Joy❤

“I saw Sorrow
holding a cup of pain.
I said, hey sorrow,
sorry to see you this way.
What’s troubling you?
What’s with the cup?
Sorrow said,
what else can I do?
All this Joy that you have brought to the world has killed my business completely.”

Some ways to bring joy to the world:

1.) Acts of kindness

2.) Smile

3.) Give thanks for all the good no matter how small/trivial it seems

4.) Breathe deeply

5.) Let things go

6.) Listen to happy songs

7.) Be surrounded in cheerful or calming colors whenever possible

8.) Share uplifting quotes to inspire others

9.) Read inspiring books/blogs/writings

10.) Engage in activities that inspire happiness or calming effects

11.) Hug dogs/cats

12.) Forgive self & others ❤

13.) Be a safe space for others, active listening, without negative judgment, ridicule, selfish expectations, unsolicited suggestions

14.) Watch the sun setting and/or rising

15.) Do something random & fun!😆

16.) Buy a gift for self!💙

17.) Be mindful of right now and go with the flow without judging even if our current experience seems unpleasant

18.) Watch a fun comedy movie/tv show

19.) Go above & beyond to help someone, friend, family, stranger, coworker, neighbor, boss, enemy…

20.) Get fixed up, bring out expensive kitchen utensils and things reserved for special occasions….just because, even when alone. Every moment we’re alive is a special occasion!

I hope you’re having a beautiful day or night wherever in the world you are!❤💖💗💙💚💛💜💝💞❣

Much love & light,

Xoxo Kim

Roll with it, Baby!❤

“When life is too much, roll with it, baby

Don’t stop and lose your touch, oh no, baby

Hard times knocking on your door

I’ll tell them you ain’t there no more

Get on through it, roll with it, baby

Luck’ll come and then slip away

You’ve gotta move, bring it back to stay

You just roll with it, baby”

Roll with it – Steve Winwood

“A monk asked ‘What does it mean to go where there’s no cold or heat?’
Tung-shan said, ‘In the cold, cold freezes you; in the heat, heat burns you up.'” 💛
💙
💚
💜
💗
Roll with it, Baby! ❤🕉️ #acceptance #justbe #koan #buddha #love #wisdom #inspiration #breathe #oneness #zen #loverofreality #justbreathe #gowiththeflow #rollwithit #keephurdling #itsallgood #itiswhatitis #shithappens #suckitup #detachment #renunciation #wwbd #whatwouldbuddhado #letitgo #keepgoing #yougotthis #livewithitandloveit #deepwisdom

This is a post of mine on Instagram I shared somewhat recently. I copied the tags and pasted them here because they add to the wisdom of the koan I shared with the picture.

I shared this on Instagram because the wisdom is so inspiring but never realized that not long later, my own post would sooth & inspire me more than ever.

Last night, I was listening to music on my super old phone. It’s a blackberry phone that is broken mostly but some parts, including music & memos, still work. I use it frequently and have years of poetic/philosophical/creative/deep….writings & things on it. Most of these writings are my own and some are the writings of others that I find fascinating & inspiring. I don’t remember who all the writers are or where to find the writings again. I just have it all saved onto my old phone.

While listening to the music, I accidentally hit my phone against a bar on my bed and the phone shut down and won’t come back on. So years of brilliance gone! Lol I have experienced things like this before, losing stuff I have written and can never get back but this is the worst one yet. I even have a few philosophical essays/writings I wrote in college that I saved off the university account (which I know longer have) onto that phone and have been so thankful to still have. Hundreds upon hundreds, probably thousands of files gone. Some I kept just for me to read but most I eventually planned to share, things I poured my “heart & soul” into and now wish I would have just shared it all already.

I was laying in bed thinking how this kills me & looking at my own Instagram account when I came across this post I recently shared. For a few seconds, especially while reading the tags I put on it, I felt soothed and inspired.

My “grief” comes in waves just like any other form of grief. This grief though is nowhere near the magnitude of grief experienced after the loss of a human or animal/nonhuman friend or family member/…… It’s beyond disappointing but I wouldn’t say I’m shattered or even devastated. Though I feel as if some sort of devastation may hit later.

I keep remembering specific things I lost like certain writings, e-books, and website links I don’t remember but looked at a lot. I just remember the content, not the names or links. More & more keep coming to me and automatically, I try to repress it so as not to remember more of what I lost. I feel that it’s like losing a big part of myself. It was like an electronic journal of sorts. So many of my experiences & reflections…gone.

When this happened before but not as much or good stuff lost, I fell into a depression for a while. Usually, things that happen in my environment don’t trigger a depressive episode/symptoms but sometimes they can. This morning I very briefly wondered if this would provoke some sort of depression in me.

