Quotes About Awareness

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader

clarity of vision—especially

Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage.

When KFKD is playing, we are at cross purposes with the river. So we need to sit there, and breathe, calm ourselves down, push back our sleeves, and begin again.

Transcendence means you go from judgment, separation from life and yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are, truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

But where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.

There is so much mercy around us and in us, so much available to us if we just have the eyes and intention to see it.

Yet not matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity.

And while everyone has to make a living and show up for family, listening is optional. You have to make a conscious decision to listen harder.

You pay twenty-five dollars to hear one of my heroes, Thich Nhat Hanh, say: "When you walk, just walk." You think: I paid good money for this? Notice your feet as they connect to the earth? Left foot, right foot, breathe? Crazy.

Whether it's Mount Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, aliveness (or whatever you want to call it) the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgment, separation from life and yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are, truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

I tell the six-year-olds that if they want to have great lives, they need to read a lot or listen to the written word. If they rely only on their own thinking, they will not notice the power that is all around them, the force-be-with–you kind of power. Reading and writing help us take the blinders off so we can look around and say "Wow," so we can look at life and our lives with care, and curiosity, and attention to detail, which are what will make us happy and less afraid.

Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours.

The plates of the earth had shifted and settled inside her, and the world should know.

I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying give us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children.

Someone else is doing the living for me, and all I have to do is let their stories, humor, knowledge, and images—some of which I'll never forget—flow through me, even as I forget to turn off the car when I arrive at my destination.

Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture that--the details, the nuance, what is.

It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony

You unconscious can't work when youare breathing down it's neck. You'll sit there going, Are you done in there yet? Are you done in there yet?. But it is trying to tell you nicely, Shut up and go away.

Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down it's neck. You'll sit there going, Are you done in there yet? Are you done in there yet?. But it is trying to tell you nicely, Shut up and go away.

I need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked, here. It is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to listening to your broccoli that exists for writers.

I'm actually quite depressed," she said. "I don't see why." "What's the silver lining here? I can't seem to remember today." "The silver lining is that you're not going to have to see any more naked pregnant pictures of Demi Moore." She looked at me for a moment with real wonder. "God," she said, "that's a lot—I hadn't even thought of that.

It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

T. S. Eliot wrote, 'Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.' We long for this, and yet we check our smartphones every ten minutes for news, texts, distraction.