β
The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.
β
β
John F. Kennedy
β
My only advice is to stay aware, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it.
β
β
Judy Blume
β
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
β
β
Hermann Hesse (Demian)
β
The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other peopleβs perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
β
β
Michel de Montaigne (The Complete Essays)
β
Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they donβt need the approval of others.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; weβre actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that weβre suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before!
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right.
β
β
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
β
It's worth making time to find the things that really stir your soul. Thatβs what makes you really feel alive. You have to say βnoβ to other things youβre used to, and do it with all your heart.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
I don't fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
You will never follow your own inner voice until you clear up the doubts in your mind.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
I am who I am; no more, no less.
β
β
Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1))
β
Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;
For I am like the Moon,
you will see me with new face everyday.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
β
β
Marianne Williamson
β
You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!
β
β
John Lennon
β
Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
β
Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.
β
β
Ramana Maharshi
β
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work β the most you will make is 5 dollars.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
β
You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
β
For some people, βthe point of no returnβ begins at the very moment their souls become aware of each othersβ existence.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
β
β
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
β
Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.
β
β
Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
β
Your greatest awakening comes, when you are aware about your infinite nature.
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me.
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.
β
β
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
β
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
β
We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful.
β
β
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
β
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
β
β
Pico Iyer
β
APPLY WITHIN
You once told me
You wanted to find
Yourself in the world -
And I told you to
First apply within,
To discover the world
within you.
You once told me
You wanted to save
The world from all its wars -
And I told you to
First save yourself
From the world,
And all the wars
You put yourself
Through.
APPLY WITHIN by Suzy Kassem
β
β
Suzy Kassem
β
I suffer because my interactions with others do not meet the expectations I did not know I had.
β
β
James Patrick McDonald
β
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
β
β
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
β
You are your master. Only you have the master keys to open the inner locks.
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
Have love for your inner Self and everything else is done for you.
β
β
Amit Ray (Peace Bliss Beauty and Truth: Living with Positivity)
β
Total paranoia is just total awareness.
β
β
Charles Manson
β
To know a species, look at its fears. To know yourself, look at your fears. Fear in itself is not important, but fear stands there and points you in the direction of things that are important. Don't be afraid of your fears, they're not there to scare you; they're there to let you know that something is worth it.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Each person you meet
is an aspect of yourself,
clamoring for love.
β
β
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
β
Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.
β
β
Hugo Hamilton (The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood)
β
IF YOU DON'T GO AFTER WHAT YOU WANT; YOU COULD SPEND YOUR ENTIRE LIFE SETTLING FOR WHAT YOU CAN GET
β
β
Mo Stegall (Against All Odds I Can Be: 10 Steps To Revolutionize Your Destiny)
β
Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.
β
β
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
β
At the core of your heart, you are perfect and pure. No one and nothing can alter that.
β
β
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
β
Forget your voice, sing!
Forget your feet, dance!
Forget your life, live!
Forget yourself and be!
β
β
Kamand Kojouri
β
It is when you lose sight of yourself, that you lose your way. To keep your truth in sight you must keep yourself in sight and the world to you should be a mirror to reflect to you your image; the world should be a mirror that you reflect upon.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on.
I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise.
I have full confidence in myself and my abilities.
I can do all things that I commit myself to.
No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me.
I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily.
I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past.
I am moving forward daily.
Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
β
If you walk on sunlight, bathe in moonlight, breathe in a golden air and exhale a Midas' touch; mark my words, those who exist in the shadows will try to pull you into the darkness with them. The last thing that they want is for you to see the wonder of your life because they can't see theirs.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
β
β
Andrei Tarkovsky (Sculpting in Time)
β
What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?"
"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced β from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.
β
β
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
β
Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves. ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent.
β
β
Sanaya Roman (Living with Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation)
β
I have realized; it is during the times I am far outside my element that I experience myself the most. That I see and feel who I really am, the most! I think that's what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it's only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing "tail" behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they're shooting stars! That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me! I discover a smile I didn't know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn't know existed in me... I see myself. I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.
