Men delight in building up idols.
But they delight more in tearing them down.

K.Gibran
art:@n_u_u_n_u

If someone ignores you or hurts your feelings.
Always remember this.
The buddha explains a person is made up of
these things called the five aggregates :

form,
feeling,
perception,
intention,
consciousness.

Whether it's your five aggregates
or someone else's.
They have these three common
characteristics. The Buddha calls them
the three marks of existence,

anicca : Everything is impermanent.

dukkha : Whatever is impermanent produces suffering.

anatta : It's not under your control.

We normally think feelings and intentions
are under our control, but really it's just
a set of conditions. If someone hits us,
we hate them. If someone gifts us, we love them.

If someone does the right thing while we're in
the wrong mood, it has its own effect.
So always remember, if it's so difficult
to control your own feelings and intentions,
how are you supposed to control the intentions
and feelings of others.

littlelightofwisdom

Love poem to myself

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the one who stops
mid-sentence
and chooses
silence
over repetition

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the one who feels
the full weight
of many lifetimes
and still decides
not to pass it on

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the child
who grew up
too early
so the future
could rest

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the one
who carries grief
that was never named
and gives it a body
so it can
finally leave

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the hurt
no one sees
the labor
no one applauds
the loneliness
between what was
and what has
not yet learned
how to exist

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the pause
in the lineage
where harm
loses momentum

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the one
who disappoints
the old gods
to protect the unborn

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the trembling hand
that chooses
tenderness
without proof
it will be returned

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the quiet hero
who bleeds
in private
so others
can arrive lighter

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

not weak
not broken
not exhausted
from loving forward

THE CYCLE BREAKER IS

the bridge
that no one thanks
because everyone
is too busy
crossing

Hanna-Leana Kuus
art:Mirjam Duizendstra

I have been many versions of myself.
Every one of them had to survive.
Some learned how to fight.
Some learned when to let go.
Some where softer than others.
Some broke just to keep me alive.
I carry pieces of every one of them.
Everyone of me had to survive so
I could become this one.

mushinjournal Art: Rainier ridao

A river does not know the way.
It finds it.
It meets a stone and learns
it's curves.
It meets the slope and follows.
Sometimes it rushes, sometimes
it barely moves.
It lets the world shape its
way without losing itself.
Maybe we can learn from the river
and move with nature too.

WWF
art:Yayoi Kusama

You call it a
full life. The
Tao calls it
a life with
no room left
for the Tao.

A life packed with
commitments can look rich
from the outside. Work,
relationships, projects,
goals, enterainment,
obligations.

But inwardly it can leave
no room to simply be.

Taoism often points
toward emptiness (wu)
not as meaninglessness or
deprivation, but as an open
space that allows things to
happen naturally.

Because. Too many
commitments create
constant intention. You
are always trying to get
somewhere, accimplish
something, respong to
someone, or maintain
something.
The mind stays
in a state of reaching.

And. Emptiness creates
receptivity. When nothing
is demanding your attention,
you can notice what is
actually happening
rather than immediately
acting upon it.

Taoist simplicity isn't
necessarily having nothing.
It is having fewer things
that grip you. The problem
isn't activity itself, it's
being so full of obligations
and desires that there is no
unoccupied space.

This connects to wu wei
often translated as "non-action"
or "effortless action."
It doesn't mean doing nothing.
It means acting without excessive
forcing, striving, or interference.

Because. Emptiness is
functional. The famous image
from the Tao Te Ching is that
a cup is useful because of the
empty space inside it.
Likewise, a room is usable
because it isn't completely
filled with objects.

So a conventional idea of
a good life is "fill your life."
A taoist intuition is "leave
room in your life."

Is every hour is allocated,
every silence filled, every
desire pursued, and every
possibility turned into a
commitment, there is nowhere
for spontaneity to arise.

So.
Taoist emptiness says:
don't fill every space
merely because it is
available to be filled.

The empty afternoon, the
unanswered question, the
walk with no destination,
the moment where you're
not producing anything…
these aren't wasted time.
They can be the very
space in which peace
becomes possible.

A crowded life may be full of
things and empty of peace.

You keep adding to your
life, then wonder why you
cannot breathe inside it.

When every hour has a
purpose, you have
forgotten the purpose
of having an hour.

You don't fing peace by
adding the right thing. You
find it by discovering what
does not need to be there.

So the art of Tao is not
filling the bowl. It is
knowing when to stop
pouring.

sofieringsten

You must leave me
alone
if you have no
intention
of arriving with
sincerity.

Not because I am
asking for forever.
Not because I need a
promise
before I let you sit
beside me.

But because there is a
particular cruelty
in reaching for
someone
with hands that
already know
they will let go.

You saw me.

That is what makes it
harder.

You saw the way I
loved-
without keeping an
account of it.
The way I made room.
The way I listened for
the sentence
beneath the sentence.
The way I remembered
small things
people usually forget
about themselves.

You saw how gently
I carried what was
entrusted to me.

And still,
you came closer
while carrying your
own wreckage
like a matchbook in
your pocket.

You knew you were not ready.

Perharps you called it
confusion.
Perhaps you called it
timing.
Perhaps you told
yourself
you were only seeing
where this went.

But someone else's
heart
is not a wainting room
for the life you haven't
learned
how to live.

You do not get to enter
because you are lonely
and leave because you
are afraid.

You do not get to
borrow
someone's tenderness
while deciding
whether
you are capable of
returning it.

And you certainly do
not get
to discover how loved
you can feel
inside somebody's
hands
and then hand their
loneliness back
to them as it it were
always theirs.

You saw my light.

I wish people
understood
that light is not an
invitation
to come closer and
take from it.

Sometimes a person
shines
because they have
spent years
learning how to keep a
small fire alive
through weather
no one else ever saw.

You came into the
room
and warmed yourself.

You did not ask
what it cost me to keep
the fire burning.

And when you left,
you left the door open.

You left the cold
behind.

This is the part
I want you to
understand:

peace is not an
inexhaustible
resource.

There are kinds of
peace
we spend years
building.

A morning without
checking the phone.
A night without
wondering
whether silence means
abandonment.
The ability to believe
that someone's
tenderness
does not have an
expiration date.

The quiet return
of trusting your own
judgment.

That strange,
miraculous moment
when your nervous
system
finally stops mistaking
uncertainty
for love.

I had that.

And then you came
along.

And now I am left
to gather myself
from places I did not
leave myself in.

Tell me-

when you know
you cannot love
someone carefully,
what makes you reach
for them?

When you know
you are still bleeding
from somewhere else,
why put your hands
on someone's else's
skin?

When you know
you cannot stay,
why teach someone
the shape of your
absence?

There are
consequences
to being careless with
a person
who loves you
honestly.

Not dramatic ones.

Not the kind that make
good stories.

Sometimes the
consequence
is simply this:

someone becomes a
little harder to reach.

Someone who used to
believe
in the uncomplicated
goodness
of being chosen
starts reading the fine
print.

Someone who once
opened the door
without asking who
was standing outside
begins looking through
the peephole.

And maybe you will
never know
what you changed.

Maybe you will go on
and call it another
almost.

Another person.
Another chapter.
Another thing that
simply
didn't work out.

But I will know.

Because I will be the
one
who has to teach my
heart
that your carelessness
was not evidence
that I was foolish to
love.

I will be the one
who has to coax peace
back into the house.

And maybe it will
return.

I hope it does.

But listen carefully:

you do not get to
destroy
someone's peace
and call it the cost of
finding yourself.

Somebody else's heart
is not the laboratory
for your unfinished
healing.

If you are not ready,
say so.

If you are affraid,
say so.

If you cannot stay,
say so.

But do not pull me
close enough
to make me believe
I am safe here
when you already
know
you are holding the
door open.

Because I was not
asking you
to save me.

I was asking you
not to hurt me
with something
you already knew
you could not carry.

And there is a difference.

A very large one.

So leave me alone
until you know

Because I can
survive
the truth that
you cannot love
me.

What I do not
know
if I can forgive
is being loved
just enough
to make me
forget
how peaceful I
was
before you came.

Faraz Arif Ansari
art: Persian-Iranian bas-relief

Ga maar.
Heb Lief.

Te veel desnoods.

Raak maar gehecht.

Aan mensen.
Aan plekken.

Aan een toekomst
die je al helemaal
voor je zag.

Zeg ja
terwijl je nog niet weet
hoe het afloopt.

Zeg blijf
als je eigenlijk bedoelt
bij jou
durf ik te blijven
waar ik anders
zou weglopen.

En laat het dan soms
maar misgaan.

Laat iemand vertrekken.

Laat een droom
een andere afslag nemen.

Laat je hart maar even
niet weten
waar het heen moet.

Want we zijn zo goed geworden
in onszelf beschermen.

Niet te veel verwachten.
Niet te dichtbij.
Niet te hard lopen.

