Quotes About Awareness

I've heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could be less generous than it is. I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity.

I've heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks, because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could well be otherwise, less generous than it is. But I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity. I

Losing their names is a step in losing respect. Knowing their names is the first step in regaining our connection.

suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own.

While city folks may be separated from the sources of what they consume, they can exercise reciprocity through how they spend their money. While the digging of the leeks and the digging of the coal may be too far removed to see, we consumers have a potent tool of reciprocity right in our pockets. We can use our dollars as the indirect current of reciprocity.

However alluring the thought of warmth, there is no substitute for standing in the rain to waken every sense - senses that are muted within four walls, where my attention would be on me instead of all that is more than me.

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.

I suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.

You have to concentrate; you have to give yourself to the listening. It takes effort, especially in a time when we are accustomed to sound bites and immediate gratification.

Yes, I have learned the names of all the bushes, but I have yet to learn their songs.

Everybody lives downstream.

As I listen to them, I hear another whisper from the swaying stand of cattails, from spruce boughs in the wind, a reminder that caring is not abstract. The circle of ecological compassion we feel is enlarged by direct experience of the living world, and shrunken by its lack.

Breathe in its scent and you start to remember things you didn't know you'd forgotten.

Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery - as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.

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.

You don't even realize you're living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after.

There are some moments you'd rather sleep through, pass from point A to point B without awareness of the time passing or the events that carry you from present to future. And it's mostly those moments in which it's smarter-safer- to stay awake.

They both took their napkins, unfolded them and set them on their laps. I did the same and watched as they arranged their utensils, following their lead. It was just another reminder of how much I didn't know. The

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.

Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.

We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.

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?

You've been treading water," she said. "You're marking the years, not living them.