you to check it out.  Or, if you just want to give it a try, follow the instructions below:  Think of one thing that you would like to work on releasing and use the Violet Flame to h...

“...[L]asting change only comes when we transcend the energies that created it  [whatever the 'problem' is as we see it].”  -- Lauren C Gorgo How do we make lasting change? Starting where we are. Being willing to be a beginner every moment . Questioning and Bargaining . Backsliding and starting over. Being honestly inconsistent . Putting one foot in front of the other until we realize - sometimes suddenly - that we no longer need to drink or yell or bite our fingernails or tell lies or overeat or whatever it is we do that gets in our way. But what is it, exactly, that we are transcending? I can't answer that question for you, but what I have realized for myself over this twenty-eight days is that what I need to transcend to make this change permanent is not my addiction to wheat, but my addiction to AVERSION. According to the Buddha, there are two habits which get in the way of enlightenment, clinging and aversion. Both are present, I believe, in any form o...

Nature: inconsistently, honestly, beautiful "To be honest, one  must  be inconsistent."   –HG Wells This seemed the perfect quote to follow on from yesterday's theme of " progress, not perfection ." The idea of progress and not perfection, of taking things one step at a time and leaving room for backsliding and imperfection, has been crucial to my own personal growth and spiritual journey.  As a young child I became enamored with the idea of being perfect. I believed that if I always sat up straight, always listened to the teacher, always did my best and always got good grades, that would be make me "a good girl" and everyone would love me.  Of course it is not always possible to always sit up straight, always listen to the teacher, always do your best, and always get good grades, but I made a pretty good show of it by subjugating my feelings and acting the part.  I tried to do the same thing as a young mother - though...

Once upon a time there were two brothers who lived together in their father's house. Upon the death of their father they were to split all of his assets fifty-fifty. When the time came, they divided his houses, his livestock and his money equally. After this was done, however, they discovered two rings which had not been included in the estate. The first ring was made of pure gold and encrusted with diamonds, which sparkled from a great distance. The second ring was made of silver. It was old and scratched and any shine it had once had was long gone. The older brother immediately took charge and said, "As the oldest male in the family the gold ring should be mine, I will give it to my oldest daughter when the time is right." The younger brother did not complain and so he received the silver ring. Many years passed. The older brother had made a great fortune out of what his father had left to him and yet he was dissatisfied with his life. The younger brother st...

"Revenge is a poison meant for others that we end up swallowing ourselves." -- Life , Season 1, Episode 2 I love it when I see the woo-woo showing up on television. It makes me feel like my fellow seekers and I are making a difference, like the messages are seeping in, ever so slowly, to mainstream culture. And, also, it just makes for great TV. "Life" is a perfect example of that. On one level a police procedural drama, the underlying story - about a cop who is framed for murder, goes to prison, discovers ZEN Buddhism and is then exonerated years later - is one of hope, redemption and a whole lotta woo-woo. I highly recommend it, if only for the great quotes like this one. (Well, and Damian Lewis , who ain't too hard on the eyes....) [Although "Life" was cancelled after only two seasons, it is available to stream on Netflix and Hulu .]

"There shouldn't be a leash on life." --Tess On Halloween my son invited one of his new middle school friends over to Trick or Treat with us. She is a delightful girl - warm. open, chatty and wicked smart. I was cutting up apples for their snack and she asked if she could have some peanut butter to go with them. "It doesn't have to be much," she said, "My mom limits me to one tablespoon because she says I'll eat all the peanut butter." She paused and then spoke words of wisdom I wish I had known when I was her age:  "But why not eat all the peanut butter? There shouldn't be a leash on life."  Ah-h-h-h. It was a deep-breath moment for me. I just stood still and breathed in the truth of these words and the truth that they had been missing from my world-view for far longer than was good for me. I know it is time for me to start living without a leash. Cassie (see above) couldn't agree more. Thanks Tess!

  One of the coolest things we did in LA was visit the Watts Towers , a unique display of public and personal art by Simon Rodia . (If you want to learn more I highly recommend following one of these links.)  While there I picked up a postcard, which was a photo almost exactly like this one I shot by Marisol Manzano, with the following caption: "I want my life to be full of light, color and flavor."  Me too, Simon, me too!

"You don't need to buy it to own it...If you own yourself, you own the world." --Tom Spanbauer Have I mentioned that I LOVE this book ?

"Nobody loves you the way your dog loves you." -- Tom Spanbauer This is how my god...whoops....Freudian slip....dog loves me - right up in my face.

