We can choose to heal ourselves and those shadows we have disowned. Remember that we have all emotions, ways and moods, there is no separation. We are all a diverse whole. Every time I judge another, look down from up on high, all I really see down there is a part of me I left behind.

I realize the magnitude of what I have just experienced, and I start to cry. I wrap my arms around her and she lays her head on my shoulder.

I don’t want to stay young forever. I want this human life -- all of it. I want to experience the profound gift of a whole human lifespan, grey hairs and all.

Our pain speaks a coded language. When we coil inward and emulate a golden ratio, we unlock the keys to answers within our own questions. We can become consciously aware of an unconscious code streaming in through the waves of our day and night visions.

I laughed as tears slid in between my lips. But I always remembered what he said. Love wasn't meant to be chicken-scratched at.

Once she gained your trust with such surface-level stories, she would carry on to describe the time she graced my skin and held me tight when my voice quivered as I gave my father's memorial speech at the funeral home -- the way my heart broke with every word I muttered, but her stitching never faltered.

What story will I tell? What will I do with all the other things that I consider unforgivable... my fear is screaming at me, my ego is demanding I stop this nonsense and go buy some shoes, go eat, go self-medicate somehow but stop these feelings. I know I cannot do that, and I know I am not yet brave or strong enough to start this work, but what I am is willing.

Take a big deep breath, as the first month of this year is heralding in more liberation than just a single person's decision to rescue a dog. But, if I can do my part and help save a life somewhere, then who's to say that we all can't pitch in and uplift and give to another person or animal in some capacity?

The hollow places inside of you that you've been trying to cram with the impermanent things of this world are magnified. Turned into chasms, a deep well you are terrified to peek into for fear of what you may find in the darkness.

I am very much a beginner in the forgiveness faculty and it's one of the areas where my dear ego pulls out all the stops, sweeping herself up in her feather boa and flouncing around in full flourish.

By Lakshmi Raman Ever since I could remember, I’ve been obsessed with love, with the idea of being loved and cherished. I knocked on many doors, some open, some half-open and some closed shut. None of these doors gave me the love I desired. My heart was broken, walked over, punched and shattered. I was done and wanted to close my heart. Love isn’t for me, I thought. A profound healing begins when you sit on the floor, hands together, and begin to pray. You just surrender, to something bigger and greater than you. I silently prayed for a love that would fill me up, for a relationship that would nourish and nurture me. My job: to listen to the inner voice that spoke with so much love. I began journaling and talking to this higher power. I began tapping into that inner goddess within me. I slowly began to heal. I was feeling more connected with everyone...

I am currently embarked on a self-forgiveness journey that I thought I had completed, yet I am discovering depths, cellular, depths of pain, judgment, anger, hurt, sadness, sorrow that I have held on to at a deeper level until right now, when my back is scraped raw from sliding up and down the wall of resistance and fear.

I climbed into her lap and put my nose on her face. I slapped up as many sloppy kisses as I could and wagged my tail with gale-force wind strength. I told her that not every day is easy, but each one is another chance for you to turn it all around. I am happy and grateful every day. It’s not perfect, but I love my life because I am home with family. She wiped her tears, drove us home, and we’ve never looked back. I love magic.

Trust in the infinite wisdom that brings you every experience you need and seek on the path of your own liberation.

The parent/child relationship moves to another level beyond teacher/student. For when one is giving birth to something new that has never before existed, it is beyond just learning a system of knowledge that already exists.

I am awakening me with all there is. Happy Birthday to Me. I am powerful and vulnerable. I am hot and cold. I am summer and winter. I am like the rising tides and the sparkling moon. I am night and day. I am all there is.

So tonight I look in the eyes of the woman I know, better than I know anyone or anything, as her smiling face sits beside my typing fingers on the page I have created to express me.

I will hum these achingly warm and compassionate phrases to you when the tears stream down your flushed cheeks. Bring me your dissonant melodies and I will show you how these tense suspensions resolve and how the cadences of sadness will eventually modulate to a brighter, major key.

I just turned 44 a few weeks ago and with every birthday I like to do a little numerical research. According to numerology, the essence of the number 44 is conscientious, balanced, and methodical with a focus on what it wants to accomplish. I have lots I want to accomplish but it’s helpful to also look back and remind myself of some things I have learned, actually these are more "awarenesses" than "lessons".

She suddenly understood that they had just used her, put her into those shoes that really started to hurt her now She felt an unknown sadness rising with a tsunami of tears coming up from her heart.

Actually, these moments are not beautiful: it's too easy to be caught in the path of razor-sharp ice needles, and they crack so quietly you never know if they're about to fall until you're crushed and killed -- a bleeding mass that will be quickly swept up because no one wants to ruin the plush cream carpets either.

