Awareness 3

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 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

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

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

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

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

HOME - contents
abundance - acceptance - achievement - action - adversity - aging - anticipation - appreciation - attitude - authenticity
awareness - balance - beauty - being yourself - beliefs - body - character - children - Christianity - coincidence
commitment - common sense - community - compassion - compliments - compromise - confidence - conscience
contentment - courage - creativity - death - determination - earth - ego - encouragement - enthusiasm - eternity
faith - family - flowers - forgiveness - freedom - friendship - fun - gardening - gentleness - giving - God - goodness
grace - gratitude -growing up - happiness - healing - helpfulness - home - hope - humility - imagination
integrity - joy - kindness - laughter - learning - letting go - life - listening - love - marriage - miracles - mystery
nature - now - open-mindedness - opportunity - optimism - patience - peace - perseverance - perspective
play - prayer - principle - purpose - religion - rest - role models - sadness - self - self-respect - serving others - silence
simplicity - spirit - success - time - today - truth - values - war - wisdom - wonder - work - worship
spring - summer - fall - winter - Christmas - Thanksgiving - New Year - zen sayings
obstacles to living life fully - e-zine archives - quotations contents
You can help to support this site!

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

Many of us at times, myself included, don't pay very much attention
to our senses and to the world around us; we are too busy living
in our heads and are often lost--sometimes quite literally lost--in our
thoughts. Paradoxically, when we tune into our bodies, awaken our senses,
and pay a little bit of attention to the world around us, the obsessive
thinking that dominates us when we are upset or worried dissolves,
or at least quiets down, and consequently,
our thoughts become calmer and clearer.

Gary Egeberg

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

How then, do we come in contact with ourselves? Number one,
by becoming aware. Isn't that a nice word--aware? It kind of hits
you right where it matters, doesn't it? To be aware. To be aware
of everything. To be aware of life. To be aware of growth, to be
aware of death, to be aware of beauty, to be aware of people,
flowers, trees. Open your mind and begin to see and feel! Begin
to experience, and don't be ashamed of it! Touch, feel, chew, as
you never have before. Keep growing! Keep consistently growing.
Every moment that you do, you change. Open your mind, open your
heart, open your arms, take it all in. You can keep taking and taking
and taking, and what is, never runs out. There's always more. The
more that you see in a tree, the more that there is to see. You hear
a Beethoven sonata, and it leads you to infinity. Pick up a book of
poetry, and it leads you to beauty. You love one person,
and that love leads you to hundreds. Keep growing.

Leo Buscaglia

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

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

J.M. Power