Quotes About Awareness

Thus, to see all memory as present experience is to collapse the boundaries of this present moment, to free it of illusory limits, to deliver it from the opposites of past vs. future. It becomes obvious that there is nothing behind you in time nor before you in time. You thus have nowhere to stand but in the timeless present, and thus nowhere to stand but in eternity.

The only way I could discover how to help someone was by listening. Only when I heard what they were trying to say could I get a sense of what they needed, of the issues they were confronting at that time, of the kind of help that would really help at that specific moment.

I saw only the glory of green emeralds, and radiant buddhas walking everywhere, and there was no I to see any of this, but the emeralds were there just the same.

Put this all a different way, and perhaps the importance of this fact will become clear: the very key to your growth, development, and evolution is to make your present subject an object—that is, it is to look at your present subject instead of using it as something through which to view the world (and thus remain identified with).

Thought is sequential, successive, one-dimensional, while the real world presents itself as a multidimensional, non-successive, simultaneous pattern of infinite richness and variety; and trying to make the one grasp the other is like trying to appreciate a beautiful landscape by looking through a narrow slit in a fence or trying to take in a Renoir painting by microscope alone.

There is a spectrum of depth, a spectrum of consciousness. And evolution unfolds that spectrum. Consciousness unfolds more and more, realizes itself more and more, comes into manifestation more and more. Spirit, consciousness, depth—so many words for the same thing.

Your "overall self" is your True Self (or Witness) plus your conventional, relative, finite self, and that finite self can be a false (inaccurate) or an authentic (accurate) self-concept. The choice is truly yours…

Of all the definitions of "human" provided over the ages—from the "political animal" to the "symbolic animal"—probably the most accurate is the "role-taking animal," the capacity to see not only what one is oneself seeing but to put oneself in the shoes of an other and see the world as that other is seeing it.

Because the amazing fact is that truth alone will not set you free. Truthfulness will set you free.

This profoundly disturbed me, because I had had several kensho or satori-like experiences (glimpses of One Taste), but they were all generally confined to the waking state.

This gives the feeling, vis-à-vis time, that you are not moving through time, but rather time is moving through you (that is, through your awareness), with your being not moving at all. It's like sitting in a movie theater and, without moving from your seat, having the entire scenery move past you (and if the you is "headless," then in you).

Across the board, the sense of being any sort of Seer or Witness or Self vanishes altogether. You don't look at the sky, you are the sky. You can taste the sky. It's not out there. As Zen would say, you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, you can swallow the Kosmos whole—precisely because awareness is no longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are not-two.

They dramatically overidealize this primitive lack of differentiation. Just because the self is not aware of suffering does not mean it has a positive presence of spiritual bliss. Lack of awareness doesn't mean presence of paradise!

The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to "black out" or "forget" various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a "constant Consciousness" or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.

The ladder is much higher than the climber, who remains committed to the lower rungs. It's one thing to tap into a higher level; quite another to actually live there! And the same thing can happen with spiritual experiences. People can temporarily access some very high rungs in the ladder or circle of awareness, but they refuse to actually live from those levels—they won't actually climb up there. Their center of gravity remains quite low, even debased

Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever.

In this regard, the pure Ego or pure Self is virtually identical with what the Hindus call Atman (or the pure Witness that itself is never witnessed—is never an object—but contains all objects in itself).

So these Nondual traditions do not necessarily abandon emotions, or thoughts, or desires, or inclinations. The task is simply to see the Emptiness of all Form, not to actually get rid of all Form. And so Forms continue to arise, and you learn to surf.

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, And everything you do, Is for your self, And there isn't one.

If not, they will once again contract and move down, to the lowest state possible, the gross, egoic realm, and there they will live the life of a typical human—some happiness, much sorrow, some joy, great suffering—until and unless they take up a spiritual practice and rediscover the higher realms of their own being, ultimately WAKING UP to their vast, pure, deep, spacious, Nondual Awareness or Clear Light Void, thence to assist others in their own Waking Up.

ALL you are actually ever aware of is this timeless Now.

Esa especie de paracaidista que contempla el mundo desde fuera está hundido hasta el cuello en contextos y sustratos que determinan el alcance de su visión!

What do you want?" and so on might be a few of the questions asked and responded to.

On a day like this, I can't imagine anything better that might happen in a person's life than for them to start paying attention to birds—to become aware of this magical world that exists all around us, unnoticed by many but totally captivating for those who know its secrets. This kind of spring day, with its bountiful myriads of colorful sprites just arrived from tropical shores, has to be one of the greatest gifts of life on Earth.