lara simmons

The theme this week follows  last week's almost magically. Listening is an important part of any good relationship and it is not an easy skill. It is hard to listen without judgement, to listen without interrupting, to listen without jumping in to share or solve. To just listen. I encourage you to try it this week and hope the quotations I have chosen will inspire you to listen well: "To listen well, we must attend both to the words and the silence between the words."  --William Issacs in "A Matter of Spirit," the  Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center  quarterly newsletter "The first duty of love is to listen." -- Paul Tillich "Listen to those who open a path to you; listen and don't say a word." -- RUMI "O Great Spirit help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak and to remember the peace that may be found in silence." -- Cherokee prayer "...[Y]our l...

This is the first week I chose quotes without a theme in mind - and the quotes reflect this to some degree - but as I read over them I hear whispers of an underlying theme....relationships, interactions with others, communication. I hope these eight gems will help you move in the direction of more awareness, more understanding, and more compassion (for yourself as well as others). ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~ "May I know what it is to feel the weight on another's shoulders. May I know forgiveness in my heart. May I be given strength to extend my hand across the divide to pull another from the abyss, though that person has wounded me." --Maisie Dobbs, quoting her teacher Maurice in "Journey to Munich" by Jacqueline Winspear "Dogen-zenji said, 'When you say something to someone, he may not accept it, but do not try to make him understand it intellectually. Do not argue with him; just listen to his objections until he himself finds something wrong with th...

  "And we should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new." --Shunryu Suzuki After almost five years - and more drafts than I can remember (fifteen? twenty?) - I am pleased to announce that I am publishing my first book today. What began as a class I first taught in August of 2011 at East West Bookshop , was scribbled out long-hand in a series of sketchbooks during a somewhat uncomfortable weekend writing retreat in New Mexico , and revised and designed over the past nine months since I began my blogging hiatus in May of last year, is now complete. It is not perfect, but I am proud of it. I hesitate to say proud because pride brings to mind an overabundance of good feelings about oneself, but checking the dictionary just to be sure this is the word I wanted to use, I found that "overabundance of good feelings about oneself" is actually the secondary meaning of proud and that it primarily means...