awareness 2 - awareness 3 - awareness 4 - awareness 5
mindfulness

The person who cannot wonder is
but a pair of spectacles behind
which there is no eye.

Thomas Carlyle

  

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

      

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

  

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

   

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

  

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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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

   
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

  

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

awareness 2 - awareness 3
awareness 4 - awareness 5
mindfulness

  

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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

  

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

   

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

  
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

  

   
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
    

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

   

The trouble with us is that we expect too much from the great
happenings, the unusual things, and we overlook the common
flowers on the path of life, from which we might
abstract sweets, comforts, delights.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living 

   

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

  

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

   

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

awareness 2 - awareness 3
awareness 4 - awareness 5
mindfulness

   
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
What Is Your Life Telling You?    Helaine Iris
The Art of Living with Ourselves      Wilferd A. Peterson

   

   

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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

   

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference,
ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time,
add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Marian Wright Edelman

  

If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that
which I considered to be the most useful to the people of our century, I
should simply say:  in the name of God, stop a moment,
cease your work, look around you.

Leo Tolstoy

    

awareness 2 - awareness 3
awareness 4 - awareness 5
mindfulness

We are so busy in our lives that we need to purposely give attention
to the everyday things that can make our lives lovelier, such as keeping
a vase of fresh flowers in an obvious place, or several places in the house.

Emilie Barnes
  

Throughout our lives, the moment we bring our awareness fully into
the Now, we enter the domain of the true self, and our immediate
conscious reality is once again that of sensation and perception.  As
I sit in the park, the sunlight brightens the leaves and casts shadows
on the ground. I have a feeling of contentment.  And as long as “I”
don’t create stories about what I am seeing or about the fact that I
am feeling content, which leads me away from my immediate experience,
what I experience remains simply perception and sensation.  The same is
true for any feeling, any emotion. In the Now, it is just what it is.  In the
Now, I “go back” to my original awareness “by the way that [I] have
come.”  When we directly perceive and experience whatever is present
in our larger fields of awareness, it is possible to have a relationship with
it without becoming lost in it or defined by it.

Richard Moss
The Mandala of Being

  

It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment,
and not expecting a huge payoff.  The magic in this world seems
to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

Charles de Lint

   

         
   

When Walker first steps onto the road, he has no thoughts, no history, no memories, and no clothes. As he travels and meets people and learns from them, he comes to know more about life, living, and becoming the person he's meant to be. Walker is a parable for all of us who wonder what might be the purpose of life, why bad things happen with almost as much regularity as good things, and how we can learn from the bad examples and experiences in our lives as much as we can learn from the good things. Tom Walsh's parable is a story of the ages, a timeless exploration of ideas and thoughts that all of us wonder about, a sincere and heartfelt portrait of a man who has no past and no future, but who learns to make the most of each precious present moment as it comes.