Cheryl LeClair

“if you spend too long not
letting yourself be creative
you can literally start feeling sick

you were born to create
let it flow, do not overthink it”
― yung pueblo, Inward

“It seems both outrageous and irresponsible that so few mental health clinicians connect the epidemics of mental distress in industrial societies with the devastating impact of our suicidal destruction of our own habitat and ecocidal elimination of whole species. — Linda Buzzel and Craig Chalquist”
― Joanna Macy, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects

“The unification of mind in śamatha is temporary and conditioned. However, the unification around Insight is far more profound, and it’s permanent. When temporary unification around a shared intention fades, each sub-mind operates as a separate entity, constrained by and at the mercy of the mind-system as a whole. Therefore, individual sub-minds strive to preserve their autonomy and, as much as possible, direct the resources of the mind-system toward their individual goals. Yet after Insight, the various sub-minds become unified around a shared Insight into impermanence, emptiness, suffering, no-Self, and interconnectedness. From this flow a corresponding set of shared values: harmlessness, compassion, and loving-kindness. Now each sub-mind operates as an independent part of a much greater whole, working for the good of that whole. This allows each sub-mind to do its job effectively, without running into fundamental conflicts with other sub-minds.

When enough of the mind-system has undergone this transformation, we’re able to function as an individual person while simultaneously perceiving ourselves as part of an indivisible and inconceivably greater whole.”
― Culadasa (John Yates), The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science

“Mushrooms were the roses in the garden of that unseen world, because the real mushroom plant was underground. The parts you could see - what most people called a mushroom - was just a brief apparition. A cloud flower.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood