Quotes About Awareness

The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.

We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts.

There is but one world common for those who are awake, but when men are asleep, each turns away into a world of his own.

A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.

The word "autism" still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most people—they visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut off from human contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, never of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

When in the body of a donkey, enjoy the taste of grass.

We do not ignore the use of the meaning in dreaming. But it is good to recognize that there is also dreaming in meaning.

Abiding in the space of the nature of mind, we not only are free, we are freedom.

The highest practice is the one that is most effective, not necessarily the one categorized as "higher.

We also know life passes quickly and death is certain, yet in our busy lives we find it difficult to practice as much as we wish we could. Perhaps we meditate for an hour or two each day, but that leaves the other twenty-two hours in which to be distracted and tossed about on the waves of samsara. But there is always time for sleep; the third of our lives we spend sleeping can be used for practice.

Although some Western psychologies believe that the dreamer should not control the dream, according to Tibetan teachings this is a wrong view. It is better for the lucid and aware dreamer to control the dream than for the dreamer to be dreamed. The same is true with thoughts: it is better for the thinker to control the thoughts than for the thoughts to control the thinker.

Every diploma is an award for developing a more sophisticated ignorance.

Methods can become an obstacle to abiding in non-dual awareness if the practitioner believes that one must use the practice to renounce something or transform something. Practices are only used to connect to the natural state and stabilize in it.

When we think of an experience as "only a dream" it is less "real" to us. It loses power over us—power that it only had because we gave it power—and can no longer disturb us and drive us into negative emotional states.

Dreams arise from the same karmic traces that govern our waking experiences. If we axe too distracted to penetrate the fantasies and delusions of the moving mind during the day, we will most likely be bound by the same limitations in dream.

Conversely, when we continually bring awareness to the immediate moment of experience, this capacity will soon be found in dream.

When we think of an experience as "only a dream" it is less "real" to us. It loses power over us—power that it only had because we gave it power—and can no longer disturb us and drive us into negative emotional states. Instead, we begin to encounter all experience with greater calm and increased clarity, and even with greater appreciation

memories, feelings, sense perceptions, or thoughts

Because karmic traces are the roots of dreams, when they are entirely exhausted only the pure light of awareness remains: no movie, no story, no dreamer and no dream, only the luminous fundamental nature that is absolute reality. This is why enlightenment is the end of dreams and is known as "awakening.

Don't ignore intuitive tickles, lest they reappear as sledgehammers. (from First Rule of Ten)

One who understands is freer in the head but sadder in the heart. It is sad to know that there is so much wrong in our world, and for the most part we are helpless to do anything about it.