Quotes About Self-awareness

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.

Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There's less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what's happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Carl Rogers

Most of the time Marilyn's mother remained unconscious, her breath labored and erratic. One morning before dawn, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked clearly and intently at her daughter. "You know," she whispered softly, "all my life I thought something was wrong with me." Shaking her head slightly, as if to say, "What a waste," she closed her eyes and drifted back into a coma.

There's a mystic who says there's only one really good question, which is, 'What am I unwilling to feel?

The deepest transformations in our lives come down to something very simple: We learn to respond, not react, to what is going on inside us.

The biggest illusion about a path of refuge is that we are on our way somewhere else, on our way to becoming a different kind of person. But ultimately, our refuge is not outside ourselves, not somewhere in the future - it is always and already here.

was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, often invisible but always on the job. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself, without mercy or kindness.

Through the simple practice of seeing our own goodness, we undo the deeply rooted habits of blame and self-hate that keep us feeling isolated and unworthy.

The "one I love" was everywhere, including within me.

Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us.... Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly when it feels most intolerable to do so.

As cartoonist Jules Feiffer puts it: "I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's walk, my father's opinions and my mother's contempt for my father.

Whenever we reject a part of our being, we are confirming to ourselves our fundamental unworthiness.

I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness. Walt Whitman

Living in the future creates the illusion that we are managing our life and steels us against personal failure.

the 'secret' of a spiritual life is the capacity to '...return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment -- if even it is a feeling of being humilated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.' Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience.

When we say, "I accept myself as I am," we are not accepting a story about a good or bad self. Rather, we are accepting the immediate mental and sensory experiences we interpret as self. We are seeing the familiar wants and fears, the judging and planning thoughts as a part of the flow of life. Accepting them in this way actually enables us to recognize that experience is impersonal and frees us from the trap of identifying ourselves as a deficient and limited self.

Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. A moment of Radical Acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom. The

experience even the most intense craving without pushing it away or acting on it. Instead of hating her experience or losing herself in a swirl of mental activity, Sarah was saying yes to the feelings of urgency and tension and fear. Instead of trying to satisfy her craving, she was simply letting it express itself and move through her.

it is our mistaken perception of who we are that's causing the difficulty.