Quotes About Awareness

It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.

In truth, Freud sees nothing and understands nothing.

Lose your face: become capable of loving without remembering, without phantasm and without interpretation, without taking stock. Let there just be fluxes, which sometimes dry up, freeze or overflow, which sometimes combine or diverge.

Self-consciousness comes from focusing your attention inwards, on to yourself, so that you become painfully aware of what is happening to you. At its worst, self-consciousness dominates your attention and makes it difficult to think of anything else but your inner experience – and this can become totally paralyzing.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness." —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

wherever you sit, in whatever blend of familiar and strange, it always pays to stop and ask yourself a simple question that the bankers on the Riviera were not asking: If I was to arrive in this culture, as a total stranger, or as a Martian or child, what might I see?

Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision.

the workers were careful when handling oil drums marked as "full." However, workers happily smoked in rooms that stored drums marked "empty." The reason? The word "empty" in English is associated with "nothing"; it seems boring, dull, and easy to ignore. However, "empty" oil drums are actually full of flammable fumes.

the need to make the "strange familiar," to make the "familiar strange," and listen to social silence.

Ever notice there are no clocks in stores? It's like casinos; they don't want you to know how much time you've spent dropping your quarters.

There was something wrong; nobody else had to tell me. Writing it down made me see it. I'd told myself, as if writing to another person.

wakefulness

The dirt is coming for us all as we free-fall. This much I know: that eventually, we all have to start screaming well before we hit the ground, so the women below us will understand when to scatter, when to take cover, when it is safe to come back outside and try again to change the world. So that future generations will know, from the echo of our voices, never to stop watching the sky.

Where you are standing—your spot on the ground amid this vast world—and what you choose to look at from there means absolutely everything.

To commune with your heart and soul, be willing to go out of your mind.

Each of us knows when it's time to wake, eat and rest. We don't need to read a clock for these activities; we need to listen.

Give full attention to life's moments and the images you capture will be everlasting.

At times, productivity means doing nothing at all.

Once back home I would adjust my lens to the resolution through which I perceived the people and provinces of the globe. My daily commute, the supermarket check out line, neighborhood walks, pedestrian tasks of any job would inspire me as much as the stir of white linen canopies in Venice's Piazza San Marco; the velvety dunes of the eastern Sahara; Bali's kaleidoscope of color; my Vietnamese sisters.

Turn off the radio, TV, DVD, iPod, computer and cell phone. Then, listen.

You can miss an experience by obsessing over how to contain it.

What do you resist examining up close? How can you ground yourself so you feel safe enough to try?

Do your fears warn of external dangers? Or, are they the kind that keep you from becoming more of your true self?