React Less Observe More Quotes

When people have a low vibration they are more reactive and less able to observe and think properly. Trauma, sadness, injustice, apathy and anger, all these things bring a person down to a state from where many never get out. Then because these people can't control themselves, they are constantly reacting to the high energies they feel - pulling them down. They attack the wrong target and fear what they need the most. They literally become antagonistic to higher vibrations. It's in their nature and they can't control that. Neither do they want. They will rationalize "disbelief" and prove you wrong to make you confused before they change, even when they promise to change, because they don't want to. And why would they if they can confuse you? Confusion is a low vibration scheme, and as you go lower in this vibration of lies, you feel more lost and confused about yourself. It then happens that you are forced to abandon any group that vibrates at a low frequency because they insist on making you confused. Certainty - which is not the same as arrogance but is instead the knowing of something to be true -, is a high frequency level. And the creatures of the darkness attack precisely that certainty, by making you feel ashamed of what you know, by calling you a narcissist. You find them in all religions without exceptions. Very few people know what the light is because they have never seen their real face in a mirror when the light is on.

One day in the dojo (the martial-arts studio) before our karate class began, I witnessed the power of a concentrated focus unlike anything that I’d ever seen growing up in the heartland of northern Missouri. On that day, our instructor walked into the room and asked us to do something very different from the form and movement practices that were familiar to us. He explained that he would seat himself in the center of the thick mat where we honed our skills, close his eyes, and go into a meditation. During this exercise, he would stretch his arms out on either side of his body, with his palms open and facedown. He asked us to give him a couple of minutes to “anchor” himself in this T position and then invited us to do anything that we could to move him from his place. The men in our class outnumbered the women by about two to one, and there had always been a friendly competition between the sexes. On that day, however, there was no such division. Together, we all sat close to our instructor, silent and motionless. We watched as he simply walked to the center of the mat, sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, held out his arms, and changed his breathing pattern. I remember that I was fascinated and observed closely as his chest swelled and shrank, slower and slower with each breath until it was hard to tell that he was breathing at all. With a nod of agreement, we moved closer and tried to move our instructor from his place. At first, we thought that this was going to be an easy exercise, and only a few of us tried. As we grabbed his arms and legs, we pushed and pulled in different directions with absolutely no success. Amazed, we changed our strategy and gathered on one side of him to use our combined weight to force him in the opposite direction. Still, we couldn’t even budge his arms or the fingers on his hands! After a few moments, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and with the gentle humor we’d come to respect, he asked, “What happened? How come I’m still sitting here?” After a big laugh that eased the tension and with a familiar gleam in his eyes, he explained what had just happened. “When I closed my eyes,” he said, “I had a vision that was like a dream, and that dream became my reality. I pictured two mountains, one on either side of my body, and myself on the ground between the peaks.” As he spoke, I immediately saw the image in my mind’s eye and felt that he was somehow imbuing us with a direct experience of his vision. “Attached to each of my arms,” he continued, “I saw a chain that bound me to the top of each mountain. As long as the chains were there, I was connected to the mountains in a way that nothing could change.” Our instructor looked around at the faces that were riveted on each word he was sharing. With a big grin, he concluded, “Not even a classroom full of my best students could change my dream.” Through a brief demonstration in a martial-arts classroom, this beautiful man had just given each of us a direct sense of the power to redefine our relationship to the world. The lesson was less about reacting to what the world was showing us and more about creating our own rules for what we choose to experience. The secret here is that our instructor was experiencing himself from the perspective that he was already fixed in one place on that mat. In those moments, he was living from the outcome of his meditation. Until he chose to break the chains in his imagination, nothing could move him. And that’s precisely what we found out.