β
β
Sharon Maas (Of Marriageable Age)
β
You are awareness, disguised as a person.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
β
If you swim effortlessly in the deep oceans, ride the waves to and from the shore, if you can breathe under water and dine on the deep treasures of the seas; mark my words, those who dwell on the rocks carrying nets will try to reel you into their catch. The last thing they want is for you to thrive in your habitat because they stand in their atmosphere where they beg and gasp for some air.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.
β
β
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
β
I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with the contents of your mind.
β
β
Rasheed Ogunlaru
β
I wasn't lonely. Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world. If anything, because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more aware of and connected to the seven billion other people who call it home.
β
β
Chris Hadfield (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth)
β
When you blame, you open up a world of excuses, because as long as you're looking outside, you miss the opportunity to look inside, and you continue to suffer.
β
β
Donna Quesada (Buddha in the Classroom: Zen Wisdom to Inspire Teachers)
β
1.If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion.
β
β
Osho
β
Be patient. Your skin took a while to deteriorate. Give it some time to reflect a calmer inner state. As one of my friends states on his Facebook profile: "The true Losers in Life, are not those who Try and Fail, but those who Fail to Try.
β
β
Jess C. Scott (Clear: A Guide to Treating Acne Naturally)
β
A healer's power stems not from any special ability, but from maintaining the courage and awareness to embody and express the universal healing power that every human being naturally possesses.
β
β
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
β
B.O.Y. means βBeware of Youββ¦ Be aware of your power. We have the choice to live positively or in our own destruction.
β
β
Hayley Williams
β
Owning your own feelings, rather than blaming them on someone else, is the mark of a person who has moved from contracted to expanded awareness.
β
β
Deepak Chopra (Spiritual Solutions: Answers to Life's Greatest Challenges)
β
Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.
β
β
Germany Kent
β
Your strength doesn't come from winning. It comes from struggles and hardship. Everything that you go through prepares you for the next level.
β
β
Germany Kent
β
If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.
β
β
Thich Nhat Hanh
β
I am sure it is everyoneβs experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.
β
β
W.H. Auden (Markings: Spiritual Poems and Meditations)
β
No matter who we are, no matter what our circumstances, our feelings and emotions are universal. And music has always been a great way to make people aware of that connection. It can help you open up a part of yourself and express feelings you didn't know you were feeling. It's risky to let that happen. But it's a risk you have to take-because only then will you find you're not alone.
β
β
Josh Groban
β
If it is bread that you seek, you will have bread.
If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul.
If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.
β
β
Tobsha Learner (The Witch of Cologne)
β
There is something simply beautiful and simply innocent, in being human. It is just so innocent and beautiful. I love it.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Just take this as a warning. Know that there's always a price for not being yourself.
β
β
Benilde Little (Acting Out: A Novel)
β
Change happens for you
the moment you want something
more than you fear it.
β
β
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
β
Advice to my younger self:
1 Start where you are with what you have
2 Try not to hurt other people
3 Take more chances
4 If you fail, keep trying
β
β
Germany Kent
β
A universe without purpose should neither depress us nor suggest that our lives are purposeless. Through an awe-inspiring cosmic history we find ourselves on this remote planet in a remote corner of the universe, endowed with intelligence and self-awareness. We should not despair, but should humbly rejoice in making the most of these gifts, and celebrate our brief moment in the sun.
β
β
Lawrence M. Krauss
β
It's easier to take than to give. It's nobler to give than to take. The thrill of taking lasts a day. The thrill of giving lasts a lifetime.
β
β
Joan Marques
β
Once our imagination starts collapsing and the fragrant blossoms of our inspiration are wilting, petal after petal, our awareness may shake to its foundations, but nothing might deter us if we find the strength to rediscover the path back to the undifferentiated groundedness of our being and the essence of our roots.
("One drink after work.")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
β
β
Martha Graham
β
All we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)
β
From "Wetness and Water"
How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?
Do not try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire.
Do not wash a wound with blood.
No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes it's in front.
Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you.