"It's a funny thing...but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they DON'T want.”  -- Khalid Hosseini , from his book And The Mountains 

"...[L]ife itself is a meditation."  --Raul Julia I have always loved Raul Julia, since I first saw him as the sensitive married man having sexual tension with Susan Sarandon while solving a murder in "Compromising Positions" (the cast of which also included the always entertaining Judith Ivey - I love her voice and demeanor so much I think I could watch her in anything). He went on to play defense attorney Sandy Stern in "Presumed Innocent" and of course the beloved patriarch Gomez Addams in "The Addams Family."  His was one the first celebrity deaths - in 1994 - to really effect me. He always seemed to have an undefinably quiet strength and grace. I get it now - he saw his life as a meditation - and that makes all the difference.  I hope someday to be remembered for my quiet grace and thanks to Raul I have one more clue about how to do that. Thanks Raul. For everything.

“...[H]armony requires us to change along with the whole. If you open yourself to the hum of the world—if you live in the present rather than in your idea of it—it will change you." -- Philip Shepherd , author of New Self, New World , interviewed in The Sun

"Hello, again, hello...I couldn't sleep at all tonight..." so I got up and made myself a cup of tea and a piece of peanut butter toast and I have been sitting here reading through quotes and downloading updates to my computer and searching campsites for later this summer and, mostly, trying to figure out what to write. Trying to figure out how to say, "Hello, again," to this blog after a rather long and unintended break. "What happened?" You may be wondering. "Where did you go?"  I went to a place called Summer Vacation. I went to a place called The Kids are Out of School. I went to a place called The Relatives are Visiting. And I went to a place called Japan.  I went on a 35,000 km motorcycle ride with Nathan Millward (author of The Long Ride 'Home' ). And I went on a journey to the depths of the human experience with Dear Sugar (in her book Tiny Beautiful Things ). I went to a place called Happy. And a place called ...

"...[W]e're all broken, every single one of us, and yet we pretend that we're not. We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to this fantasy that there's this perfect life..." -- Jimmy Smits , speaking as Presidential Candidate Matthew Santos in The West Wing , Season 6, Episode 22, " 2162 Votes " Another reason to love the West Wing....

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." --Ralph Waldo Emerson I read this on Facebook the other day and it was one of those quotes I immediately knew was going on the blog because it contains a nugget of truth so sharp I want to tell everyone I know. It's about getting out of your head and into your body. It's about feeling your life and not rationalizing it. It's about living and not just plodding along. There is more life in a scream than in a thesis. More truth. And sometimes even, more joy. It you are feeling frustrated or confused or angry today, why not take a break, go somewhere quiet and just scream it out? Happy Monday All!

"The journey is the destination." --"Physical Phil" from October Road, Pilot The easy answer is: MY KIDS. Those two little boys whose burps and farts, cries and screeches -  whose very presence - have filled up my world for more than ten years now. Elizabeth Stone said that having children is like having your heart walking around outside of your body. For me, it feels more like two baby-shaped pieces of myself have been let loose into the world and two similarly-shaped holes left in my body. At first I could not bear to be away from them for more than a few minutes, then a few hours, and now I can handle even a few days . But if I think one of them is lost, or I am not absolutely certain of where they are - even for a few minutes - that old panic starts to surface and I feel the loss again in my body. The truth is, however, that living for them gets me into trouble. It leads to unrealistic expectations of behavior (mine and theirs) and a desire for appreci...

"Ricard's Buddhist notion of happiness is better described as 'well-being' or better yet: 'a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment, a state that pervades and underlies all emotional states, including all the joys and sorrow that can come one's way.' It isn't to be confused with pleasure, not even hours of it." --From "Stories for Boys" by Gregory Martin This is the third in a series of photographs I took on our recent family vacation to Maui. First came PEACE; then LOVE; so now, of course, HAPPINESS. This quote is from one of the books I read while on vacation and I loved this Buddhist idea of happiness. It seems somehow less daunting, more achievable, and less rooted in factors often outside of our control such as the weather or our income or relationship status. A deep sense of serenity and fulfillment. A state that pervades and underlies all emotional states that can come ones way. Bring it on!

"Just when I thought it was over and I could finally settle down, Life continues to challenge me to rise up and hold my ground!" -- Tom "Kaypacha" Lescher Another gem from my sister, this weekly astrology forecast is not for everyone, but I love it. Hope you will too!