Let go of the clinging.

Let go of the craving.

Let go of the desire.

Return.

To now.

Allow yourself to be.

Be the way.

Be the way.

Be the way.

Practice and you will become the way itself.

    -Atara Schimmel

"In the garbage I see a rose.

In the rose I see the garbage.

Everything is impermanent.

Even permanence is impermanent."

                                           -Buddhist




Stay with your suffering.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

There is nowhere to run to.

Nothing to run from.

Everything is here.

Enlightenment is here.

Awakening is here.

Love is here.

You need not search anymore.

Just be.

Be.

Be here now.

I am here now.

I am here.

Here.

Now.

We can do this together.

We can do this alone as well.

We can do this, always.

Here.

Now.

Here.

Now.
.
I devote myself to practicing the way.

Back.

To myself.

If you can find yourself within me.

Than I can let you go.

We are both free.

Free.

Free from attachment.

Free from the cycles of birth and death.

Understanding and compassion is what I seek.

To teach.

To bring the rose back to its petals.

They disperse and crumble back to the earth.

They flutter and fall.

Into the arms of my own clinging desire to escape my pain.

Your arms like the rose fade away into a fist.

That opens and holds my heart.

I promised you poetry.

To mend my broken heart that has never been broken at all.

Back into this moment.

Where the practice guides me.

I will sail and I will return taking the shore with me.

Dissolving into the sea where I imagined that you walked with me.

     - Atara Schimmel

https://soundcloud.com/blue-cliff-monastery/discourse-on-the-eight-realizations-of-the-great-beings-m-woyo-nuevo



I am tangled

twisted

ropes tie me down

I am deeply free

Peace is within me

I am seeking to escape

I am here now

Right here with you

I am running into others

Only to find that they are all me

and that running

lands me right back on the floor

to my self

All of my longing to be in someone else's arms

I drop back down on my knees

left always with only me

We are all one

so what could i possibly run into

whose arms could i drown all of this pain in

when we are this pain together

can you hold my pain

playing hot potato

that is what we do

the kinder and more compassionate we are with each other

the easier it is to pass and carry this hot potato

more and more i want to be relieved from this suffering

more and more i want to accept this suffering

more and more i want to shave my hair off and practice the dharma

more and more i want to go to a buddhist monestary to practice

to practice holding

holding

holding this suffering

holding

holding

holding

this suffering

I have made an important decision that so far I have been very good at sticking to. I want to reduce my time on facebook significantly and to use facebook with clear intention of inspiring and offering healing. I have been spending the last few months on facebook reading so much about factory farming and looking at the violent images and the unimaginable cruelty of the factory farms. And then I post to facebook. When I post I am so angry, so distraught and so emotionally drained from the violence and the suffering that I expose myself to. I am stopping with this. Stopping because I no longer want to suffer from anger. I no longer want to walk around in this world thinking that everyone is selfish and inconsiderate. I am tired. I want to return to compassion. I want to believe that people are kind. I want to inspire people to choose compassion. I don't want the anger or the blame anymore. I want peace. I need peace.

We lost Tammy Bergrstrom to Pudendal Neuralgia.  I painted this angel for her two children, Anna and Cole. Anna is 5 years old and Cole is 3. I will send this to Anna and to Cole sometime soon.
Painting the angel helped me process Tammy's loss. I am tired of losing people that I care about. It has been such a long and harrowing summer.

Project Angel seems to have come back to life at least in terms of what is expected of me. Being called to serve again has woken me from my depression. There seems that there is too much to do again. The fact that Abba is in the hospital suffering from psychotic depression is not an excuse to give up. Nothing is. Tardive Dyskenisia isn't. The despair I feel for the animals isn't. The fear and anxiety that I feel over all of my health challenges.....None of these can be excuses. There is too much work to do and too many of us continue to die from these conditions.

Mary Frances did a beautiful job on her short documentary about Project Angel.

https://vimeo.com/186303327

And my short documentary on Sunny Meadow Sanctuary came out lovely as well.

https://youtu.be/-ThkVsoOaZw

The veggie festival is coming up this weekend and I look forward to that. On the 5th of November I will be exhibiting Project Angel at the Pudendal Neuralgia Association's medical conference. This is a great honor and a leap forward. Somehow Tammy will be with me there. We don't know yet if she committed suicide or if she died from a complication from the surgery. Either way PN kills. 

My angels are starting to make it into more and more clinics all around the country. Progress always feels slow to me but I still recognize it.

Atara

You can heal everything.

Each broken part of yourself.

Can be mended.

You have the power to heal yourself with acceptance.

With love.

With kindness.

With patience.

Each broken part can be mended.

This is your art now.

This is you now.

You can become the wound and the balm at once.

You can hold them both as you would a crying child and see the perfection in the holding itself.

You can hold your own suffering.

For as long as you need to.

You can hold it in the arms of your own healing.

              -Atara Schimmel

My greatest challenge is to keep my heart open to humans. I must practice compassion towards humans daily.

June 26, Artist Deanna Yildiz created this for me after I posted the nasty comment that a woman from the Provincetown Community Facebook group sent to me. Yes, someone actually sent this to me as a message via facebook. Hatred of vegans. Hatred of animal rights activists.