May Your Life (and Pain) Carve a Yosemite-Like Canyon Within You (Inner Strength and Beauty)

I spent last week in Yosemite National Park for 7 nights. I have some ideas I want to share with you. Details about Fall Wise Circles. Piano Recitals With Watercolour Giveaways THIS WEEK. Four to choose from. 45 minutes on ZOOM. Thursday, Sept. 21, 7PM-7:45PM PT, Friday, Sept. 22, 6PM-6:45PM PT, Saturday, Sept. 23 (First Day of Autumn), 2PM-2:45PM PT and Sunday, Sept. 24 (My Eight Year Sober Anniversary), 3PM-3:45PM PT. Links and free tickets at viralmindfulness.com/piano. "The role of spiritual practice is basically to exhaust the seeker. If the practice does what it’s supposed to do, it exhausts our energy for seeking. And then reality has a chance to present itself" (Adyashanti). "I’ve learned a great deal drifting in and out of wakefulness over the years. In the beginning, I used to do a lot of things—write, play music, draw, garden—one after another. But along the way, it stopped being about creating things and started being about the space that is opened in the active of creating. Now the experience of creating brings me such joy, because somehow I came to realize that it is the space that creating opens that saves me, not what it produces. Now it doesn’t matter if I finish anything. I just need to be in that space. In that holy interlude, I am grounded. Only when in conversation with what-is-eternal am I able to stand in a fundamental knowing that is unshakable. When I stand there, I feel calm. When I stand there, I’m attuned to different weather" (Mark Nepo). "Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world won't blow your candle out" (Katherine Dunham).