Quotes About Consciousness

The drop of rain knows who and what it is as long as it remains a drop. When it falls back into the sea, its origin, it can no longer know.

Love, then, is the binding power of being, on every level of reality. In fact, love is being and reality: love turning toward love in love with itself. Everything is on this track, and everything being/consciousness/bliss, whether it "knows" itself as such or not. But the soul which awakens and finds itself in the dance: that soul has won the bet.

Art has little to do with made things, but rather concerns a state of mind, a way of being, a gesture that cannot be betrayed, a life

A meaningful life depends upon a sense of aliveness and presence, both of which spring from intimate contact with internal body states.

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-in-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

You will know your state of mind when you wash the dishes. Your care or your impatience; your attention or your distraction. You will see yourself, at that moment, clearly.

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

We confuse being some thing with Being.

Once a conceptual identity occupies the place of "self," this is what we think we are "being.

Being driven by your beliefs is a very different matter than consciously understanding how it is your beliefs are created and what purpose they serve.

Enlightenment: Some Nothing from Which to Come

Our core beliefs simply appear to us as reality.

An inner dialogue runs pretty much unceasingly though our minds. Sometimes we listen; sometimes we barely notice. The commands and assessments of this story line are there all the same, even if the depth of their influence goes unnoticed. But the most dangerous fictions aren't those we recognize as stories. Of more concern to us here are the ones we assume to be real.

it seems that the conceptual activity that is created to serve the self has become the self.

I'm inviting you to realize that we're not talking about changing from an apple to an orange, which is too easy and still in the domain of familiar things, as is simply imagining a "better self". The demand here is more like transforming from being an apple to being the color blue, or infinite space.

Again, I invite you to consider that if you can identify with character traits, qualities, thinking, or experiences other than what you identify with now, then you must not actually be any of these elements. If this is so, who are you? What are you? If you try to pin down who you really are, you will search your mind and attempt to grab onto an idea, or feeling, or sense. Yet that very idea, feeling, or sense itself can be let go, and so it can't be you either. See how this works?

The mind's goal is not to get at the truth but to fulfill our needs, and like a computer with very specific programming, the mind's interpretations are based on what's already known or believed.

Whatever we think of as "self" we will protect and maintain. If it's a conceptual self, and likely it is, then we end up with mind protecting mind.

When self becomes confused with mind, and mind becomes seen as the self, the mind's self-serving activities end up creating an experience of reality that is entirely self-referential.

Remember, mind has no interest in what's true—its job is to keep you alive while maintaining an identifiable sense of self. To do this, it not only creates and identifies with physical and mental-emotional activities, it also builds on past experience and any previously established conceptual identity. You're still alive and you're still you, so mind will naturally protect and promote all the beliefs behind the activities that keep you that way.

The original function of mind is to do a job, the essence of which is to keep you alive and successfully being you.

His (Samuel Coleridge) dark senses were constantly in play, the frustration of them bringing illness. Weather and organic nature combined in a synaesthetic multi-media event, and this was the ground of all perception before it was divded up in daily living: the Primary Imagination giving way to the Secondary. Poetry was forever seeking a conscious return to this state, which existed all the time, whether he knew it or not.

Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God … Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice … However, we often turn a deaf ear — through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness.

Lewis Smedes sums up the dangers of superficial forgiveness: "We will not take healing action against unfair pain until we own the pain we want to heal. It is not enough to feel pain. We need to appropriate the pain we feel: Be conscious of it, take it on, and take it as our own … I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain.