Girls Who Read

Stephen Fry

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
Stephen Fry

Let It Shine

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. 

-Marianne Williamson

These Are The Things I Truly Believe In

OCT. 28, 2013 

By CAITLIN COLLINSWORTH

I believe in songs on the radio. In shuffle. In chance giving you all the signs you could possibly want. I believe in music, the one song you only ever needed to hear. The melody, the words, letting you know it isn’t just you. There are others out there, the ones who get you. Somewhere across miles, even oceans, someone else felt lost and confused. Someone else set a beat to the feeling seeping into your heart.

I believe in fortune cookies. In the handful set on your table. The end of the meal, how could fate step in when it gives you something you’ve had before? Ink typed on a page allowing all the meaning you will let it. A piece of trust inside something so small. Trust in the universe, in chance, in more than what you can see in your hands.

I believe in the sunrise. In even the worst days ending, the wind piercing your bones walking home through the dark. Coats doing nothing against the outside. The sun will come up tomorrow. The bad will end and blue with eventually come with it. Eyes will adjust as the rays escape through the clouds. The light on your face warming even the coldest of places. Insides that were hollow will fill up with the colors, each day newly painted as long as one remembers to trust.

I believe in taking risks. In living life as worst as you can. It’s a risk loving all you come in contact with, love is never guaranteed. There are people who will eat up all you give them, asking for more when you think you’ve almost run out. There will be ones who will love you back with all their atoms. Believing in the risk you take just by breathing in the air. The others thirsty for passion, finding what burns them and letting it consume. I believe in souls who light up gold when incased by the fire.

I believe in being nervous, being terrified. The butterflies in your stomach fluttering when you see how far you can go. When failure causes the conditioned response, but still holding your head up high. Putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward at all times. You have to build to a run, sprinting doesn’t last forever. I believe in the long inhale, in walking out the door on days it’s pouring and with no idea what to expect.

I believe in you. In us. In loving all the moments. In the times when you’re on the ground and can barely make out the stars. When it’s so dark and freezing and you don’t think you will ever be warm again. When you lose something important to you, the failure weighing on your shoulders. When you wonder how anyone is able to walk uphill after their hearts were snatched out of their chests. I believe in purpose, in letting it find you just by trying everything you can. Boundless opportunities if you are willing to look underneath. I believe in timing, in chance, in never giving up even if you fail. In starting over, in taking a step back, in pausing for the world to see you are trying to help. I believe in solutions, if we keep looking, keep experimenting, we will find them. In trying to create in your little moments, in the only moment we know we have.

I believe in the flow of life from one to another, in being kind.

Your 20s Get Better In Time

This article is literally everything I needed to read right now

OCT. 28, 2013 

By KOVIE BIAKOLO 

I never like telling people my age. It’s usually met with disbelief about not being older. (Although recently, I have encountered a few people who thought I was younger than I am.) I often feel like my age is not a reflection of my experience, and I don’t want to be dismissed because of it. Growing up, I was always younger than all my peers, and I mostly still am. Yet somehow, I have always felt that my life experiences allowed me to have greater depth than those same peers in many respects. Perhaps it was growing up fast due to having siblings significantly older than me, and one who I am significantly other than. Or perhaps it was having to be independent earlier than most. But I have always felt older than I am. Still, I can honestly say that my twenties have been a whirlwind thus far.

A lot of things have gone wrong – horribly, terribly wrong. I sometimes look around my less than perfect, (and these days) often messy apartment, and feel it is an exact representation of my life. My twenties have been chaotic and disorganized and unexpected – like a lot of people. I still remember how scared I was on the morning of my college graduation, almost two and a half years ago now. I had never felt so uncertain in my entire life even though I thought I had plans. Little did I know, that moment would mark the beginning of an uncertain period of my life. Sometimes I feel like all I’m doing is fighting through one uncertainty after another; one thing after another. I feel like I’m constantly running a race, or maybe swimming and trying to keep my head above water. I feel like I’m taking steps forward and having to take those same steps backwards. Every day, I feel like I’m fighting.

I’m good at fighting. Random too-much-information story about me: I came into the world fighting. My mother loves to tell the story of how I’m the baby that she almost lost. And my parents – strip away their education and titles and very put-together demeanor – and you’ll find some of the greatest hustlers you’ll ever come across. So fighting is in my DNA. I know how to pull the sleepless nights and to keep on truckin’ even when things look bleak. And I know what it is to fail even when you’ve given something everything you’ve got; and to have to pick yourself up with no time for respite. I know what it is to be at your wit’s end as to what tomorrow will bring. And I know what it is to hang on by a thread, by your last sliver of hope; to hang on when all you have left is a Hail Mary.

But I also know that even when I have failed, that Hail Mary never failed me. And if you have enough perspective, you might realize it never failed you either. Because no matter how many times we’ve hit rock bottom during these years, if we’ve awoken the next day, we’re already doing better than we can possible imagine. These years are hard and uncertain. And every day that you are able to get out of bed and go into the world and learn something, and create something, and be useful and kind to someone – no matter how small, no matter how insignificant – you’re doing really well. And on those days where you can’t muster the strength to get out of bed because everything just looks like it’s falling apart, stay in bed as long as you need to. Because on those days you’re just getting stronger to be able to continue the fight when you’re ready.

And fight you will, because in order to survive and thrive, you must. But things will get better, and if you look around you, maybe they already are. Maybe you’re smarter, maybe you’re more fearless, maybe you’re more confident and less worrisome. In some small way that you don’t even realize, I promise you’re doing better. And those small ways will one day turn into something big, and you’ll look back at how far you’ve come. You’ll realize that those weak moments were really some of your strongest moments. You’ll realize that all the fighting was preparing you for something much better; something that you might not be able to see right now.