This experience reminds me how much more evolved I am than some years ago. Years ago, I would have found this incident almost unbearable. I was way more attached. But now, though it’s way more than just a minor annoyance or disappointment, it’s not a catastrophe! And this experience also shows me how much more I still have to evolve. It’s not the end of the world but it’s still bad enough to me that I woke up with anxiety and still have anxiety off & on. I’m very disturbed and keep wishing it would come back on and bring all my stuff back to me.

So it’s a good thing to have this experience to inspire me to work even more to get better & better. Also, it’s a reminder of my lighthearted, easily amused nature! I have always been very easily amused and playful and even when severely depressed or grieving, I am able to sense my cheerful nature underneath it all.

Last night I searched Google in a desperate attempt to find any little bit of hope that my phone would somehow come back on. I couldn’t find any hope on the net but saw someone wrote “My blackberry z10 croaked today” and I burst out laughing. It gave me a belly laugh and when I was telling my mom, I could hardly talk!

Unpleasant things can bring out much pleasantness if we are open to it!❤

So this koan here that I shared on Insta. Shows us how if we just roll with it and go with the flow, just let the self dissolve into the situation, no matter how unpleasant or painful, we will become one with it til it’s no more. Just let it be. Tolerate it. Then accept it. Then welcome it. Then embrace it. It is what it is and it cannot be different. The tags that helped me the most when I saw my post are #shithappens & #suckitup. Just reading those, I found it so uplifting. It’s just so true. A little bit of “tough love” to lift the spirit!😆😊

If you are experiencing anything unpleasant (and also pleasant things!), no matter how serious or trivial, just remember to roll with it, baby! You got this!!

(Lol photo not mine!)

Much love & light,

Xoxo Kim

Jealous bitches be like…☹😾👎

Lol! Jk Please don’t mind the offensive title. This is a post on jealousy I had planned since like October, originally titled On Jealousy til one morning when I was about to get a shower and this new title popped into my head & I burst out laughing. Hopefully no one reads the title and thinks it’s a dramatic rant about jealous people doing me wrong and just disregards it because Geshe-la has some serious wisdom to open us up to or remind us and I wouldn’t want my jestful title to turn people away! lol 😉 You won’t find any rants in this here post! 😀

Here are some wise words on jealousy, by Geshe-la.

“Anger is often related to jealousy and so we need to try to overcome both these delusions. When a rival is successful or praised, it is very easy to feel jealous, but why should someone else’s happiness make us unhappy? If we step out of our egocentric view for a moment and put ourself in the other person’s place, instead of feeling the pain of jealousy we can rejoice and share in his or her happiness.

When a jealous person sees signs of other people’s success and good fortune, his heart is pierced with envy. But someone who has learned to rejoice in the good fortune of others experiences only happiness. Seeing another person’s beautiful house or attractive partner immediately makes him happy-the fact that they are not his own is irrelevant. When he sees a colleague praised or promoted, or when he meets someone who is more intelligent, good-looking, or successful than he is, instead of immediately being reminded of his own inadequacies he simply shares in the other person’s happiness.

Rejoicing in other people’s happiness or good qualities is one of the purest of all virtuous minds, because it is unstained by self-cherishing. When we practice giving, for example, it is possible that we might hope for something in return-for gratitude, to be liked, or to be thought of as a generous person-but when we rejoice in another’s good fortune we expect nothing in return.”

&

“Jealousy is one of the most senseless and purposeless of all delusions. Nothing can be gained from being jealous of another’s good fortune, good job, reputation, or success. Suppose someone gives a rival some money. The jealousy and unhappiness we feel about this will do nothing to change the situation. Whether our rival is given money or not, there is no way we are going to receive that money ourself. So why should we be jealous? Furthermore, developing jealousy on the one hand, while wishing to obtain wealth and possessions on the other, are contradictory states of mind. Why? The root cause of receiving wealth, possessions, and any other pleasurable things is our own accumulation of virtue, which is created by giving, rejoicing, appreciating and respecting others, and so forth. However, when due to our self-centered view of the world strong jealousy arises in our mind, the potentialities of these virtuous actions are damaged and so our chances of experiencing good fortune in the future are diminished or destroyed. Therefore, if we really wish to obtain good fortune, wealth, and so forth in the future, we should guard our mind well, and instead of allowing jealousy to arise in response to others’ happiness, we should rejoice.

There is also no reason to be happy when our enemy meets with suffering, because how do such negative thoughts either hurt our enemy or benefit us? Even if we thought ‘It would be great if my rival were to suffer,’ this would never harm him or her. And even if he were harmed, how would that ever bring us happiness?

‘But if my enemy suffers, I will be satisfied’ Thoughts like this never bring us any happiness. On the contrary, nothing harms us more than indulging in such petty and vengeful thoughts, which do nothing but drag us down into the lower realms.”

