our third page of quotations and passages on awareness

If I were to begin life again, I should
want it as it was. I would only
open my eyes a little more.

Jules Renard

Once upon a time there was a woman who longed to find out what
heaven is like. She prayed constantly, "O, God, grant me in this life
a vision of paradise." She prayed in this way for years until one
night she had a dream. In her dream an angel came and led her
to heaven. They walked down a street in paradise until they came
to an ordinary-looking house. The angel, pointing toward
the house said, "Go and look inside."

So the woman walked in the house and found a person preparing
supper, another reading the newspaper, and children playing with
their toys. Naturally, she was disappointed and returned to the
angel on the street. "Is this all there is to heaven?"

The angel replied, "Those people you saw in that house
are not in paradise--paradise is in them!"

Edward Hays

There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people
are those who do it to the limit of their ability.
We can be completely present. We can be all here.
We can give all our attention to the opportunity before us.

Mark van Doren

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

J.M. Power

Imagine how our lives might be if everyone had even a bit more
of the Wisdom that comes from seeing clearly. Suppose people
everywhere, simultaneously, stopped what they were doing and
paid attention for only as long as it took to recognize their shared
humanity. Surely the heartbreak of the world's pain, visible to all,
would convert everyone to kindness. What a gift that would be.

Sylvia Boorstein

Carefully observe the natural laws in operation in the world around you,
and live by them. From following them, you will learn the morality
of modesty, moderation, compassion, and consideration (not just
one society’s rules and regulations), the wisdom of seeing things as
they are (not of merely collecting “facts” about them), and the happiness
of being in harmony with the Way (which has nothing to do with
self-righteous “spiritual” obsessions and fanaticism). And you
will live lightly, spontaneously, and effortlessly.

Benjamin Hoff

Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the
birds sing in one's own way and not the way one was taught.

Eric Berne

The aim of life is to live, and to live
means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly,
serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller

An aware person is in tune with all the powers
of God and makes them his or her own.

Donald Curtis

There is no end to the beauty for the person
who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk
contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty.

Matthew Fox

There are so many things that can
provide us with peace. Next time you
take a shower or a bath, I suggest
you hold your big toes in mindfulness.
We pay attention to everything except
our toes. When we hold our toes in mindfulness and smile at them, we will
find that our bodies have been very
kind to us. We know that any cell in
our toes can turn cancerous, but our
toes have been behaving very well,
avoiding that kind of problem. Yet,
we have not been nice to them
at all. These kinds of practices
can bring us happiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

It is said that the Christian mystic Theresa of Avila found difficulty
at first in reconciling the vastness of the life of the spirit with the
mundane tasks of her Carmelite convent: the washing of pots, the
sweeping of floors, the folding of laundry. At some point of grace,
the mundane became for her a sort of prayer, a way she could
experience her ever-present connection to the divine pattern which
is the source of life. She began then to see the face of God in the folded sheets.

Rachel Naomi Remen

The fact that we are aware of ourselves is both
our greatest curse and also our greatest blessing.

Leonard Jacobson

Bring a heightened state of awareness to your daily life by noticing
your surroundings and thinking of their history. For example,
imagine the history of a wooden table. Think back to when it
was a tree in the woods. Look at the grain and see the lines,
each signifying a year, and think of that tree standing all that time
in one place. Then imagine it being cut down, taken to a mill, made
into lumber, shipped to a furniture factory, sawed, glued,
and finished. Imagine the table on the transport truck, and then
in a store, and think of the people walking by and touching it.
Then remember when it came into your life.
It has a history, the same as we do.

A heightened state of awareness comes when we look,
and then look again, and then relax into whatever situation
we are in. When we have a capacity for fascination with
simple things, we are able to sit peacefully for hours on a
park bench, or in an airport, engrossed by the different gaits
and gestures of people as they walk, talk, and stand. We develop
the ability to be patient as we stand in line at the grocery
store because we have the ability to look with fascination
and wonder at all that surrounds us.

Charlotte Davis Kasl

Sometimes we forget to pay close attention, and because we're
not doing so, we forget what we're missing. Paying close attention
to anything in our lives helps to remind us of the beauty and wonder
of this world, two elements of our lives that thoroughly enrich our
experience here. But only if we allow it to, and we can allow it
to only by paying attention to it.

tom walsh

It was as if I had worked for years on the wrong side
of a tapestry, learning accurately all its lines and
figures, yet always missing its color and sheen.

