Quotes About Presence

Unspoiling is nothing more than the absence of spoiling.

If we would just slow down, happiness would catch up to us.

Giving someone or something our entire attention, with no preconceived ideas or agendas whatever, is the essence of love.

Here. Right here, right now bring your mind to this place and time. Invite it, even if it resists, to sit and witness what it is to be alive. Let there be no ulterior motive in this moment but to be. Rest on the waves of breath and choose to experience all of it. Let thoughts float through and leave again, as the mind slowly settles like snow inside a shaken paperweight. This is all there is. Here. Right here and now.

She was a mousy woman, uncomfortable in her own body. Laverne detested women who filled the air with their discomfort, their body apologizing for their very existence. They tried so hard to take such little space that they ended up filling every room.

All things came from Me and all things will return to Me. Split the timber and there I Am. Lift a stone and you will discover Me there.

Look not above, there is no answer there; Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer; Near is as near to God as any Far, And Here is just the same deceit as There.

People on earth are never alone," he explained. "There's always someone as a guide for each individual.

Why do we do inefficient things? Because sometimes we don't want life to be seamless—we want to feel resistance, we want to take our time, we want to savor the experience. When what you're doing isn't just a means to an end, you're in no hurry to get it done.

When what you're doing isn't just a means to an end, you're in no hurry to get it done.

She knows she'll never see him again in this or any life to come. Yet she sees him wherever she looks. That's life; the dead keep the living alive.

A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

Je ne fais aucun mal en restant ici. I do no harm by remaining here.

For the first time, she realizes that being alone is a contradiction in terms. Even in a body's most private moments, something else joins in.

Trees know when we're close by. The chemistry of their roots and the perfumes their leaves pump out change when we're near. . . . When you feel good after a walk in the woods

inhabit that place. Wherever

The third tree is all around you: Now. And like Now itself, it will follow wherever you go.

You have a right to be present. A right to attend. A right to be astonished.

They were two human primates carrying another primate. One was the master of the earth, or at least believed himself to be, and the other was a nimble dweller in trees, a cousin of the master of the earth. Both species, the human and the monkey, were in the presence of another life form, which was older and more powerful than either of them, and was a dweller in blood.

The character damage of a trauma survivor," he concludes, "can be understood as a reflection both of his or her radical aloneness and of the continued presence of the perpetrator in the victim's inner life.

In solitude, at last, we're able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence

God for us, God alongside us, God within us.

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.

Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self.8 Love is where you came from and love is where you're going. It's not something you can buy. It's not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit—or what some theologians name uncreated grace.