Quotes About Consciousness

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." His deepest conviction: "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts…. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand.

Perhaps over time we can adjust our default setting to one of greater mindfulness rather than of mindlessness and being lost in thought.

We can feel victimized by our thoughts, or blinded by them. We can easily mis-take them for the truth or for reality when in actuality they are just waves on its surface, however tumultuous they may be at times.

It is not that mindfulness is the "answer" to all life's problems. Rather, it is that all life's problems can be seen more clearly through the lens of a clear mind.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. KABIR

Just because you decide to still your body and observe your breath from moment to moment doesn't mean that your thinking mind is going to cooperate.

What does happen as we intentionally pay attention to our breathing is that we realize pretty quickly that we are

we scarcely have time for being anymore, or even for catching our breath, literally and metaphorically—to say nothing of time for knowing what we are doing as we are doing it, and why.

Even the tiniest manifestation of mindfulness in any moment might give rise to an intuition or insight that could be hugely transforming.

The power of mindfulness is the power to examine those self-identifications and their consequences and the power to examine the views and perspectives we adopt so reflexively and automatically and then proceed to think are us.

you be aware of this as you practice?

Meditace je opravdu jediná lidská ?innost, ve které se nesnažíte dostat nÄ›kam jinam, ale prostÄ› si dovolíte z?stat tam, kde jste, a takoví, jací jste. Je to hoÃ…â"¢ká medicína, která se Å¡patnÄ› polyká, když se vám nelíbí, kde jste a co se kolem vás dÄ›je, ale v takových pÃ…â"¢ípadech je její užívání obzvláÅ¡Å¥ užite?né.

The virtues of getting up early have nothing to do with cramming more hours of busyness and industry into one's day. Just the opposite. They stem from the stillness and solitude of the hour, and the potential to use that time to expand consciousness, to contemplate, to make time for being, for purposefully not doing anything. The peacefulness, the darkness, the dawn, the stillness - all contribute to making early morning a special time for mindfulness practice.

Perhaps over time we can adjust our default setting to one of greater mindfulness rather than of mindlessness and being lost in thought. As

The challenge of 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.

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.

are using the word practice here in a special way. It does not mean a rehearsal or a perfecting of some skill so that we can put it to use at some other time. In the meditative context, practice means "being in the present on purpose." The means and the end of meditation are really the same. We are not trying to get somewhere else, only working

When we identify ourselves with a permanent, solid "self," it is a delusion of consciousness, a form of self-imprisonment, according to Einstein. Elsewhere he wrote that "the true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

Can we simply address what it means to be human? What is available to us in this brief moment when the universe lifts up in the form of a human sentient body and being and we live out our seventy, eighty, or ninety years (if that) and then dissolve back into the undifferentiated ocean of potential?

Thought doesn't wrap around awareness. Awareness wraps around thought.

Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time Ã¢â'¬Â¦ You

This is the case because, as we noted earlier, it is not the breath that is most important here, but the awareness itself. And the awareness can be of any aspect of your experience, not just your breathing—because it is always the same awareness, whatever the chosen object or objects of attention.

The discipline I am referring to is really the willingness to bring the spaciousness and clarity of awareness back over and over again to whatever is going on — even as we feel we are being pulled in a thousand different directions.