Anna Louise Strong

The "burning bush" was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out
whether or not Moses could pay attention to something for more than
a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to
what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without
falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one,
whenever we pay attention.

Lawrence Kushner

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take
a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was
greatly excited. . . at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive
in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe.
I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped
gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies
cast broadside from a generous hand.

Annie Dillard

I suspect we are all recipients of cosmic love notes. Messages, omens,
voices, cries, revelations, and appeals are homogenized into each day's
events. If only we knew how to listen, to read the signs.

Sam Keen

The world reflects what you need to see,
not only what you want to see.

Stephen C. Paul

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Look deeply. Don't miss the inherent quality and value of everything.

Marcus Aurelius

The majority of people are not awake; it is only here and there
that we find one even partially awake. Practically all of us, as a result,
are living lives that are unworthy almost the name of lives, compared
to those we might be living, and that lie within our easy grasp.
While it is true that each life is in and of Divine Being, hence always
one with it, in order that this great fact bear fruit in individual lives,
each one must be conscious of it; he or she must know it in thought,
and then live continually in this consciousness.

Ralph Waldo Trine

Everything is extraordinarily clear. I see the whole landscape
before me, I see my hands, my feet, my toes, and I smell the rich
river mud. I feel a sense of tremendous strangeness
and wonder at being alive. Wonder of wonders.

the Buddha

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 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.

Wilferd A. Peterson

Awareness is the first step on the path to change.
With awareness, you gain insight into the facets
of your life that need balance, the parts of
yourself that yearn for calm, and the times and
situations in which your heart is tempted to close. Important insights can lead to equally important
actions that improve your life exponentially.
Bringing an intentional and nonjudgmental
awareness to yourself and your environment
opens your mind and heart to the best choices
available. Such awareness empowers you to
make wise, healthy, and mature choices based
on real and appropriate needs and desires.

Sue Patton Thoele

Articles and book excerpts on Awareness:

Accepting Yourself Unconditionally      Brian Tracy
Living in the Moment      Susan L. Taylor
Mindfulness of This Moment      Jon Kabat-Zinn
The River of Feelings      Thich Nhat Hanh
from Walden       Henry David Thoreau
The Fourth Tuesday: We Talk about Death      Mitch Albom
You May Not Know What Really Matters      Elaine St. James
Call "Time Out" and Adjust Your Course      Jeff Keller
Have You Stopped to Listen Today?      tom walsh
How to Develop a Healthy Perspective      Jeff Keller
I'd Pick More Daisies      Don Herold
I Just Don't See It      Gail Pursell Elliott
Integrity      Paul Bauer
It's Your Life to Live      tom walsh
I Was Wondering      Beth Burns
Re-Energize Your Journal Writing      Michael Boyter
The Keeper of the Spring
A Lesson in Kindness      Author Unknown
Listen Closely. . . .      tom walsh
My Favorite Four-Letter Words      Norman Vincent Peale
Nourishing Awareness in Each Moment      Thich Nhat Hanh
Practical Time Management Tips      Tony Murtaugh
Walking a New Road      Jim Rohn
Watching the News      tom walsh

The words which one might be tempted to use for a silent and wide-open
mind are mostly terms of abuse--thoughtless, mindless, unthinking, empty-
headed, and vague. Perhaps this is some measure of an innate fear of
releasing the chronic cramp of consciousness by which we grasp the facts
of life and manage the world. It is only to be expected that the idea of an
awareness which is something other than sharp and selective fills us with
considerable disquiet. We are perfectly sure that it would mean going
back to the supposedly confused sensitivity of infants and animals, that we
should be unable to distinguish up from down, and that we should certainly
be run over by a car the first time we went out on the street.

Alan Watts

Those flickering leaf-shadows playing over the heap of cut grass. The shadows
are blue or green, I don't know which, but I feel them in my bones. Down
into the shadows of the gully, across it through glistening space, space that hangs
suspended filling the gully, so that sounds wander there, lose themselves, and
are drowned; beyond, there's a splash of sunlight leaping out against the
darkness of forest, the gold in it flows richly in my eyes, flows through my brain
in still pools of light. That pine, my eye is led up and down the straightness of its
trunk, my muscles feel its roots spreading wide to hold it so upright against the
hill. The air is full of sounds, sighs of wind in the trees, sighs which fade back
into the overhanging silence. A bee passes, a golden ripple in the quiet air.

Marion Milner

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