There are smiles in the sky, songs in the trees, and asteroids in the garden if only you are weird, wild, mad and wise enough to open your blinded eyes, to uncork your tightly sealed ears so that, at last, you are immersed in awe. So that, now, in this instant and forever after, you shimmer so brightly with droplets of joy that it is your face, too, that is reflected in the moon.

To embark on the pleasurable journey of developing a positive body image, the most fundamental way to feel good is to feel good about being alive. Anyone can access this feeling at any time because it is simply a shift in awareness, from complacency to gratitude, regardless of your struggle with your weight and food.

We are fluid. We are made of and immersed in abundant watery life. Love and creativity keep the waters flowing. This year, let us commit not to being dams, but vessels.

It was a year of anger and relief. Grief and empathy. Heartbreak and open-hearted compassion. Anger and sadness and bone-aching loneliness. Kindness and support and healing words and gestures. I rediscovered old strengths and developed new ones.

I chose trust because I was about to leap, about to jump off the cliff into the unknown, into the not-yet-experienced self-forgiveness realm, and I knew one of two things... either everything would change, or I would remain in the shaming abyss I have spent my whole life in.

Why is it wrong to be flawed? Why do we have to associate imperfection as a bad thing? Imperfection is beautiful, it's awe-inspiring; imperfection is what makes this world, our home, a place worth dwelling.

If it isn't an absolute necessity, it has to go.

Then I got it. I started laughing to myself in the way you do when you realize the Universe is conspiring to help you out. This little kitten -- Wolf, as we've started calling her -- is my Christmas gift, here to remind me of some really big lessons.

What's true for one is false for another. Things change from one moment to the next. The gospel is based on gospel. What's wrong can be right. What's black can be white. The only difference is how we see it -- how we construct our very own version of reality.

And I want you to know we are already home, in us. Just like the stardust, we are home wherever our hearts beat, wherever we feel the soil beneath our feet we are home in each other. As mothers and sisters, as fathers and brothers, as fighters and dreamers, as poets and lovers. We are already home.

If we bend ourselves to these external standards, we will always fall short of someone's ideal version of us. We might win the girlfriend or sex object label but we will never win at happiness.

I ride waves you're afraid of. I swim in waters that drink your dreams. I kiss your lips and leave a scent you can't conceive of. I live in tides that bridge you and me.

I had this physical story and this mental story of my own, and it's the stories that separate us. The stories keep us from presence, because in this moment we are One. Stories are a lot to keep up with, and if you ask me, it takes a lot of wasted energy to entertain them.

Being your authentic self -- in your current state of imperfection -- allows you to grow naturally and perfectly into a genuine stronger version of yourself.

Most of the folk I encountered shunned me though, saw through frenzied chatter and the emptiness of my words, which can still flicker when I am nervous, like a falling star that I can still see here, at night.

I was grateful to have a beautiful beach to ourselves. I was grateful that they knew to follow me so they could witness a ritual that might speak to them at some point in their lives. I was grateful for the sweet release. I was grateful to break something.

Why are we (especially as women) so uncomfortable about how wonderful we are? Why do we dim down our light and shrink away from our greatness?

By Manik Gunatilleke There is no logic to why we love someone. Some of it is about the object of one’s affection, but not all. It is about us and who we are. It is about me; about you. The most liberating lesson of this past year was to accept that loving regardless of being loved back is the right thing to do. Sometimes, it was the only thing to do. Without it, I would have been lost. The path opens in mysterious ways and, as the Sufi poet Rumi says, there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Loving was a way to better know and love myself — the parts I hid with and from. The sum of parts that hold us closed. Parts I ignored, for they scared me; they asked for too much. Parts that dared ask me to let go of unnecessary baggage and inherited fears. Parts that scarred me when I didn’t know what I now know, unable to cope with all the demons that...

In twenty years, you will not recall the numbers in your bank account today. However, you will remember moments. You will remember adventures.

We are who we are and can't and shouldn't change to make others like us or accept us.

I still feel his dignity is intact. He manages to get elated whenever there is a hint of play and it brings tears to my eyes, as I remember him being the leader of the pack and fetching for miles one ball after another. Just looking at him and being in his presence brings me a sense of peace, because I know his old soul has lived a good life.

Dance! Be that person on the dance floor that lets go every time they make a movement declaring their happiness, sending joyful earth shudders to silence even the fiercest, war-driven glance.

To be a spectator of our wildest dreams must be quite the profession.

As a crest crashes in the sea, the former me joins the presiding we and we are the essence. The past becoming the present becoming the future.

Each one of us is unique and prismatic. We have all come here with one of a kind, remarkable offerings to share with one another.

Moment by moment, we breathe. Within the silence of our breath, we find that respite and calm. I remind myself of this simple fact from time to time when feeling a bit overwhelmed by the world and all its goings-on. I stop and focus on the breath and think of nothing.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly. Then spread it, but don't preach. You may push someone you care about away.

Every night he tucked her in, his folds of thickest fur, he loved to watch her color rise as warmth enveloped her, and sometimes in her deepest sleep he'd see a bit of cheer in the lifted corners of her mouth, the one he held so dear.

We are all messy hearts pulled apart by computer screens and pride, and I wholeheartedly believe that if we could, we'd remove the digital screens and run up to each other, arms open and sit cross-legged with each other for hours, just enjoying each other.

I believe that when we experience compassion and love for ourselves we are able to embrace forgiving ourselves in those moments we aren't so proud of. We also gift others the ability to do the same.

I hope you know how loved you are. I hope you know it in your marrow and in the space between heartbeats. I hope the weight of it crushes you. I hope it obliterates your preciousness and untruths. I hope you wake up and fucking see.

In its small boat, let compassion put up its white flags of hope that stretch in the fierce wind, and sail on the ocean of your beautiful and complex life, far out to the horizon of hope and possibilities.

As I descend to this wordy primacy, I know I am only a master of words, not thoughts; not a maintenance woman for your stanzas or phrases.

She was, of course, hesitant. After years and years of looking after others, was it time for someone to look after her? Her big, dark, beautiful eyes stared at me and questioned whether they were, in fact, seeing what they saw. I could tell that she needed me, and I her.

This is bliss to me. These are my own walls tumbled into a crumpled mess on the floor. I love to let people in. I love to see the sparkle in people's eyes about anything and everything that makes their heart sing.

Like every other practice, with repetition and re-enforcement, I am learning to minimize the negative forces in my life by removing my energy and focus from them. I focus on the good, the possibilities, and gratitude for all things awesome that are in my life at the moment.

"When life knocks you down, try to land on your back, because if you can look up, you can get up," says Les Brown. If the tears parade down your cheeks and the pain is too much to endure, "Don't cry to give up. Cry to keep going," as Eric Thomas advises.

We don't have to ever really grow up. Society tells us we should. But I say we shouldn't. I say we should always stay amazed by life, always be grateful for the small, simple things. For sunshine, for friendships, for beauty, for music, for nature and to move our bodies and stretch our imaginations.

Dreams of the end of the world -- the intricacies of which rivaled any apocalyptic blockbusters of Hollywood. From a very young age, we were prepped; warned that we might be split up from our family, tortured and tested.

Is there any greater cliché than the ability a caterpillar has to transform into a butterfly? Is there anything more fundamentally magical in the natural world? When the caterpillar is in a cocoon, its entire body basically turns into a jello-like substance, utterly disintegrating so it can re-crystallize into something wholly new. I can't help but think the caterpillar has no idea what he is getting into when he wraps himself so tight, frozen as his body parts dissolve at their seams.

So if you see me skipping on raindrops down the street at age 90, please join me. And remind me of this poem. I will be glad to meet your acquaintance and dance with you.

I let go of the mind chattering, breath and expand myself into the whole. Stillness, whilst the forest becomes aware of someone new. My body remembers this familiar silence, for from it, I was born.

What is pain? Why do we fear letting go? And what exactly are we fighting against in preventing death? Please ask these questions, help us answer and share them, and also extend your intelligence, respectful thoughtfulness and compassion in your inquiry. Everyone deserves your kindness.

I am self-respect. I am courage. I am experience. I am new opportunity. I am blunt honesty, learning and truth. I am the reason. I am the outcast, and I am deep contemplation. I strip away the bullshit and I am life in it’s real, raw glory. I am the wild, and the ancient. Then I remind that all of it is you.

My wish is that you live as the blessing that you are and that you see the gift you were born to be; that you use your voice to speak your truth, to share your story, and to sow the seeds of your unique soul wisdom. I want you to take a chance on yourself.

But this poem is not about cheering myself up, but rather, to be in that pain of not knowing, of not having a map, of feeling lonely in the process.

Now it is time to allow the true adventure to live and to meet my destiny head-on. So my plan is going through the ceiling instead of wasting any more time with those walls to embrace the plan I know and releasing the need to struggle.

Not being on the right frequency, I had to look inside of me. The vibrations I was sending out, Did not match that which I was intentional about. I wanted these things, but my thoughts you see, Were the ones that were blocking me.

My responsibility is to myself. When I am quiet long enough, my heart shows me what actions to take. My body follows suit. Tears spill, washing away the dirt you’ve poured over me.