Quotes About Awareness

None of us is a Da Vinci, painting the Mona Lisa in the morning and designing helicopters at night. That's as it should be. No, the bigger problem is that we're proud of not knowing things. Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.

If the public has no idea about the substance of an issue, and will vote based on who they like rather than what they want, it is difficult to put too much blame on policymakers and their expert advisers for being confused themselves. How can a republic function if the people who have sent their representatives to decide questions of war and peace cannot tell the difference between Agrabah, Ukraine, or Syria?

Just as we are not all equally able to carry a tune or draw a straight line, many people simply cannot recognize the gaps in their own knowledge or understand their own inability to construct a logical argument. Education

So few people are really aware of their thoughts. Their minds run all over the place without their permission, and they go along for the ride unknowingly and without making a choice.

If you are not in control of your thoughts then you are not in control of yourself. Without self-control, you have no real power, regardless of whatever else you accomplish. If you are not aware of the thoughts that you are thinking in each moment, then you are the rider with no reins, with no power over where you are going. You cannot control what you are not aware of. Awareness must come first.

We think too many thoughts at once, most of them the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before. We are impatient with life, and anxious.

Rushing had become so much of a habit that I was amazed at the amount of concentration it took to work slowly on purpose.

creating the practicing mind comes down to a few simple rules: • Keep yourself process-oriented. • Stay in the present. • Make the process the goal and use the overall goal as a rudder to steer your efforts. • Be deliberate, have an intention about what you want to accomplish, and remain aware of that intention.

The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialogue is running wild and dragging you with it.

Most of us spend very little time in the present moment. We usually are either thinking about something that has not yet happened (and may never happen) or reliving something that already has. We waste each moment's opportunity to experience what

When you notice yourself fretting over something, you have accomplished the do portion. Now observe the behavior that you want to change. In your observation of yourself worrying, you separate yourself from the act of worrying. Now realize that the emotions you are experiencing have no effect on the problem over which you're fretting. Release yourself from the emotions as best as you can — that is the correction portion — and try to look at the problem as an Observer.

So, as an adult, try to notice the carefree nature that comes naturally to a child, who lives for and in the present. Try to help children to not lose that nature as they grow up in a world that constantly tries to push it out of them. To

The paradox of slowness is that you will find you accomplish the task more quickly and with less effort because you are not wasting energy. Try it and you will see.

When you focus your mind on the present moment, on the process of what you are doing right now, you are always where you want to be and where you should be. All your energy goes into what you are doing. However, when you focus your mind on where you want to end up, you are never where you are, and you exhaust your energy with unrelated thoughts instead of putting it into what you are doing.

If you are not in control of your thoughts, then you are not in control of yourself. Without self-control, you have no real power,

Thoughts come clearly while one walks.

Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.

[W]hen the faculties are empty, then your whole being listens.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.