i come back to these words from Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar” every so often.

i share them here again for all who are feeling the weight of being targeted and attacked in this moment, whose body autonomy and privacy are being stripped away, for those whose authentic existence is questioned and pushed into invisibility, for those whose embodiment of love isn’t seen as the sacrament it is, and for those whose history is being rewritten and erased.

you are worthy.

you are sacred.

you are life.

you are love.

you are here.

you ARE.

no one can take these truths away, no matter their ignorance, fear , or desperation in trying to do so.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#life #love #equality #liberty #YouAreLife #YouAreLove #YouAreSacred #YouAreWorthy #OpenHeart #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga #JMWart #SylviaPlathQuotes

Happy PRIDE San Diego!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

you are a beautiful, unique, manifestation of life and embodiment of love!  

BE YOU!

🤍💗🤎🖤❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

may hearts open to the diversity, nuance, and colors of life and love. 

may joy and wisdom arise, celebrating the diversity, nuance, and colors of life and love.

and where and when we fall short, may we do the work to learn and grow this world into a welcoming home to all.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#SanDiegoPride #Pride #LGBTQIA #LGBTQ+ #Queer #gay #GayMan #GayBuddhist #Buddhism #EngagedBuddhism #life #love #OpenHeart #path #practice #embodiment #celebration #diversity #Zen #enso #JinpaLhaga #JMWart #GayArt #QueerArt #LGBTQIAart #LGBTQart #art

“When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself…Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.”

~ Pema Chödrön

we can find resilience within love itself and our capacity for love and our capacity to love. when we realize that we are love itself and love simply IS, then we can have awareness that we are intrinsically connected to all other life, to life itself, to the Absolute which is both within and beyond our current circumstances and experiences, that our wounds carry within them this potentiality of love’s healing.

this engagement with our heart, with our wounds, with our experiences is not a one time journey. it is a practice we return to with patience, with care, with generosity, and grace.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#love #heart #OpenHeart #resilience #life #UltimateReality #AbsoluteReality #HereAndNow #GoDeep #compassion #tenderness #JinpaLhaga #JMWart #art #PemaChödrönQuotes

this is fantastic. simple, easy to remember number when in need. may it be beneficial, contributing to health and well-being, and saving lives ⭕️💙🙏🏻

Posted @withregram • @988lifeline Starting July 16th, 988 will be a universal entry point so that no matter where you live in the U.S., you can easily access 24/7 emotional support.

In the meantime, please continue to share 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to be connected with a trained, caring counselor.

We’re here for you. #988Lifeline

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”

~ Howard Zinn

hope is a practice. hope is seeing with clarity, with an open heart, and a steady mind, and putting these into practice.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

if interested, join me for some mindfulness awareness and lovingkindness meditation this Saturday at 10am pst. session is free or by donation. $10 suggested. 

link: https://linktr.ee/jaysenwaller

#hope #mindfulness #awareness #lovingkindness #meditation #compassion #courage #kindness #path #practice #SelfCare #JinpaLhaga #JMWart

i know this image has already been posted so many times today, but i’ve been looking at it all night, sitting in awe. a renewed feeling of what i have often felt when looking up at a clear night sky – a combination of the smallness of my life and this moment, yet the vastness of the entire thing, and immense gratitude to be a part of it. stardust looking onto stardust.

this galaxy cluster is SMACS 0723. NASA states on their website, “This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground…The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.”

i wonder what cluster SMACS 0723 looks like now.galaxy clusters can contain 100s to 1000s of galaxies in them. our own Milky Way galaxy has at least 100 billion stars in it (some say possibly up to 400 billion). on average each star has at least one planet orbiting it. some estimate there to be 100 to 200 billion planets or more in our Milky Way galaxy.

there’s no place for hubris in such vastness. no place for pride or ego. no place for trying to control and oppress. no place for taking away rights. no place for war and conquering. awe and gratitude are the only appropriate response, and love. those can be our offerings to each other and to the universe.

looking forward to the release of more photos today (7/12) from the James Webb Telescope.

~j

💫♥️🙏🏻

#JamesWebbTelesope #NASA #space #life #universe #GalaxyClusters #SMACS0723 #JinpaLhaga

information via nasa.gov

📸 Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

one choice at a time. may they all be from love. may they all bring love into being through our words, through our actions.

~j
⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#bellhooksquotes

Posted @withregram • @theinterdependenceproject “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.” – bell hooks⁠
⁠

#love #compassion #metta #mindfulness #breakopenyourheart

being fully human is experiencing all of our emotions. let’s practice allowing space for this, allowing space to express, allowing space to be fully human. that’s what love does. allows space to be.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#emotions #BeingHuman #allow #spaciousness #love #OpenHeart #nonjudgment #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga #MrRogersQuotes #FredRogersQuotes

just a quick reminder that if we put forth the effort, we can be miserable no matter where we are. 😂

however, the opposite can also be true! 👍🏻

as my friend, Marty Martin, always says – “Choose joy!” 😁

choosing joy doesn’t mean we won’t have challenging, crummy things happen to us, or that we won’t have difficult times in life. choosing joy, is choosing our perspective, our lens through which we view life. there’s no dark cloud over our lives, there’s no bad luck. there are life events, there are challenges and difficulties – all of which are opportunities to learn, to grow, to practice our love, our compassion, our kindness, our patience, our healing. life is always moving and changing so there is opportunity for newness, for freshness – after winter, spring. 🌻

we get to experience this precious life – that’s something to be joyful about.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#ChooseJoy #joy #perspective #life #love #flow #impermanence #potential #opportunity #path #practice #OpenHeart #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga

how else to tend to a world in need? how else to bring healing? 

openness in heart with a beginner’s mind, is a practice aligning ourselves with life. such openness allows space for clarity and compassion to arise, to see the need, to tend to the need.

the opposite, is death. to be closed, constricted, hardened. this closing, this hardening, this narrowing brings harm and destruction. we are seeing a lot of this right now, in the fear, in the anger, in the violence we are seeing.

stay open, be curious and willing to learn, to grow, to be alive. center in and move from love, rather than fear.

~j

⭕️♥️🙏🏻

#life #love #OpenHeart #BeginnersMind #path #practice #mindfulness #awareness #lovingkindness #EngagedBuddhism #ThichNhatHanh #ThichNhatHanhQuotes #JinpaLhaga