What hurts you blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Big Red Book)
β
But there was a special kind of gift that came with embracing the chaos, even if I cursed most of the way. I'm convinced that, when everything is wiped blank, it's life 's way of forcing you to become acquainted with and aware of who you are now, who you can become. What is the fulfillment of your soul?
β
β
Jennifer DeLucy
β
How aware are we of our own inner life, our spirituality-something so intangible yet so priceless? How much effort do we make to perceive that which is not obvious, which can neither be seen nor heard? I believe the exploration and enrichment of the human spirit is what determines our very humanity. Such enrichment provides an inner compass that can lead civilizations to greatness.
β
β
Daisaku Ikeda
β
Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?
β
β
Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)
β
Missing you,
I missed a part of me
I shared with you
thatβs now gone.
Missing you,
when really,
it was the way you made me feel
and the things you made us do.
Missing you
I shouldnβt be.
But I canβt help missing
who I was with you.
Missing you,
I missed
and missed so much of the world
and wasnβt even missed in return.
β
β
Kamand Kojouri
β
Your mind can be your enemy or friend. If you always follow your heart, your mind will feel neglected. If you follow only your mind, your heart will never forgive you. Never ignore your conscience, yet always be conscious of reason. Make your heart and mind friends and you will have peace of mind throughout life's seasons.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
Through the reciprocation of energy, always, and every time, we will get exactly what we put out there to others. Like Karma, whatever we do will indefinitely come back to us in some way shape or form.
When goodness is given, it is likely to returned.
When you support someone, you will be supported.
When you Love, you will be Loved.
If you give someone your last dollar, someone will help you equally.
This is the law of the universe. What selfless characteristics do you portray to benefit your reality? Expand.
β
β
Will Barnes (The Expansion of The Soul)
β
That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space.
β
β
Vladimir Bartol (Alamut)
β
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
β
β
David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
β
What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
The wise comprehends with knowledge
To the ignorant it is but a wonder
Some worship the formless God
Some worship his various forms
In what way He is beyond these attributes
Only the Knower knows
That music cannot be written
How can then be the notes
Say Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion.
β
β
Kabir
β
We've all heard about people who've exploded beyond the limitations of their conditions to become examples of the unlimited power of the human spirit.
You and I can make our lives one of these legendary inspirations, as well, simply by having courage and the awareness that we can control whatever happens in our lives. Although we cannot always control the events in our lives, we can always control our response to them, and the actions we take as a result.
If there's anything you're not happy about--in your relationships, in your health, in your career--make a decision right now about how you're going to change it immediately.
β
β
Anthony Robbins
β
Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.
β
β
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
β
This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness hereβthe screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.
β
β
Frank Herbert (Heretics of Dune (Dune #5))
β
Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many waysβthe strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled daysβthat's something else.
β
β
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)
β
The most important thing in life is your inner energy. If youβre always tired and never enthused, then life is no fun. But if youβre always inspired and filled with energy, then every minute of every day is an exciting experience. Learn to work with these things. Through meditation, through awareness and willful efforts, you can learn to keep your centers open. You do this by just relaxing and releasing. You do this by not buying into the concept that there is anything worth closing over. Remember, if you love life, nothing is worth closing over.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness β awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: βThis is water, this is water.β
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
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David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
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A positive attitude is most easily arrived at through a deliberate and rational analysis of whatβs required to manifest unwavering positive thought patterns. First, reflect on the actual, present condition of your mind. In other words, is the mind positive or not? Weβve all met individuals who perceive themselves as positive people but donβt appear as such. Since the mind is both invisible and intangible, itβs therefore easier to see the accurate characteristics of the mind through a personβs words, deeds, and posture.
For example, if we say, βItβs absolutely freezing today! Iβll probably catch a cold before the end of the day!β then our words expose a negative attitude. But if we say, βThe temperature is very coldβ (a simple statement of fact), then our expressions, and therefore attitude, are not negative. Sustaining an alert state in which self-awareness becomes possible gives us a chance to discover the origins of negativity. In doing so, we also have an opportunity to arrive at a state of positiveness, so that our words and deeds are also positive, making others feel comfortable, cheerful, and inspired.
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H.E. Davey