During the nineteenth century, corps commander was the highest level of command to still require skills of an operator for success. A corps commander was still able to see a problem develop and to dispatch soldiers or artillery to solve it on the spot. But at the army level of command the dynamics were for the first time different. The army commander was much more distant from the battle and consequently had no ability to act immediately or to control soldiers he could not see. The distance of the army commander from the action slowed responses to orders and created friction such that the commander was obliged to make decisions before the enemy’s actions were observed. Civil War army commanders were now suddenly required to exhibit a different set of skills. For the first time, they had to think in time and to command the formation by inculcating their intent in the minds of subordinates with whom they could not communicate directly. Very few of the generals were able to make the transition from direct to indirect leadership, particularly in the heat of combat. Most were very talented men who simply were never given the opportunity to learn to lead indirectly. Some, like Generals Meade and Burnside, found themselves forced to make the transition in the midst of battle. General Lee succeeded in part because, as military advisor to Jefferson Davis, he had been able to watch the war firsthand and to form his leadership style before he took command. General Grant was particularly fortunate to have the luck of learning his craft in the Western theater, where the press and the politicians were more distant, and their absence allowed him more time to learn from his mistakes. From the battle of Shiloh to that of Vicksburg, Grant as largely left alone to learn the art of indirect leadership through trial and error and periodic failure without getting fired for his mistakes. The implications of this phase of military history for the future development of close-combat leaders are at once simple, and self-evident. As the battlefield of the future expands and the battle becomes more chaotic and complex, the line that divides the indirect leader from the direct leader will continue to shift lower down the levels of command. The circumstances of future wars will demand that much younger and less experienced officers be able to practice indirect command. The space that held two Civil War armies of 200,000 men in 1863 would have been controlled by fewer than 1,000 in Desert Storm, and it may well be only a company or platoon position occupied by fewer than 100 soldiers in a decade or two. This means younger commanders will have to command soldiers they cannot see and make decisions without the senior leader’s hand directly on their shoulders. Distance between all the elements that provide support, such as fires and logistics, will demand that young commanders develop the skill to anticipate and think in time. Tomorrow’s tacticians will have to think at the operational level of war. They will have to make the transition from “doers” to thinkers, from commanders who react to what they see to leaders who anticipate what they will see. To do all this to the exacting standard imposed by future wars, the new leaders must learn the art of commanding by intent very early in their stewardship. The concept of “intent” forms the very essence of decentralized command.

Learn to listen more and speak less. Learn to observe more and react less. You’ll be able to pick up a lot more than if you were busy speaking and reacting. And trust me, it would save you from a whole lot of trouble.

There are many interpretations of the word “mindfulness.” Its most common interpretation involves the use of meditation. But mindfulness includes many other aspects. One is contemplation. Being mindfully aware may sound difficult at first, but it’s not. Nor is it something we have to work hard to achieve. Mindful awareness is simply paying attention to what is happening now. In doing nothing other than living in the moment for a few minutes, we can let thoughts and feelings come and go without holding on to them or judging them. In doing so, we build the muscles of concentration, observation, and relaxation all at the same time. This is different from thinking, in which we often judge each moment on what has been or what could be. I sometimes call it mind-full awareness because the mind is full of nothing but a gentle focus on the breath. It is the direct opposite to being mind-less. Mindlessness is when we are on autopilot and not paying attention to the present moment. We’ve all been there. We sometimes feel as though we are sleepwalking through our lives. Minutes, hours, even days can go by that we don’t fully recall because we don’t feel aware of what is happening. By sitting and mindfully breathing for ten minutes a day, in as little as eight weeks you strengthen the part of the prefrontal cortex involved in generating positive feelings and diminish the part that generates negative ones. —Richard Davidson, PhD Sometimes in mindlessness we find ourselves reacting automatically in negative ways—lashing out or saying things we later regret. We ask ourselves, “Why did I do that?” or “Who was in charge of my mouth?” It doesn’t have to be this way. We all have the ability to become more present. First we have to truly believe it is possible. Then we create the intention. The more we tune in to our own thoughts and feelings, the more choices we give ourselves in terms of our responses. The key to all these mindful practices is to keep going and not be overcritical of ourselves. Whenever we become aware that our minds have wandered from our practice, we just gently refocus. Learning expert Tim Gallwey calls this “awareness without judgment” and claims that it is one of the greatest tools for learning in what he describes as the “inner game.” The more we reinforce this message, the more we improve our own focus—and the more we help our children accept that they can make mistakes without being overcritical of themselves. One

Ruth Baer based her recent analysis of mindfulness on descriptions of how a variety of normal subjects experience mindfulness internally when they are (more or less) ‘‘just sitting.’’3 Their mental experience includes: Acting with greater awareness. This implies that the subjects are neither being distracted nor are they acting solely on ‘‘automatic pilot.’’ Experiencing internal and external events nonjudgmentally. Noting an experience, but not reacting to it. Identifying mind states and describing them silently with words. Simply observing sensations that arise in the body, noticing feelings and thoughts, while attending to each of them with awareness.