Quotes About Consciousness

The ideally free Ego would be a lucid calculator of payoffs.

You wish your face was more—more, something. You don't know what. Maybe not more. Less. Less flat. Less delicate. More rugged. Your jawline more defined. This face that feels like a mask, that has never felt quite right on you. That reminds you, at odd times, and often after two to four drinks, that you're Asian. You are Asian! Your brain forgets sometimes. But then your face reminds you.

I can see how I am always in perpetual motion through time, how I can never stop, obsessed with the past, projecting myself into the future, clutching at and always failing to grasp the wisp of now.

Or rather, a dialogue, between myself and my future self, in which my future self is telling my present self what I have already finished thinking but have not yet realized I thought. This is consistent with Libet (1983).

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Vosotros no sois ganado, no sois máquinas, sois Hombres.

He said if a tree fell down in a forest, and there was nobody there to hear it, would it make a sound? I think what he meant was that sounds only become sounds when we hear them, otherwise it's just waves that go through the air. So if there were no ears there to pick up the sound waves then is there any sound at all?

The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.

We're all hurtling towards death. Yet here we are, for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die. Each of us secretly believing we won't.

Hear with your eyes, see with your ears

There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here.

When we're lost in thought, when we're dreaming, what have we lost? We've lost reality. Our life has escaped us.

The only sure path is to live consciously, moment to moment, as you let go of the outcome.

Buddhism] takes us beyond a kind of self-centered narcissism because instead of identifying with the content of our experience, we identify with awareness itself.

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.

they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere "instinct," a wholly personal feeling; it was—a religion.

You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People.

There you have it. You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere "instinct," a wholly personal feeling; it was—a religion.

La conscience morale de l'humanité progresse, lentement mais sûrement...

Getting where you want to be has everything to do with awareness, and nothing to do with willpower.

It doesn't matter what did or did not happen then. It only matters what happens NOW.

The quality of our lives is determined by the focus of our attention.

Facing suffering, embracing suffering, becoming the conscious, compassionate awareness that can bring an end to suffering, is not painful. Trying to hide from suffering is extremely painful and will rob you of your life.