Jordan from Refine The Mind dug up a brief collection of poignant quotes on approaching life a bit more playfully. 

From Fyodor Dostoevsky: 

“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”

Joseph Campbell in the book Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion:

“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.”

Alan Watts’ ever-charming perspective:

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the Gods made for fun.”

Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Breakfast of Champions:

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,’ said the driver.

‘I won’t know myself until I find out if life is serious or not,’ said Trout. ‘It’s dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s serious, too.”

A sentiment of Charles Bukowski’s:

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

Ray Bradbury in Twice 22: The Golden Apples of the Sun and a Medicine for Melancholy:

“I always figured we were born to fly, one way or other, so I couldn’t stand most men shuffling along with all the iron of the earth in their blood. I never met a man who weighed less than nine hundred pounds.”

The illustrious Friedrich Nietzsche weighs in:

“The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity; and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.”

From the immortal William Shakespeare: 

“Frame your mind to mirth and merriment
which bars a thousand harms
and lengthens life.”

Finally, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, as quoted in Dr. Seuss: American Icon:

“Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.”

Via Refine The Mind

Here are twenty powerful secrets that will help you form meaningful relationships with people:

1. When two people meet, the prize always goes to the one with the most self-insight. He will be calmer, more confident, more at ease with the other.
2. Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how you feel.
3. Pay little attention to what people say or do. Instead, try to see their innermost motive for speaking and acting.
4. Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and dignity to another person is all wrong.
5. Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and another person. This is why we cannot hurt another without hurting ourselves, nor help another without helping ourselves.
6. When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we can never be deceived or hurt.
7. You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you refuse to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander. For one thing, resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.
8. You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.
9. Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens to you in your human relations, especially the pains and disappointments. Do this and everything becomes clear at last.
10. The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety when his love is unseen or rejected.
11. If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out at once for a replacement. Such action prevents you from examining your heartache and breaking free of it.
12. Do not be afraid to be a nobody in a social world. This is a deeper and richer truth than appears on the surface.
13. Every unpleasant experience with another person is an opportunity to see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize them. The more unpleasant the other person is, the more he can teach you.
14. You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and injustice that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.
15. We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not possess in ourselves. It takes a truly loving and patient person to recognize those virtues in another.
16. Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.
17. There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts that do not. Place yourself on the side of the positive forces: do all you can to aid and encourage them.
18. You must stop living timidly from fixed fears of what others will think of you and of what you will think of yourself.
19. Do not contrive to be a loving person: work to be a real person. Being real is being loving.
20. The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so transform you inner life that others are attracted to your genuine example of goodness.             
    

Source: “Twenty Special Secrets,” from Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, by Vernon Howard

Online Source: The Bounded Spirit

Pedro Reyes Turns Guns Into Functioning Musical Instruments

Violence has been running rampant in Northern Mexico throughout the last six years.

Artist Pedro Reyes is doing his best to reverse this trend by sculpting confiscated weapons into functioning musical instruments.

Image Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, click to see more on Pedro Reyes’ Art and Philosophy.

Why  Turn Guns Into Instruments?

In an email to the Associated Press, Pedro said, “The music expelled the demons [the guns] held, as well as being a requiem for lives lost.”

At Lucid Practice, we believe in using creativity to counteract violence. We believe in changing negative societal norms — we’re featuring Pedro today because his project is a testament to these virtues.

The guns that Reyes used came from the Mexican Army who had confiscated the weapons from Ciudad Juárez, a violent city just south of Texas (see map below) with a population of over one million people. It is believed that Ciudad Juárez reached a murder rate of 300 per month at the peak of recent violence.

An Act of Protest?

With drug cartels and frequent violence, protests in Juarez’ surrounding cities has been common. However, Reyes’ work transcends protests as he says, “[My work] is not just a protest, but a proposal…. This project has a pacifist intent.”

Image Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, click to see more on Pedro Reyes’ Art and Philosophy.

How We Can Learn from Pedro Reyes

At Lucid Practice, we admire Reyes for his ability to use creativity, music, and love to combat suffering and bring the concept of peace to a devastated region. Instead of merely defining a problem, Reyes is using art to express a completely contrarian perspective to what the region has become accustomed to. As Reyes says, “This exercise of transformation we see with the guns, is what we would like to see in society.”

Mr. Reyes is correct, everywhere we see hate, let’s turn it into love.

