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awareness 2
- awareness 3
- awareness 4
mindfulness
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The person who cannot wonder is
but
a pair of
spectacles behind
which there is no eye.
Thomas Carlyle
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As the fish doesn't
know water, people are ignorant of space.
Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying
details; it ignores constants--especially constant backgrounds.
Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to
everything.
Alan Watts
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An enlightened mind is not
hoodwinked;
it is not shut up in a
gloomy prison till
it thinks the walls of its dungeon the
limits of the
universe, and the reach
of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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We
can know nothing of humankind without knowing
something of ourselves. Self-knowledge is the property
of those people whose passions have their
full play, but
who ponder over their results.
Benjamin Disraeli
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Become
aware that you already possess all the inner wisdom,
strength, and
creativity needed to make your dreams come
true. This is hard for most of us
to realize because the
source of this unlimited personal power is buried so
deeply beneath the bills, the car pool, the deadlines,
the business trip, and the
dirty laundry that we have
difficulty accessing it in our daily lives. When we can't
access our inner resources, we come to the flawed
conclusion that happiness
and fulfillment come only from
external events. That's because external events
usually
bring with them some sort of change. . . .We can learn to
be the catalysts
for our own change. . . .you already
possess all you need to be genuinely happy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
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We have only this moment,
sparkling
like a star in our hand. . .
and melting like a snowflake.
Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Edith Beynon
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The most beautiful
thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the
source of all true art and science. Those to whom
this
emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe, are as good as dead: their eyes are
closed.
Albert
Einstein
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Two things fill me with constantly
increasing admiration and awe,
the longer and more
earnestly I reflect on them:
the starry heavens without
and the moral law within.
Immanuel
Kant
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A greater poverty than
that caused by lack of money is the poverty of
unawareness. Men and women go about the world unaware of
the beauty, the goodness, and the glories in it. Their
souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocketbook
than to suffer from a poor soul.
Jerry
Fleishman
The miracles of the church seem
to me to rest
not so much on faces or voices or healing power
suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our
perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment
our eyes can see and our ears can hear
what is there about us always.
Willa Cather
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What else is going on
right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet?
The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. . .
. The sun's surface is now exploding; other stars implode
and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are
arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet the
winds are blowing. . . .Somewhere, someone under full
sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums;
in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the
eerie scent of the chinook, the snow-eater, a wind that
can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows,
and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter,
mistral. Lick a finger: feel the now.
Annie
Dillard
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To see a
World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
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Half the
joy of life is in the little things taken on the run.
Let
us run if we must--even the sands do that--but let us
keep our hearts young and our eyes open that nothing
worth our while shall escape us.
Victor
Cherbuliez
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I saw Fair Haven Pond
with its island, and meadow between the island and the
shore,
and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in
the lee of the island, and two hawks,
fish hawks perhaps,
sailing over it. I did not see how it could be improved.
Yet I do not see
what these things can be. I begin to see
such an object when I cease to understand it
and see that
I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no
further than this.
How adapted these forms and colors to
my eye! A meadow and an island!
What are these things?
Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof!
and Nature so
reserved! I am made to love the pond and the meadow,
as
the wind is made to ripple the water.
Henry David Thoreau
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If I had influence
with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening
of all children I should ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so
indestructible that it would last throughout life, an unfailing antidote against the boredom
and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial,
the alienation from the sources of our strength.
Rachel
Carson |
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I have walked with people whose eyes
are full of light but who see nothing
in sea or sky,
nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were
far better
to sail forever in the night of blindness with
sense, and feeling, and mind,
than to be content with the
mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark
is the
night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.
Helen Keller
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i
thank You God for this most amazing day;
for the leaping greenly spirits
of trees and a blue true
dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which
is infinite which is yes.
e.e. cummings
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Be on the lookout for
mercies. The more we look for them,
the more of them we
will see. . . . Better to lose count
while naming your
blessings than to lose your blessings
to counting your
troubles.
Maltbie D. Babcock |
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Why do some people always see beautiful
skies
and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human
beings,
while others are hard-pressed to find anything or
any place that is beautiful?
Leo Buscaglia
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A person is alive
only to the degree that he or she is aware. To make the most of
life
we must constantly strive to be aware of the importance of being
aware.
Be Aware of
Yourself: We should be aware of who we are and what we want to
be. We should be aware of our ideals and purposes and our
relationship to the Infinite.
