Quotes About Consciousness

Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?

We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.

You are -- your life, and nothing else.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.

Écrire, c'est fermer les yeux en les gardant ouverts.

In certain situations, manifesting anger is the right attitude; in others it is not the right thing to manifest because it will only add to the violence. In the first case, anger unblocks the conflict and causes another to become more conscious. In the latter, it only adds to the unconsciousness and inflames the conflict. (73)

Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness. (14)

Quoting Father Seraphim: Our life hangs only by a breath. It is the thread that links you to the Father, the Source, which brought you into being. Be conscious of this thread, and go where you will. (27)

There are many greedy and clever human animals in this world, but few human beings. Authentic human beings are so rare that I would even go so far as to say that we do not live in a truly human world.

C]hange your thinking, your interpretation of he world, change the way you see! To change the way you see is to change the world. (50)

It is the conscious Breath that comes from the unnamable space where inspiration originates, and expiration returns—that space without boundaries, which we are sometimes fortunate enough to taste when silence reigns within us.

Maybe the meaning of your life is what your life means to you now. It's hard to understand that time doesn't exist because we have such a clear experience of past, present and future, but we don't really experience past and future, only present. Past and future are just ideas in the present. This means that there is only now, but what is now? We can't say what now is because there is no not-now. It's always now. There is only now.

Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves, As Souls only understand Souls.   Walt Whitman

It's like I can hum a few bars but I have forgotten most of the words. I can't stand in line at the grocery and carry on a normal conversation if it gets much past the weather.

What do we know for sure? That's the real question. That's what the cogito is. That's what solipsism is. This isn't theory. This isn't belief or faith. This is the basic fact of existence. It's all about figuring out exactly what we know for certain as opposed to everything else. It's truly amazing that something so glaringly obvious and irrefutable is so universally ignored by science and philosophy and religion.

The point isn't to make yourself feel that you're a part of everything, but to stop for one minute insisting with every thought and feeling that you're not.

What do you know? The answer is: I Am.

Ask yourself. Who am I? If you do it, you will become enlightened. There is no possible alternative. The only way self-inquiry can fail to work is if you fail to do it.

An easy way to distinguish between caterpillars and butterflies is to remember that the enlightened don't attach importance to anything, and that enlightenment doesn't require knowledge. It's not about love or compassion or consciousness. It's about truth.

Maya is the fear that permeates us so fully that we don't know it's there. Maya is the organizing principle of emotional energy in the fear-based, segregated state, and Maya is inherently mysterious.

Yes, I have an ego and it looks similar to the one I dropped to, as you say, achieve nirvana. But then I came back all enlightened and everything, and I needed something to wear. I look around and there's my discarded ego lying in a pile on the floor so I slip into it and here I am.

To say that the individual can do nothing to break free of dualistic perception because it results in nondualistic perception is nonsensical, like saying a living being can't step off a cliff because it results in death, or that a dreamer can't wake up because he's dreaming.