What are your thoughts about turning weapons into instruments?

We have talked a lot about Elon, TESLA, Solar City and more here on this blog. Check out the 35 reasons why Business Insider thinks he has been a great story — Here.

Image via Forbes

Eddie Stern has posted a transcript of a very important lecture given by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois on the mind/body connection, providing us with invaluable insight into Guruji’s thinking about the role of yoga in well-being. Here’s Eddie’s description of the context (from his Facebook page):

In 1977, Guruji was invited to give a presentation at a Yoga Conference that was organized by Swami Vishnu Devananda in Bangalore. The papers were all collected and published in a book called “Yoga and Science”, and the title of his presentation was “Yoga and Therapy”. I had looked for the book for many years, but to no avail. Then this past fall, almost miraculously, the son of Leslie Kaminoff – who I knew from my pre-yoga days – found the book in India, and Leslie gave it to me.

Click to read the transcript of Yoga and Therapy.

Via Confluence Countdown

We were the only family with children in the restaurant. I sat Erik in a high chair and noticed everyone was quietly sitting and talking.

Suddenly, Erik squealed with glee and said, ‘Hi.’ He pounded his fat baby hands on the high chair tray. His eyes were crinkled in laughter and his mouth was bared in a toothless grin, as he wriggled and giggled with merriment.

I looked around and saw the source of his merriment. It was a man whose pants were baggy with a zipper at half-mast and his toes poked out of would-be shoes. His shirt was dirty and his hair was uncombed and unwashed. His whiskers were too short to be called a beard and his nose was so varicose it looked like a road map.

We were too far from him to smell, but I was sure he smelled.. His hands waved and flapped on loose wrists. ‘Hi there, baby; hi there, big boy.. I see ya, buster,’ the man said to Erik.

My husband and I exchanged looks, ‘What do we do?’

Erik continued to laugh and answer, ‘Hi.’

Everyone in the restaurant noticed and looked at us and then at the man.

The old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby. Our meal came and the man began shouting from across the room, ‘Do ya patty cake?

Do you know peek-a-boo? Hey, look, he knows peek- a-boo.’

Nobody thought the old man was cute. He was obviously drunk.

My husband and I were embarrassed. We ate in silence; all except for Erik, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring skid-row bum, who in turn, reciprocated with his cute comments.

We finally got through the meal and headed for the door. My husband went to pay the check and told me to meet him in the parking lot. The old man sat poised between me and the door. ‘Lord, just let me out of here before he speaks to me or Erik,’ I prayed. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back trying to sidestep him and avoid any air he might be breathing. As I did, Erik leaned over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby’s ‘pick-me-up’ position. Before I could stop him, Erik had propelled himself from my arms to the man.

Suddenly a very old smelly man and a very young baby consummated their love and kinship. Erik in an act of total trust, love, and submission laid his tiny head upon the man’s ragged shoulder. The man’s eyes closed, and I saw tears hover beneath his lashes. His aged hands full of grime, pain, and hard labor, cradled my baby’s bottom and stroked his back. No two beings have ever loved so deeply for so short a time.

I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms and his eyes opened and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm commanding voice, ‘You take care of this baby.’

Somehow I managed, ‘I will,’ from a throat that contained a stone. He pried Erik from his chest, lovingly and longingly, as though he were in pain. I received my baby, and the man said, ‘God bless you, ma’am, you’ve given me my Christmas gift.’ I said nothing more than a muttered thanks. With Erik in my arms,
I ran for the car. My husband was wondering why I was crying and holding Erik so tightly, and why I was saying, ‘My God, my God, forgive me.’

I had just witnessed Christ’s love shown through the innocence of a tiny child who saw no sin, who made no judgment; a child who saw a soul, and a mother who saw a suit of clothes. I was a Christian who was blind, holding a child who was not. I felt it was God asking, ‘Are you willing to share your son for a moment?’ when He shared His for all eternity.
How did God feel when he put his baby in our arms 2000 years ago. 

The ragged old man, unwittingly, had reminded me, ‘To enter the Kingdom of God , we must become as little children.’

If this has blessed you, you may bless others by sending it on.

Sometimes, it takes a child to remind us of what is really important. We must always remember who we are, where we came from and, most importantly, how we feel about others. The clothes on your back or the car that you drive or the house that you live in does not define you at all; it is how you treat your fellow man that identifies who you are.

~Bob Dylan