But keep fighting because no matter where you are now, you’re not dead; and that means you’ve still got some fight in you. And as long as you keep fighting, even if it feels like that’s all you’re doing, even if this is hard to believe, believe you must, that these years will get better in time.

Alan Watts Lecture "The State of Nothing"

The State of Nothing Lecture by Alan Watts
If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end, that is don’t you see what makes it lively. Liveliness is change it is motion, and motion is going to fall out and be gone. You see, you are always at the place you always are..[Laughs] Except it keeps appearing to change. And you think wowie we’ll get that thing. I hope we don’t go further down so that we don’t lose what we have. But that’s built into every creature’s situation or matter how high or how low. So is this sense, all places are the same place. And the only time you ever notice any difference is the moment of transition. When you go up a bit you gain, when you go down a bit you feel disappointed, gloom, lost. You can go all the way down to death. Somehow, there seems to be a difficultly getting up. Death sees so final. Nothing seems so very very very irrevocable and permanent.
Then if it is, what about the nothingness before you started. So don’t you see, what we’ve left out of out logic and this is part of the game rule to the game we are playing. The way we hoodwink ourselves is by attributing powerlessness with nothingness.
We don’t realize that is a complete logical fallacy. It takes nothing to have something. You wouldn’t know something without nothing. You wouldn’t know what the form is, without the background space. You would’t be able to see anything unless there was nothing behind your eyes. Now imagine yourself with an anestical eye, and you can see all round. Now whats in the middle? Even if I have all this behind me within view suddenly I will find there is something in the middle of it all and there is a hole of reality. Like now there seems to be wall, not so much a whole, but you see if I was an animal that had eyes in the back of its head. You could feel the sensation I’m describing.
Now you may say to me, now that’s all a bunch of wishful thinking, because when your dead your dead! Now wait a minute, what is that state of consciousness that talks that way? This is somebody saying something that wants to make a point, but what kind of point are they trying to make? When your dead your dead see. Well that’s one of the people that want to rule the world. That’s what frightening about death. Death is real. No indulge in wishful thinking, all you people who dream of an afterlife, and heavens and gods and mystical experiences, and eternity. You are just wishy washy people, you don’t face the facts!
What facts? How can I face the fact of nothing. Which is by definition not a fact. All this is toddle whatever way you look at it. So if you really go the how way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Of all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you?
Is a curious thing, that in the world’s poetry, this is a very common theme. “The earthly hopes men set their hearts upon turns ashes, and or it prospers, a non like snow settles on the desert dusty face lighting an hour or two and is gone” All kinds of poetry emphasize the theme of transcendence. There is a kind of nostalgic beauty to it. "The Banquet Hall deserted, after the revelry, all the guests had left and gone on their ways. The table with overturned glasses, crumbled napkins, bread crumbs , and dirty knives and forks lies empty. And the laughter echoes only in one’s mind. And then the echo goes, the memory, the traces are all gone. That’s the end you see."
Do you see in a way, how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing? That’s what it’s all going to come to. With these physicists who think of the energy of the universe as running down dissipating into radiation, and gradually and gradually, and gradually, gradually, until there is nothing left.
And for some reason, we are suppose to find that depressing. But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how this looks behind your eyes. So cheer up you see, this is what is meant in Buddhist philosophy by saying ‘we are all basically nothing.’
When the Six Patriarch says “the essence of your mind is intrinsically pure”. The pure doesn’t mean a ‘non dirty story state of mind’ as is it apt to mean in the word Puritan. Pure means “clear “ void. So you know the story when the Six Patriarch was given his office to his successor. Because he was truly enlightened. There was a Poetry contest. And the losing one wrote the idea that the mind, the consciousness was like a mirror.
So I’m detached, calm, and pure headed. Buddha-ed. But the one who won the contest said there is no mirror, and the nature of mind is intrinsically void. So where is there anywhere for dust to collect? See so in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of being scared, and it’s nothing it just a dream. Because your really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. All the Six Patriarch went on to contrast that emptiness of indifference. Which is sort of blind emptiness. See if you think of this idea of nothingness as blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and mountains, and rivers, and goodmen and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you it. What else could you be?

A Quick Evaluation of Your Life and Future

Part 1
Write down 10 things that you love to do.

• Do you like to do this: (A) all by yourself/ or with (P) people
• Is it something that is (M) mental or (P) physical
• Pick your top 3 favorites and mark the last time that you did it
• Mark the ones that you did for the first time in 3 years with a symbol

1. Reading a book (A, M, #1- 2 days ago)
2. Spending time laying outside in the dark looking at the stars (A, M, #3- 28 days ago)
3. Roadtrips with loud music and windows down (P, P, ) 
4. Spending time on the water (A, M)
5. Talking with friends and family (P, M) 
6. Looking at photographs (A, M)
7. Snuggling up on a couch when it's raining (A, P)
8. Playing with a dog (A, P)
9. Laughing (P, P, #2- 1 day ago) 
10. Watching a good film (A, M)

Part 2

Write down 10 things you want to do in the future.  You can already have done these, but you really want to do them again.

• Do you like to do this: (A) all by yourself/ or with (P) people
• Is it something that is (M) mental or (P) physical
• Is this (L) likely, (P) probable, (I) improbable

1. Travel (A, P, P)
2. Spend time outside with nature (A, P, P) 
3. Drive recklessly fast on an abandoned road (A, P, I) 
4. Volunteer abroad (P, M, I)
5. Have a family (P, M, L)
6. Fall head over heels in love (P, P, P)
7. Spend more time with my family (P, M, L) 
8. Feel more secure with who I am (A, M, I)
9. Own a personal library (A, M, L) 
10. Make it all count (A, M, P)