First published on Daily Cup of Yoga

By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards the wicked the mind becomes pure. ~ Yoga Sutra 1:33

Consider this:

• A yoga teacher gets a better time slot than you and her class is full when you arrive to teach the next class. No one asked you if you’d like the slot and you’ve been teaching at the studio longer…how do you respond?

…The ego loves to feel sorry for itself, loves to make excuses, loves to compare, and is jealous of other’s happiness…

• A homeless drug addict lives in a tent on the beach, he’s known for stealing, bullying and harming others..

…The ego hates, is disgusted, petrified, and proud that it is better, more humane, more decent…

• Your friend has been blessed with two beautiful children and is pregnant with another…she is beautiful and in your mind a perfect mother. You have wanted a baby for a long time but your partner isn’t ready.

…The ego is not joyful that she’s pregnant again, instead the ego is jealous…she already has two and you have none!

• Someone has it out for you, they just don’t like you and they never did. There is nothing you can do to make this person like you and they are always finding ways to drag you down, via gossip, text messages, and on those rare occasions when you are around one another, with their attitude.

…The ego may try to kill with kindness out of spite, fuel the fire, and give back a taste of the medicine…

Why is it so hard to truly be content for another when they have been given a great opportunity? I believe it is because we place too high of a demand on what we consider to be success. We tend to make excuses to not be compassionate and feed ourselves with lies. We develop a superiority complex and try to impose our values on others. Although the homeless man is living in misery, why are we not always compassionate towards this situation?

Every day we deal with the ups and downs of life, the constant pull of the need to control not only ourselves but others and their situations. It seems that the ego thinks it’s got it all figured out, every response justified no matter how cruel. I am always amazed by the power of the human mind to rationalize thoughts that we know are wrong and unmerited.

The Yoga Sutras can keep us in check, on track and call us to examine ourselves. Let us practice, meditate, pray and strive to have a pure mind, especially in our relationships with others by “cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality towards those we perceive as wicked or evil...” (Yoga Sutra 1:33).

One way to accomplish this is by taking a moment whenever we feel the ego grow dispassionate to own our feelings and then release them. One can also recite the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

God help us in our journey.

Jon Negroni does fun, creative work explaining why, “Every pixar movie is connected.”

Several months ago, I watched a fun-filled video on Cracked.com that introduced the idea (at least to me) that all of the Pixar movies actually exist within the same universe. Since then, I’ve obsessed over this concept, working to complete what I call “The Pixar Theory,” a working narrative that ties all of the Pixar movies into one cohesive timeline with a main theme.

This theory covers every Pixar production since Toy Story. 

The point of this theory is to have fun and exercise your imagination while simultaneously finding interesting connections between these fantastic movies. If you hate fun and/or imagination, you probably won’t like this theory

Check it out —- here.

Via Big Think

The mega-entrepreneur of the year is probably Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon and very recently bought the Washington Post. Certainly lots of people are focusing their hopes and fears on what Bezos might do next.

Here’s one hopeful sign: Bezos has put PowerPoint out of his business. One reason is that he has a humane man’s aversion to cruelty. Think about how much time sophisticated Americans have spent enduring the torture of literally billions and billions of PowerPoint presentations over the last couple of decades. Where PowerPoint goes, intellectual enjoyment disappears. From my perspective as a teacher, what I mostly see is that PowerPoint makes both teachers and students lazy, as “coherent narratives” are transformed into bullet points. The era of PowerPoint is also the era of the buzzword or buzz-phrase, such as “disruptive innovation.” It is also, of course, the era of management-speak, “branding,” and such.

Bezos demands that his employees not use PowerPoint. Instead, they’re required to write “6-page narrative memos.” Before the meeting begins, everyone takes the time to read the whole memo. That, of course, doesn’t take that long, and reading, more than listening, focuses attention on actual arguments. And, of course, the person who writes the memo has to make make sense or be subject to attack, ridicule, or even being fired. Bezos has returned us to the obvious thought that the point of sentences and paragraphs and such is to facilitate clear and critical thinking.  He noticed that too many of his employees were having so much fun designing PowerPoint slides that they were forgetting to think.

Read more — here.

Madonna Gaulding, author of The Meditation Bible, gives you a beginner’s guide to easy serenity:

BENEFITS: Eating slowly and mindfully increases the pleasure you will get from your food.  Not only will you taste more, but by eating consciously, you will be more likely to choose to eat healthier foods.

TO START: Make yourself a healthy, balanced meal.

STEP ONE: Lay the table and sit down, but don’t start eating straight away. Take time to relax and settle your mind. Set your intention to eat mindfully and be a healthier person.

STEP TWO: Pick up your fork and place a bite of food in your mouth. Put your fork back on the table.

Chew carefully and focus on the sensations on your tongue, teeth and throat as you swallow. Is it sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or flavoured with spices or herbs? You will probably notice a combination.

STEP THREE: When you have completely experienced the taste sensations from the first bite, pick up your fork and take another.

Focus on what arises in your mind. Are you frustrated by eating so slowly? Are you anticipating the next bite before you finish the one you have? Are you continuing to eat even though your stomach feels full?

STEP FOUR: Try to let go of all your emotional baggage about eating and simply savour the taste of your food, as if you were eating for the first time. Try to bring mindfulness to your everyday eating.

Via Daily Mail

Jordan Bates does a really nice job for HE explaining Nietzsche’s “Overman” or “Superman” Theory:

“Overman” refers to Nietzsche’s conception of a man who has literally overcome himself and human nature. In essence, an Overman is one who has superseded the bondage of the human condition and reached a liberated state — one of free play and creativity.

This state can be seen as the state of the pure individual, a person unencumbered by the influences and authorities of society and other people. This person wills their own destiny, creates their own values, and dances with the game of life to the tune of their own spirit.

What Nietzsche is saying is that before one can become Overman, one must first bear a great many burdens. One must battle with fear, love, truth, death, confusion, thirst for knowledge, and all of the other aspects of human existence. 

An overman to me seems like a person living with lucid consciousness — Being in the present moment as much as they can throughout this life.

Check out the full post — here.

LongTimeMother gives us a lot of awesome tips to reduce our carbon footprint and live more efficiently.

Check them out — here.