I think comparing ourselves to others and making our own self out to be lower or somehow less, is a form of jealousy or something of that sort even if it doesn’t manifest as feeling like jealousy. Have you ever compared yourself to another? And then felt low about your own self? I think most of us probably have and so can relate to this. The person or people we compare ourselves to may be an enemy, a stranger, a supermodel on a magazine cover, imaginary people(like just the way we think people in general are), even close family members or friends. We may or may not feel resentment for those people and may or may not feel consciously jealous. But we are unhappy for our own self when we make comparisons and feel that someone else is somehow better or has something better.

This message conveyed by Geshe-la can apply to anyone who has thoughts that someone else is better, looks better, is more successful, more intelligent, happier, does more fun things, goes on more vacations or better vacations, or more productive things….and feels unhappy about it.

One way to counter this is to try to identify with those people we feel jealous of or lower than. Instead of envying them, resenting them, or feeling low about our own self, remember how it feels to be happy or successful, tap into that empathy, & be happy for those people. Almost all of us have probably been happy at one point or another even if briefly, all of us have accomplished something, even something seemingly small or not important, we know what it’s like to have good and bad things happen to us so let’s connect with those we envy, reach out in our basic humanness and be happy for them when they are in a good place in this life.

Practicing this more and more will help heal a jealous mind. Even if we aren’t generally prone to jealousy, most of us have probably experienced it at least once or at least experienced comparing ourselves to someone else and coming up short. And actually, I think many if not most, have this unpleasant experience more than once, probably off and on.

“S/he’s prettier than me, thinner than I am, more toned/muscular, more experience with something, has a better job, a more advanced education, an amazing relationship I don’t have, a bigger, more beautiful and expensive house or car, more friends, a family….”

I love how G.K Gyatso, states:

“…the fact that they are not his own is irrelevant.”

Imagine feeling so connected to others, even complete strangers, that we are just as happy for them as we would be for our own self if we had the good fortune they have. The fact that it is not our own is completely irrelevant; we are just as happy as if it were. How beautiful!

Another way to counter jealousy or heal a jealous mind, whether it’s a frequent jealous mind or just once in a while or even just once, is to focus on the goodness we, ourself, have right now. Any little thing that is good in our world, health, a place to live, a delicious cup of coffee, our senses, ability to walk, to move, friends, family, life itself…dwell on that without repressing any unpleasant emotions. Nothing wrong with admitting, even if just to our own self, that we wish something was different but we can still focus on what is good in this moment.

And one more thing, remember jealousy is absolutely pointless. Where does it get any of us? All it does is put unpleasant energy out into the uni-verse, interfere with our happiness, & possibly friendships & other relationships. Jealousy is a lousy attitude to be stuck in and even has the word “lousy” in it. For good reason! And a positive, loving mindset is more constructive and likely to contribute to our own good fortune than a jealous and/or vengeful mindset anyway. So anyone who doesn’t care about others will still benefit by being kind and rejoicing in the goodness of others.

This isn’t to negatively judge those who are jealous or those who wish bad things on others out of jealousy or do things just to look good and not out of true kindness; it’s merely to suggest that it’s better for our own self & those we encounter if we avoid jealousy and act with pure, genuine intentions, rejoicing in the good fortune of others.

And….in case you’re in the mood for a chuckle….

Not sure what this has to do with jealousy but here it is! (Unless you’re jealous of this face! I sure am! 🙃)

💖

Much love & light to you, always

Xoxo Kim

My current gratitude list❤

(Scout! Just after midnight this morning😻)

1.) Im thankful for my job & that i got to spend the whole night last night, into the morning with a sweet, adorable, funny, beautiful girl named Scout!
2.) Im thankful i stayed in a place last night where the walls are paper thin n i got to hear a big, loud party going on next door with lots of joyous laughter, yelling, singing, stuff being banged around….& a bunch of drunk people singing “Sweet Home Alabama” and yelling other drunken things. So funny! I kept falling asleep and waking up to it all night long into the morning. I dont mind people being loud all night and actually like it. It brought me joy all night/morning to hear the joy of others! I couldn’t see it but have a very vivid imagination & all the noise I heard conjured up all these funny images in my head making me laugh out loud! Scout wasn’t as thrilled and was barking at them through the walls! Lol
3.) Thankful my pain disorder hasn’t been acting up. It’s generally not bad at all but tends to flare up now & again to seemingly unbearably levels. Last year in February, I suffered four of the most devastating, difficult days I ever experienced and the worst cluster of this life of mine. Almost a year later and i haven’t felt it that bad since then!
4.) Thankful Scout slept all cuddled with me last night
5.) Thankful for hot caramel lattes!
6.) For life itself
7.) My ability to turn my neck, walk move, my senses…
8.) Winter – My favorite season!
9.) Buddha’s teachings
10.) All of the people & animals I get to know & meet for my work

Im going to post this on Instagram later too with a pic of me! I have to wait til my hair dries and try to get a good picture lol I haven’t taken a picture of myself in so long it seems!

I hope you are having a beautiful day or night wherever in the world you are and thinking of all the things you have to give thanks for!❤

Much love & light,

Xoxo Kim