Dat minder voelen
ook minder pijn betekent.

Maar een hart
dat nooit breekt,
heeft misschien ook
nooit helemaal
opengestaan.

Dus huil maar.

Mis maar.

Word boos
om wat niet bleef.

Raap jezelf niet
te snel bij elkaar.

Blijf desnoods even zitten
tussen de stukken.

En kijk dan.

Wat ligt daar nog?

Een herinnering.
Een les.
Een naam die zachter is geworden.

Jij
Nog steeds jij.

Maak daar iets van.

Een lied.
Een verhaal.
Een ander begin.

Of gewoon;
een mens
die opnieuw durft
lief te hebben.

Je hoeft niet heel
uit alles te komen.

Soms is het genoeg
dat je van de stukken
iets maakt
waarin je weer kunt wonen.

Esmay Usmany
art:Paprika - Kon Satoshi

The eight armies of Mara -

The inner forces that obstruct awakening.



On the night of his awakening, Siddhartha Gautama encountered
Mara and his "devil" army, who attempted to prevent his awakening.

In the Padhana Sutta, the Buddha identifies the Mara armry as
a series of forces that obstruct liberation.

Mara is a "negative" being within Buddhist cosmology,
but ultimately Mara represents grapsing, fear, doubt, etc
that obstruct awakening.

1) Sensual desire : "Sensual pleasures are your first army"
Attachment to pleasurable experience. Distraction, consumption, addiction.

2) Discontent : The inability to be at ease with what is present.
Comparison, restlessness, "not enough"

3) Hunger and thirst : The persistent sense of lack.
"I need more to become complete."

4) Craving : Desire becoming attachment: "I must have this."
compulsive pursuit and inability to let go.

5) Sloth and torpor : Dullness, passivity, and loss of energy.
Avoidance and procrastination.

6) Fear : Fear of uncertainty, loss, change and the dissolution
of familiar identity.

7) Doubt : Doubt that prevents direct practice and realization.
Endless questioning without moving forward.

8) Hypocrisy and stubbornness : The ego can even appropriate
Dharma as a source of pride and superiority. "I understand
Dharma better than others."

The Padhana Sutta also names "Mara's Subtle Weapons":

Gain - Fame - Honor - Prestige - Self Praise - Contempt for others.

The most subtle form of Mara is not necessarily rejection of Dharma.
It is turning Dharma into "me" and "mine."

"I will smash your army with discernment."

Sutta Nipatat 3.2

The Buddha does not need to destroy Mara.

He becomes unavailable to Mara.

The forces arise, but they are not grasped.

To see Mara is to recognize the obstacle.
To understand Mara is to see its conditions.
To not follow Mara is to overcome it.

artofbuddhadharma _/\_

My husband and I invented three rules to live by.

1) Don’t be afraid of anybody.

2) Get a really good bullshit detector, and learn how to use it.

3) Be really tender.

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed

The three yanas of Buddhism

- Hinayana - The foundational vehicle

Do I continue to do this even though it brings me suffering?

- Mahayana - The great vehicle

Do I continue to do this even though it interfers with my availibilty to others?

- Vajrayana - The indestructible vehicle

Have I yet to transmute this to medicine?

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

Wendell Berry
art: Ed Perkins

Magnetism is what happens when truth becomes visible through a human being.

Truth is not an opinion.
It is a spiritual force.

When your thinking, feeling, and willing begin to align with reality, your entire presence changes.

You stop performing.
You stop asking the room to confirm you.
You simply become more real.

And people feel it immediately.

Some people enter a room without demanding attention, yet the atmosphere shifts around them. Their presence has weight.
Because something in them is coherent.

Truth clarifies thinking.
Truth warms feeling.
Truth awakens the will.

When these forces harmonize within a person, their presence begins to work on others.
This is the clean form of magnetism.

It creates relief because contradiction dissolves.
It creates laughter because truth exposes what was artificial.
It creates respect because authenticity cannot be faked.
And it creates attention because reality is compelling.

But truth has a shadow.

A person can discover that seeing through illusions gives them power.
They can expose weaknesses.
Corner people with facts.
Use insight to dominate or humiliate.

And suddenly something that looked spiritual becomes egoistic.

The problem is not truth.
The problem is the will behind it.

Truth without love becomes coldness.
Truth without reverence becomes domination.
Truth without respect for another's freedom becomes coercion.

This is why spiritual development cannot be separated from moral development.

The real question is:

“What am I doing with the truth I know?”

Am I using it to strengthen another person’s freedom?
Or to bend it?