Be Aware of Your
Senses and Use Them: So often we are distracted and unconscious
of the riches our senses can pour into our lives. We eat food
without tasting it,
listen to music without hearing it, smell without
experiencing the pungency of odors
and the delicacy of perfumes, touch
without feeling the grain or texture,
and see without appreciating the
beauty around us.
Be Aware of
People: This calls for sensitivity, an empathy that will make us
aware
of the inner thoughts of people--sadness, loneliness,
discouragement, joy. This is often an extrasensory
awareness. We should see people not as part
of a crowd, but as
individuals with needs, longings, and aspirations.
Be Aware of Our
Environment: We should be aware of our surroundings, both
our community and our country, and of the influences that now mold our
world so that
we can play our part in the life of our times. We
should be aware of significant events
in politics, science, and
religion and find in them the true and meaningful.
The secret of being
more vitally alive is to be more aware. Starting today, from
this moment, become aware of awareness!
Wilferd A. Peterson |
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We
all have within us a deep sense of what we need, and what is
right
and true for us. To access this we need to pay
attention to our feelings
and our intuition. We need
to
learn to listen deeply to ourselves and to
trust what we hear.
And we need to risk acting on what we feel to be true.
Even if we make mistakes, we must do this
in order to learn
and grow.
Shakti
Gawain
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Visit our new bookstore,
which is full
of inspirational and motivational material.
We'd also appreciate any suggestions you might have of what
to stock it with--please visit our feedback
page to make recommendations! |
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For
the past eighty years I have started each day in the same
manner.
It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential
to my daily life.
I go to the piano, and play two preludes and
fugues of Bach.
I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a
sort of benediction on the house.
But that is not its only
meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world
of which I have
the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness
of the
wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel
of being a
human being.
Pau
Casals |
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When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is
dwelling in awareness.
This half-smile, how many artists have labored to bring it to the lips
of countless statues
and paintings? I am sure the same smile must have been on the
faces of the sculptors
and painters as they worked. Can you imagine an angry painter
giving birth to such a smile?
Mona Lisa's smile is light, just a hint of a smile. Yet even a
smile like that is enough to relax
all the muscles in our face, to banish all worries and fatigue.
A tiny bud of a smile on our lips
nourishes awareness and calms us miraculously. It returns us to
the peace we thought we had lost.
Thich Nhat Hanh |
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When
we are conscious of being part of a wider universe, we can begin
to see that what we do matters. Every
action we take has a consequence somewhere,
whether good or bad. Everything
that happens affects a part of the whole body of life.
Having this knowledge of being part of something larger may motivate
us to contribute
to the greater good in whatever ways we can.
Sallirae
Henderson |
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One day, after a drawing exercise, one of my
students said in amazement,
"Every time I draw something I fall in love!" I wasn't
surprised to hear this,
because I know that when we wake up to the world around us in full
form,
with vivid colors, lines, and shapes, we become filled with awe and
wonder.
It is easy to fall in love with the things we've walked past so many
times,
because we realize that the world is offering itself to us like a
lover longing
for our embrace and recognition. Receiving the universe in all
its diversity
allows us a new self-appreciation, and coming to a level of
self-acceptance
and self-love prepares us to love the world in return. When this
awareness lives at our core, celebration becomes a way of life.
Adriana Diaz |
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If I
keep my eyes open, I see bugs and snakes and intricate
tiny flowers and cool rocks and nice smiles and beautiful
architecture and gentle kindness. If I keep my heart young
I notice great places to play, nice sunsets, cool hideouts,
neat ice formations, and strange and unusual birds and animals.
Life is never ordinary. We can make it seem ordinary
by closing our eyes and hearts to its wonder, but that's not
life's fault. I prefer to notice the little things and then
leave
them be--never trying to take them with me or preserve
them--because that's what life's supposed to be, and
that's what makes me happy and keeps away disappointment.
tom
walsh |
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Empiricists. .
. . think they believe only what they see,
but they are much better at believing than at seeing.
George Santayana |
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Two
great Kindle books from our site! First,
the daily meditations from the first year are gathered
together in a single volume at just $2.99 for the entire
year, and second, almost 4,000 of our most motivating and
inspiring quotations are gathered in one volume for just
99 cents-- you can
have thousands of quotations that took over a decade to
pull together, all on your
own PC, Mac, or Kindle, to take with you wherever you go,
to read whenever you feel the need for inspiring thoughts. |
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The
people who are aware of themselves are henceforward
independent;
and they are never bored, and life is only
too short,
and they are steeped through and through with
a profound yet temperate
happiness.
Virginia
Woolf
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