Quotes About Self-awareness

What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common

There are people who need people to need them. The reason you don't understand is because you're not one of those people. You'd use me and then toss me away like a paper bag if that's what it came down to. God fucked you, my friend. You're just smart enough so it would hurt you to do that, and just hard enough so you'd go ahead and do it anyway. You wouldn't be able to help yourself.

If being a grown-up really meant knowing better, why did his father go on smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day?

I wish I had looked longer, but I don't blame myself. You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you?

Most people are fitted with Lead Boots when they are just little kids and have to wear them all their lives. These Lead Boots are called A CONSCIENCE. I have none, so I can soar high above the heads of the Normal Crowd.

eighty-five per cent of what goes on in a novelist's head is none of his business

You'll consider what you did wrong & bookend your reflections with hunger – no supper, no breakfast.

Las personas con un alto nivel de tolerancia al aburrimiento tienen tiempo de sobra para pensar.

Henry did not want to be fixed, was somehow convinced that the fix would be a lie, something that would lessen him.

If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty.

The less we identify with who we think we are, the more likely we are to discover who we really are. In this regard, the Sufi master Tariqavi wrote, When you have found yourself you can have knowledge. Until then you can only have opinions. Opinions are based on habit and what you conceive to be convenient.

you should not seek transcendence as a means of escapism. Remember van Eeden's demon-dreams. You must first be willing to deal with whatever problems you may find on your personal level.

Tholey stressed the importance of asking "the critical question"—"Am I dreaming or not?"—as frequently as possible (at least five to ten times a day) and in every situation that seems dreamlike.

Sure, we're physically bigger and we have more money, but they reckon we're not much smarter than animals. They call us water buffaloes or monitor lizards. There's no bigger insult than to say that a person is an animal, and that's what they think we are. We're

The mind is a useful tool but not a very good friend.

Note which states of mind accompany each moment of like and disliking. When we recall the statement, "Physician, heal thyself," this is where the healing begins. It is particularly important to notice that this constant liking and disliking that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day. It is from this mechanical response / reaction that our actions and reactions arises.

If you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.

We all have a central fiction about ourselves, a favored delusion about talent or untapped potential. Most of us hang on to it as if it were a lifesaver, even though the obsession with it is often the very thing that drags us down and prevents us from fulfilling some lesser but more obtainable goal.

Zen teaching is like a window. At first, we look at it, and see only the dim reflection of our own face. But as we learn, and our vision becomes clear, the teaching becomes clear. Until at last it is perfectly transparent. We see through it. We see all things: our own face.

As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.

It comes from within.

Where we stand depends on where we sit. Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them.

We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we "see" ourselves—our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviors, but also how we see other people.

Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.