Quotes About Consciousness

Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

Someone's already been this way this morning." "Someone is in my hat," she says, shaking out a deerfly. Someone, not something.

In her house, we learned that everything we put in our mouths, everything that allows us to live, is the gift of another life. I remember lying with her at night as she made us thank the rafters of her house and the wool blankets we slept in. My grandma wouldn't let us forget that these are all gifts, which is why you take care of everything, to show respect for that life.

I came to know that it wasn't naming the source of wonder that mattered, it was wonder itself.

And we think of it as simply time, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it. Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story.

Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage.

I came to know that it wasn't naming the source of wonder that mattered, it was wonder itself

Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment.

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.

Does it matter whether you hate yourself? At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings.

Paul went to his room, gathered clean clothes and headed down the hall to the shower. He made it quick, but clean. He shaved. Then he thought, I am shaving—why? To be smooth cheeked when I pass out?

I can count

It's a tough moment when you have to confront the level of your own complacency. I

can you imagine paying for a place for your split personality? Makes you wonder how much she really knew about herself.

When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream.

I already know when I'm being bad, and I don't need to be nagged by my underwear.

You aren't aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain.

What the body knows and what the mind chooses to believe are two different things, after all.

Here we free ourselves of distractions and try to be present in a world that conspires against it

The past is gone. The future is a fantasy. There is only the breath, the moment.

Did that ever happen to you? Do you have dreams that you are not in, in which you are only the observer. It's probably just me.

Or she could listen to that other voice, the voice that wasn't a voice but something so deep, so indivisible from her own consciousness that it didn't have sound.