Quotes About Awareness

Outwardness does to inwardness what light does to darkness: it chases it away.

There's something deeper than behavior that determines our influence on others—it's whether we're in or out of the box. You don't know much about the box yet, but when we're in the box, our view of reality is distorted—we see neither ourselves nor others clearly. We are self-deceived. And that creates all kinds of trouble for the people around us.

Rok Zorko, vice president of product development for the very successful app-development company, Outfit7, said, "It is an eye-opener to realize that you are not to treat people as objects but to treat them as people. Once you have this knowledge, you can never unthink it.

We're so convinced that how we think and feel about other people is caused by them," he says, "by what they have or haven't done, by how inconsiderate they have been to us or how judgmental, and so on. But a seventeen-year-old young woman taught me that this wasn't true. I see people the way I see them because of me.

When my mindset is outward, I am alive to and interested in other people and their objectives and needs. I see others as people whom I am open to helping. When my mindset is inward, on the other hand, I essentially turn my back on others; I don't really care about their needs or objectives.

being able to operate with an outward mindset when others do not is a critically important ability. It is the most important move.

Because most who are trying to put an end to injustice only think of the injustices they believe they themselves have suffered. Which means that they are concerned not really with injustice but with themselves. They hide their focus on themselves behind the righteousness of their outward cause.

In fact, what obscures vision and exposes people to more risk is not an outward mindset, which stays fully alive to and aware of others, but an inward one, which turns its attention away from others while simultaneously provoking resistance.

A related reason why people resist making the most important move is that they think an outward mindset will make them soft when hard behavior is required. But this is a misunderstanding. As we've said, an outward mindset doesn't make people soft; it just makes them open, curious, and aware. Similarly, an inward mindset doesn't make people hard. In fact, people whose mindsets are inward often engage in behaviors that are softer than would actually be helpful.

we are always seeing others either as objects—as obstacles, for example, or as vehicles or irrelevancies—or we are seeing them as people.

Ask yourself the following questions: Have I (or we) thought this through with an outward mindset? Do I understand the needs, objectives, and challenges of those involved? Have I adjusted my efforts in light of those issues? And have I been holding myself accountable for my impact on these people? Have you considered what mindset-level changes might be necessary in addition to behavioral changes?

Self-betrayal is the germ that creates the disease of self-deception. And, like childbed fever, self-deception has many different symptoms—from lack of motivation and commitment to stress and communication problems. Organizations die, or are severely crippled, by those symptoms. And that happens because those who carry the germ don't know they're carrying it.

you might try to identify the people toward whom you are generally and currently out of the box. Names will come to mind, and simply thinking about your experiences with those people can take you to a vantage point from where the world seems different than it did the moment before.

RECOVERING INNER CLARITY AND PEACE(FOUR PARTS) Getting out of the box 1. Look for the signs of the box (blame, justification, horribilization, common box styles, etc.). 2. Find an out-of-the-box place (out-of-the-box relationships, memories, activities, places, etc.). 3. Ponder the situation anew (i.e., from this out-of-the-box perspective).

RECOVERING INNER CLARITY AND PEACE(FOUR PARTS) Getting out of the box 1. Look for the signs of the box (blame, justification, horribilization, common box styles, etc.). 2. Find an out-of-the-box place (out-of-the-box relationships, memories, activities, places, etc.).

Living is easier with eyes closed.

And have you traveled very far? Far as the eye can see. How often have you been there? Often enough to know. What did you see when you were there? Nothing that doesn't show. (from the 1967 song, Baby You're a Rich Man.

From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness you put into it. Remember always the Divine and all you do will be an expression of the Divine Presence. When all your actions are consecrated to the Divine, there will be no longer activities that are superior and activities that are inferior; all will have an equal importance — the value given them by the consecration.

In silence, the consciousness grows. It aspires to know You more and more perfectly. More Answers From The Mother, vol 17, p.380

He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.

Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.

Ah, well, when you explain it like that, it seems obvious, said Mudge. Of course, it always seems obvious once it's been explained.

I sometimes astonish my patients by telling them that it is far more important that they should be able to lose themselves than that they should be able to find themselves. For it is only in losing oneself that one does find oneself.

When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.