Quotes About Self-awareness

So too with the case of the snoring yogi in the previous chapter. As long as I identified with my dislike of him, I was obeying natural selection's instructions to consider myself special (certainly more special than a guy who wants to catch up on his sleep when I'm trying to meditate!).

And don't feel like you're committing a felony-level violation of Buddhist dogma just because you think of yourself as being a self.

associate the self with control and with firm persistence through time, but on close inspection we turn out to be much less under control, and much more fluid, with a much less fixed identity, than we think.

I consider myself an average man except for the fact that I consider myself an average man.

Still, at a minimum it seems fair to say that the role of our conscious selves in guiding behavior is not nearly as big as was long thought. And the reason this role was exaggerated is that the conscious mind feels so powerful; in other words, the conscious mind is naturally deluded about its own nature.

accepting, even embracing, an unpleasant feeling can give you a critical distance from it that winds up diminishing the unpleasantness.

In short, from natural selection's point of view, it's good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational, self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations aren't accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation.

It is as if I were beginning the game all over again, neither happier nor unhappier than before. But aware now of where my strength lies, scornful of my own vanities

We are ultimately alone in that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves.

y cuando una está feliz o presiente que la felicidad está cerca, pues se mira en los espejos sin ninguna reserva, es más, cuando una está feliz o se siente predestinada a la experiencia de la felicidad, tiene a bajar las defensas y a aceptar los espejos

Is that the true, the supreme terror, to discover that I am the wizened youth whose cries no one can hear?

He also discovered that he was bitter and full of resentment, that he oozed resentment, and that he might easily kill someone, anyone, if it would provide a respite from the loneliness and rain and cold of Madrid, but this was a discovery that he preferred to conceal.

I'm American. Why didn't I say I was African American? Because I'm in a foreign country? But can I really consider myself to be in a foreign country when I could go walking back to my own country right now if I wanted, and it wouldn't even take very long? Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody?

Todos tenemos algún antepasado imbécil. Todos, en algún momento de nuestras vidas, encontramos el rastro, las huellas vacilantes del más pelmazo de nuestros antepasados, y al mirar ese rostro huidizo nos damos cuenta, con estupor, con incredulidad, con horror, de que estamos contemplando nuestra propia cara que nos hace guiños y muecas amistosas desde el fondo de un pozo.

For a moment I thought he was going to cry, but suddenly, before he said anything, I realized that I'd be the one who cried, that inevitably, it would be me who cried.

With every day that passes I am more convinced that the act of writing is a concious act of humility.

I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.

Spirituality can be an important framework to help us know ourselves better while building relationships with other people in our world.

acts of forgiveness contribute to one's sense of trust in oneself and the potential of others; they contribute to a human spirit that is fundamentally hopeful and optimistic rather than pessimistic or defeated; they contribute to knowing oneself and others as potentially powerful people who can choose to lovingly create, versus seeing humans as basically self-ish, destructive and sinners

To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.

One can only walk so far from one's true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls back. I am fortunate. I have been pulled back.

Ah, Catylast, can it be that you do not see all the changes you have made? Some by your resignation and acceptance of circumstance, some by your wild struggles. You say that you hate change, but you *are* change. The Fool in Fool's Fate

I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.

That is true. I could not prevent what was done to me, nor can I change what people made of me. But I know what I am and have decided to continue being what I am.