Nature is the overbearing factor in our behavior but nurture also has a role that cannot be neglected. Early exposure to violence, combined with poverty and abuse can shape our attitudes and behavior in such a way that the damage to the psyche will contribute to the manifestation of violence in thoughts and actions throughout our lives and can result in mental illness. Continue reading
Compassion Quotations and Mantras
Compassion may be defined as deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the desire to relieve it. Our own suffering gives rise to compassion and can result in doing something for another without the expectation of return, often at a personal risk or cost. Without compassion our species would not have survived. Continue reading
Life Lessons: Aparigraha (non-grasping)
I am as far as one can get from being an urban yoga practitioner. My husband and I choose to live a life of voluntary simplicity in a semi remote location. We waste not and want not. As we chose to drop out of the consumer driven society and are unimpressed with the unrelenting advertising that assails and assaults us when traveling to the city, we are uncomfortable when evidence of misguided yoga connected marketing success shows up on our shore. Continue reading
Vibrancy and Saturation in Abstractions
DSC_5480 Kleur (Photo credit: Joop Reuvecamp)
I’ve been exploring the difference between vibrancy and saturation in digital abstracts.
Vibrant colors are very high on the scale of brightness. They are bright and striking colors that pulse with energy and suggest activity. Continue reading
The Great Compassion Mantra
Understanding the concept of suffering helps us understand and develop compassion. Suffering usually has a negative connotation yet it is a natural part of living, our cyclic existence, samsara, the cycle of birth and death. Continue reading
Re-energizing After a Lay-Off
Everyone is familiar with energy drain. Researchers are studying the links between what we eat, how we work and live and how we feel. There are different kinds of fatigue and different ways to improve your energy level. How do you know if your low energy is caused by underlying disease or is the result of lifestyle factors, stress, poor diet, lack of sleep, or normal aging? Continue reading
Islands of Sorrow, Oceans of Grief
On islands of sorrow, across oceans of grief, all over the world there will be no tomorrow for marine life and ocean birds. They ingest our waste, starve, writhe in agony and die, and we are none the wiser.
The oceans are precious, yet we fill them with lethal junk that doesn’t break down in the environment, junk that’s the agent of death for the life that’s left in the wild. We sit in front of our TV’s and believe the wilderness we see there is intact. Well it isn’t and that’s a fact. If you lived on a tiny island like me, you would begin to see a glimpse of what we are doing to the seas. Continue reading
