Quotes About Consciousness

A jelen a paradicsom, ám az agyunk nem engedi, hogy sokáig éljünk benne.

Sleep this night is not a dark haunted domain the mind must consciously set itself to invade, but a cave inside himself, into which he shrinks while the claws of the bear rattle like rain outside. Sunshine

About being mortal- I suppose it affects different people in different ways, but for me there's never been a thinning out. Being alive, no matter how sick I feel, feels absolute. You're absolutely alive and when you're not you'll be absolutely something else.

For all their talk of democracy, the conquerors worked hard to engineer consensus; and on many critical issues, they made clear that the better part of political wisdom was silence and conformism. So well did they succeed in reinforcing this consciousness that after they left, and time passed, many non-Japanese including Americans came to regard such attitudes as peculiarly Japanese.

He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.

For the last twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself again, had come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain

he walks into the hall and the old walls there settle into place all around him and say something to him, the same way they always have, he thinks, it's always like that, whether he notices it and thinks about it or not the walls are there, and it is as if silent voices are speaking from them, as if a big tongue is there in the walls and this tongue is saying something that can never be said with words ...

Awareness is not the same as thinking. It is a complementary form of intelligence, a way of knowing that is at least as wonderful and as powerful, if not more so, than thinking.

To allow ourselves to be truly in touch with where we already are, no matter where that is, we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in; long enough to actually feel the present moment, to see it in its fullness, to hold it in awareness and thereby come to know and understand it better.

One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse, or lose control of as a result of being in the automatic pilot mode is our own body.

Life only unfolds in moments. The healing power of mindfulness lies in living each of those moments as fully as we can, accepting it as it is as we open to what comes next—in the next moment of now.

Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all meditation practice.

If we are not careful, it is all too easy to fall into becoming more of a human doing than a human being, and forget who is doing all the doing, and why.

Because of this inner busyness, which is going on almost all the time, we are liable either to miss a lot of the texture of our life experience or to discount its value and meaning.

Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes use of thinking, honoring its value and its power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught up in them in reality.

we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.

Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing things clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.

we all come into and go out of this world as passing gatherings of structured energy.

Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment. It's not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.

Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice.

One practical way to do this is to look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them of just your thought about them. Sometimes our thoughts act like dream glasses. When we have them on, we see dream children, dream husband, dream wife, dream ob, dream colleagues, dream partners, dream friends. We can live in a dream present for a dream future...But if we take off the glasses, maybe, just maybe, we might see a little more accurately what is actually here.

The challenge for mindfulness is to be present for your experience as it is rather than immediately jumping in to change it or try to force it to be different.