awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 5
mindfulness

I need a kind of spiritual inhalation, a spaciousness that comes
when I am living from the inside out.  Only in this way can I find
my joy again, the tenderness I can feel toward myself and the
world.  Find is the wrong word.  I don't think anyone "finds" joy.
Rather, we cultivate it by searching for the preciousness of small
things, the ordinary miracles, that strengthen our hearts so we can
keep them open to what is difficult:  delight in taking a shower or
a slow walk that has no destination, in touching something soft,
in noticing the one small, black bird who sings every morning from
the top of the big old pine tree that guards this cabin.  I need to
give my attention to the simple things that give me pleasure with
the same fervor I have been giving it to the complex things
with which I drive myself crazy

Dawna Markova
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

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I think a lot about Big Mind-Small Mind, expansive, wide-lens
consciousness and contracted, introverted consciousness.  I
have moments--we all do--when just being alive is a pleasure
and a miracle.  They feel like moments when the shutters of
the mind are open so I can look out.  It also feels as if
those same shutters have no hooks to fix them in an open
position.  One small wind and bang--they slam shut.

Sylvia Boorstein

What better way is there to make people love one another than
to make people understand one another?  True charity comes only
with clarity—just as “mercy” is but justice that understands.
Surely the root of all evil is the inability to see clearly that which is.

William Durant

Today, I choose awareness.
I choose to be aware of the beauty of life and living.
I choose to be aware of the simple truths in life.
I choose to be aware of the simple pleasures in life.
I choose awareness of joy.
I choose awareness of peace.
I choose awareness of love.
I choose to see, to feel, to know,
the presence of divine energy
in myself and those around me.
Today, I choose to be aware and to embrace all
that is good, noble, and divine.
As my awareness of joy, peace, love, and goodness
grows in my consciousness, joy, peace, love,
and goodness become the reality in which I live.
For this I am so grateful!
And So It Is!

Iyanla Vanzant

We spend most of our time in a kind of horizontal thinking.
We move along the surface of things going from one quick base
to another, often with a frenzy that wears us out.
We collect data, things, people, ideas, "profound experiences,"
never penetrating any of them. . . But there are other times.
There are times when we stop.  We sit still.  We lose ourselves
in a pile of leaves or its memory.  We listen and breezes
from a whole other world begin to whisper.

James Carroll

When I found I no longer had the stamina to work long hours clearing
the fallen limbs in the woods around my house, I began to bring a lawn
chair and a thermos with me.  I still work in the woods, but stop
frequently to sit and have a cup of tea.  I’ve identified birds I didn’t
know lived here and evidence that a bobcat shares the property.  Since
I’ve slowed down some, I see things I never saw before and find that
quiet solitude is not lonely but nurturing, allowing my heart to open
to the signs and lessons of nature that surround me.

Sallirae Henderson

A prisoner lived in solitary confinement for years.  He saw and spoke to
no one and his meals were served through an opening in the wall.

One day an ant came into his cell.  The man contemplated it in fascination
as it crawled around the room.  He held it in the palm of his hand the better
to observe it, gave it a grain or two, and kept it under his tin cup at night.

One day it suddenly struck him that it had taken him ten long years of
solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of an ant.

Anthony de Mello

awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 5
mindfulness

When I speak about attention, I mean literally, "How much attention can we pay to ourselves?"
As children, sometimes we cannot hold our attention for more than a couple of seconds.
Over the years we are able to attend to more and more.
Yet, we're seldom schooled to hold life in respect, to enlarge our ability to love,
take care of, and be respectfully connected with all things around us.

Brooke Medicine Eagle

I shall open my eyes and ears.  Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person.  I shall not then be
concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that
they are.  I shall joyfully allow them their "divine,
magical, and ecstatic" existence.

Clyde S. Kilby

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

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

The next message you need is always right where you are.

Ram Dass

I believe that if you put fine food into a body with a crummy mind, you get
a crummy body, but if you put crummy food into a body with
expanded awareness, you get a fine body.

W. Brugh Joy

If we had a keen vision of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the
grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of the roar
which lies on the other side of silence.  As it is, the quickest
of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.

George Eliot

Not only should you believe in what you are doing,
but you should know what you are doing.

Mason Williams

Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and
allow myself a momentary "paying-attention."  This paying-attention gives meaning
to my life.  I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention
paid to anything is a window into the universe.  Pausing to think this way,
even for a brief moment, is very important.  It gives quality to my day.

Robert Fulghum

When you look at a peony, you first see the whole flower, its color
and shape.  As you keep looking, you see the petals and veins and
stamens and pistils.  When you look more closely still, you see the
segments and shading in the petals, until you begin to feel the
vastness of those details.  To see the vastness by looking at one
thing in its details is to see its sacred connection to space and to
all other things. . . . When you see an object illuminated by space,
when you see with your heart, the object actually communicates
back to you.  When you cherish something, it glows.  It tells you
where it belongs and how you should present it, because you see
it so clearly.  Then you follow its magical instructions,
you create a work of art.

Jeremy Haywood

  awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 5
mindfulness

How can I bring the feeling of God’s presence with me
into everyday life?  Perhaps I can make it a point, whenever
I drive on the highway, or ride a bus or subway, or travel
by air, to count the time as a gift.  Instead of fretting about
what’s ahead of me or how long it’s taking me to get there,
perhaps I can allow myself just to relax into the scene:
to open the windows of my awareness and let it all in;
to say, with my Creator, "It is very good."

Marilyn Morgan Helleberg