Quotes About Consciousness

neuroscientist Antonio Damasio reminds us, "We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.

Judging has become such a part of our thinking patterns that we are rarely even aware of why and how we do it. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even bring the habit of judging into our awareness.

Choosing to own our vulnerability and do it consciously means learning how to rumble with this emotion and understand how it drives our thinking and behavior so we can stay aligned with our values and live in our integrity. Pretending that we don't do vulnerability means letting fear drive our thinking and behavior without our input or even awareness, which almost always leads to acting out or shutting down.

Carl Jung wrote, "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

most of the time when we recall a memory, we are conscious that we are in the present, recalling something from the past. However, when we experience something in the present that triggers an old trauma memory, we reexperience the sense of the original trauma.

The invitation is to think about the intention behind our choices

Unfortunately, self-trust is one of the first casualties when we fail or experience disappointment or setbacks. Whether it's conscious or not, when we're wondering how we ended up facedown in the arena, we often reach for the blanket statement "I don't trust myself anymore." We assume that we must have made a bad decision and therefore it is a fallacy to count on ourselves to deliver.

think and talk and act rather than react,

Becoming a little child meant becoming aware that all is gift, that I am helpless and powerless to add a single inch to my spiritual stature. Without the subjective awareness of utter dependence, the personal consciousness of a dynamism outside of self at work in us, I seriously question whether anyone has made real progress in the spiritual life.

To properly set out on the path to Zen, we must empty our cups—in other words, we need to open our minds.

Simply sit still, with a straight back, eyes partially but not completely closed. . . . Relax all your muscles. . . . Relax your mind. . . . Let the center of your awareness drop down into your lower abdomen. . . . Now breathe–deeply yet naturally. Thoughts will come and go. Just let them be. Don't pay them any attention. Don't feed them any energy, either by grasping on to them or by trying to force them to go away. Just breathe, just be.

For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they're around mirrors.

I guess when you're not awake, you're not awake. Waking up to the suffering of people who are different from us is a long process, and has a whole lot to do with what community we belong to and whose consciousness and life experiences impact our own on a daily basis. I have a hunch I'm going to be waking up until the moment I die.

Men conscious of inferiority are always trying to impose themselves on others, because they know that underneath they are cowards or cretins.

Sometimes when she woke from a flabbergasting dream Liz would lie very still to see if she could net it before it fled; perfectly still, eyes closed, not moving her head, as if the slightest shift would tip the story-bearing liquid, break its fragile meniscus and spill the night's elusive catch.

Zij geloofde aan een samenhang van alle verschijnselen, zonder echter een hogere macht aansprakelijk te stellen voor wat haar overkwam, zonder van een god persoonlijke bemoeienis met haar lot, troost, of loon naar werken te verwachten. Zij was er van overtuigd dat in de mens zelf de krachten ontstaan die men Goed en Kwaad noemt, en dat alleen door de ontwikkeling van het individuele bewustzijn de wil tot integriteit een menselijk gegeven wordt.

Ik kende hem, zoals ik Telaga Hideung kende – een spiegelende oppervlakte. De diepte peilde ik nooit.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

He could feel his stomach churning. I'm repressing things, he thought. Along with everything else I don't have time for. I'm searching for the slayers of the dead and can't even manage to pay attention to the living. For a dizzying instant his entire consciousness was filled with only one urge. To take off. Flee. Disappear. Start a new life.

Ihminen voi olla kuollut, vaikka elää, ja olla elossa, vaikka onkin kuollut.

If you're gonna do something tonight that you'll regret tomorrow morning, sleep late

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.

The Eyes See Only What The Mind Is Prepared To Comprehend.