Am I using perception as a weapon?
Or as a service?

The highest form of magnetism does not make people dependent.
It strengthens their will.
It helps them become more themselves.

It does not say, “Follow me.” It silently communicates: “Become more real.”

That is the difference between manipulation and spiritual influence.

True magnetism is not something you acquire.
It appears when you remove everything in yourself that is false.

The less you perform, the more you become.
The more you become, the more truth can speak through you.

And when truth speaks through a human being with love, courage and reverence for freedom...

people don't just hear words.
They feel reality.

R.Steiner

firstly, I don’t cheat.

Secondly, When I love, I love completely.

Thirdly, When it’s you, it’s only you.

Fourthly, I don’t love halfway. I give my heart,
my loyalty, my time, and everything in between.

Fifthly, I don’t need options when
I’ve already found the person I want.

Sixthly, I may not be perfect
but I’ll always be honest with you.

Sevently, If I choose you,
I choose you every single day.

And lastly, I don’t want
a temporary love story with you.
I want something real,
something lasting, something
that feels like home.

victorianpoetry

Meanwhile, inside the box, Schrodinger's cat plans its revenge

“Our inner world is the only true source of meaning and purpose we have. Art is the way to discover for ourselves and others, by opening this door to the inner life”

- P. Rubinov Jacobson

It is less about looking powerful, and more about not collapsing within the storm.

daejin.creates

And when death finds me
I hope it whispers…
Come now
the fight is done…
and takes my hand
gently…

Like an old friend
who understand's
why I'm so tired…

I hope it says…
you've carried enough
Let me hold this
weight for you…

I hope it promises…
Here there is quiet
here...
you can rest.

art: Monica Esgueva

Never argue with someone who has chosen the role of the victim.
Truth is no longer what matters to them. What matters is sympathy,
attention, power ,being seen, being validated, being applauded.
Victimhood can become one of the most dangerous roles we encounter in life, because once someone needs that role to protect their own story, facts alone will rarely change it.

reinholdmessner

If you see something beautiful
in someone
Tell them, tell them..

Because most people
they go through life
never being told why
they are special

they're always being told
what's wrong with you
you need to fix this
you need to change that
you're all wrong

but if you if you
can really see
in someone's soul
and you can see it's good
you tell them
tell them

bloomster.so

5 Things we have learnt from Festival of dangerous ideas 2026

1) You cannot have agency if you live in an environment
where you are insidiously manipulated.

2) The greatest wisdom is crossing the distance to listen.

3) We didn't lose our privacy it was taken at scale.

4) The banality of equality is what makes it dangerous.

5) Not all dangerous ideas are easy to see.

ethics_centre
art: Kawase Hasui

Flag of the modern world
@johngerrard.inst

In the very first step, I was lost;
lifeless, I was utterly transformed.
What could being and not being be

once I had passed beyond reason and imagination
Both worlds, woven within one another
are one vast ocean.
Whoever says “it is not,”
is only lost in illusion.

Chorus:
Every hidden truth that was hidden
was revealed to me

I became an eternal tale,
a song poured from the wine cup.
In the realm of annihilation,
I became ecstatically entranced.

No words remained in me;
not even the image of myself remains.
In the rose garden of longing,
the soul flows forth from me.

Niyaz - Annihilation
Persian

Best comic ever, and no Economic's is not an exact science.

Alors, Lorrelei, change donc ta chanson et danse autant que tu veux, car je n’écoute plus et je navigue le long d’une autre côte.

L’amour ne se laisse pas raisonner, chère philosophe,
c’est un sentiment, tout simplement, sans jugement et hors de toute catégorie.

Et bien que j’aie clairement fait naufrage sur ton rocher, j’ai une petite voile et un radeau, et je suis devenu un pirate qui s’échappe de ton île déserte.

Je t’ai bien donné un trésor : mon cœur, dans un coffre muni d’une chaîne et d’un cadenas, tu peux le garder. Enterre-le donc, avec tes autres trésors, Lorrelei

car les pirates n'ont plus besoin d'un cœur.

F 20/6/25

Why it's so devastating for sensitive people
to let go of the feeling they had with an
unavailable partner.

There's a secret you might be keeping...
even from your friends and family.

Maybe you've only written
it down in your journal or
shared it in the safety of
your therapist's office.

it's this:

I know they weren't right for
me. I know the relationship
wasn't healthy. But I would
give almost anything to feel
what I felt with them one
more time.

That aliveness, that electricity.
That sense of being seen so completely
in certain moments that nothing before
or since has come close.

And if you've felt that - and
you're ashamed of it - I want
you to hear this first:

There's nothing wrong with you.

What you're feeling makes
complete sense, and it's more
common than you know.

Here's what's actually
happening.

When someone is emotionally
inconsistent - warm then cold,
present then distant, deeply
connected and then suddenly
gone - something very specific
happens to a deeply feeling,
sensitive person.

The inconsistency itself creates
moments of profound attunement.

When they finally show up after
pulling away - like really show
up, really see you - that relief
and the connection in that moment
is unlike anything steady love
has ever produced.

It feels electric, spiritual, and
like finally being met at the
level you've always needed.

And your sensitive system,
which feels everything more
deeply than most, absorbs that
moment completely.

It wasn't just your imagination
that connection was real.

But it wasn't because they were
your soul mate.

That intensity was partly created by
the inconsistency itself. The relief
of being chosen again after feeling
invisible.

Without the withdrawal, the return
wouldn't have hit so hard.

And your nervous system learned to
read that cycle - the longing, the
uncertainty, the sudden overwhelming
feeling of being seen - as the deepest
from of love it had ever known.

So when you meet someone who's
kind and who shows up without the
push and pull -

Something feels flat. Safe but somehow
less.

Not because they're not a good fit for
you, but because your system hasn't yet
learned to feel depth in stillness.
It's stil waiting for the withdrawal
that never comes.

And so you find yourself
chasing that feeling you had
with the unavailable partner.

And letting go of it feels like
agreeing to never feel fully alive
in love.

That's the secret grief
underneath all of it.

You're not just letting go
of a person.

You're letting go of the most
seen you've ever felt, the most
alive, and the most electric.

And you don't know yet if that
exists anywhere else.

Here's what I want you to know
- it does. But not in the form
you've known it.

That depth of feeling, that
capacity for profound
connection - that's yours. It was
never really about them.
They just happened to be the
person who accidentally
unlocked it.

But right now there are energetic
imprints, emotional patterns,
ancestral beliefs running in your
field that are keeping you locked
on that feeling and that cycle.

Beliefs that say love has to feel like
longing. That depth means not
knowing where you stand. That being
chosen after being ignored is what
real connection feels like.

Those patterns live in the energy field,
in layers that go deeper than the conscious
mind can reach.

That's the work ; clearing emotional energies
and negative believes keeping you attached.

@thereallovealchimist

art:Les Sirens by Keith Mallet

Bertrand Russel

Imagine disappointing
someone so deeply that their
words slowly become silence.

The person who once told
you everything suddenly
has nothing left to say.

Not because they stopped
caring, but because they
stopped feeling understood.

They noticed the little changes,
the broken promises, and the
moments that hurt.

They explained themselves
until explaining became more
exhausting than staying quiet.

Eventually, silence became easier than expecting things to change.

The laughter disappeared, the
conversations became shorter,
and the distance grew quietly.

You may think they became cold,
but you never saw what made
them tired.

Sometimes people don't leave immediately,
they first become silent around you.

And when the most talkative person
stops talking, something inside them
has already changed.

Sometimes silence isn't a lack of words,
it's the result of having said too much
and been disappointed to often.

thescatteredfeelings

Once a man loses
that soft spot for you..

you finally meet the version of
him he gives woman who no longer matter.

Cold. Quiet. Final.

Because his softness
was never his personality.

It was a privilege you had
because you mattered.

He used to be patient.
He used to explain.
He used to forgive.

Not because he had endless love.

Because he had hope.

The the hope gets killed.

Too much disrespect.
Too much inconsistency.
Too many small betrayals.

And the switch flips.

He stops arguing.
Stops chasing.
Stops caring about being understood.

Now you get the version of him
women get when they don't matter.

Men build women up.

No effort.
No extra attention.
No emotional access.

He's not trying to hurt you.
He's protecting himself.

Indifference is armor.

That's why apologies feel
useless at that stage.

Because you're not fighting his anger.
You're fighting his absence.

A man's soft spot doesn't
die from one mistake.

It dies from patterns.

And once it's gone
it rarely comes back.

Remember that.

masculinityadvice

You cannot destroy a healthy relationship
by telling someone how you feel.

You can absolutely derail an unhealthy,
one-sided, or dysfunctional relationship
by being honest - but that is not because
honesty ruins relationships.
It's because unhealthy relationships
thrive when one person doesn't have a voice.

tinybuddha
art: Gustave Moreau