142 Quotes On Cultivating Awareness

In our fast-paced world, cultivating awareness has become more essential than ever. It is the key to mindfulness, helping us connect more deeply with ourselves and the environment around us. By fostering a heightened sense of awareness, we can navigate life's challenges with clarity and purpose. In this blog post, we've compiled a collection of 142 powerful quotes to inspire and guide you on your journey toward greater awareness. These words of wisdom from thought leaders, philosophers, and spiritual guides offer insights that can transform your perspective and enrich your everyday experiences.

1. “Waking up is not a selfish pursuit of happiness, it is a revolutionary stance, from the inside out, for the benefit of all beings in existence.” - noah levine

2. “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

3. “Be present in all things and thankful for all things.” - Maya Angelou

4. “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” - William O. Douglas (ed.)

5. “I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was the end of some sort of career. I don’t know why, exactly. I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me. At the end of Slaughterhouse-Five…I had a shutting-off feeling…that I had done what I was supposed to do and everything was OK .” - Kurt Vonnegut

6. “What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.” - Michael Crichton

7. “The WakingI wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me, so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.” - Theodore Roethke

8. “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” - David Foster Wallace

9. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” - Malcolm X

10. “Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.” - Anthony de Mello

11. “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.” - Osho

12. “Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive?” - Osho

13. “Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.” - Daniel Gilbert

14. “The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:"This is water.""This is water."It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.” - David Foster Wallace

15. “Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.” - Annie Dillard

16. “These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.” - Anthony de Mello

17. “If you can't feel anything, it doesn't mean it's not hurting.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

18. “We become aware of the void as we fill it.” - Antonio Porchia

19. “While performing the great majority of the actions in their life, people are totally unaware. We tend to go through our daily activities mechanically. We talk without real purpose. We do things without even knowing that we do them. We are not really present to what we are doing. Even if we practise being aware, entire portions of our days can elapse before we retrieve our thread of awareness. In short, we are not living our life, we are sleeping it.” - Samuel Sagan

20. “You never know. Maybe when we’re dreaming…we’re more lucid than when we are awake.” - Katherine Angela Yeboah

21. “Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.” - John Henry Newman

22. “This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique...something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.” - Vaclav Havel

23. “Moments of splendor and moments of gloom – they help maintain life’s balance. One thought is key: they all pass...” - Joan Marques

24. “Simple things bring infinite pleasure. Yet, it takes us a while to realize that. But once simple is in, complex it out - forever.” - Joan Marques

25. “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.” - Joan Marques

26. “In still moments by the sea life seems large-drawn and simple. It is there we can see into ourselves.” - Rolf Edberg

27. “Four men killed that day. The phrase sat up in Willie's head like a rat and made a nest for itself there” - Sebastian Barry

28. “Not too long ago thousands spent their lives as recluses to find spiritual vision in the solitude of nature. Modern man need not become a hermit to achieve this goal, for it is neither ecstasy nor world-estranged mysticism his era demands, but a balance between quantitative and qualitative reality. Modern man, with his reduced capacity for intuitive perception, is unlikely to benefit from the contemplative life of a hermit in the wilderness. But what he can do is to give undivided attention, at times, to a natural phenomenon, observing it in detail, and recalling all the scientific facts about it he may remember. Gradually, however, he must silence his thoughts and, for moments at least, forget all his personal cares and desires, until nothing remains in his soul but awe for the miracle before him. Such efforts are like journeys beyond the boundaries of narrow self-love and, although the process of intuitive awakening is laborious and slow, its rewards are noticeable from the very first. If pursued through the course of years, something will begin to stir in the human soul, a sense of kinship with the forces of life consciousness which rule the world of plants and animals, and with the powers which determine the laws of matter. While analytical intellect may well be called the most precious fruit of the Modern Age, it must not be allowed to rule supreme in matters of cognition. If science is to bring happiness and real progress to the world, it needs the warmth of man's heart just as much as the cold inquisitiveness of his brain.” - Franz Winkler

29. “I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges.” - Paul Stamets

30. “Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.” - Anthony de Mello

31. “[W]e must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.” - George Eliot

32. “Live to learn to love. Learn to love to live. Love to live to learn so that you may live the life that you yearn.” - Rico Dasheem

33. “The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing ... He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths ... There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization — absolute and unconditional— of its own particular law ... To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being ... he has failed to realize his own life's meaning.” - Carl Jung

34. “Consciousness, which is the "reflective" element of Norman's conceptual brain, handles the "higher" functions at the metaphorical tip of the very top of that complicated organ. Because consciousness pays a lot of attention to your thoughts, you tend to identify it with cognition. However, if you try to figure out exactly how you run your business or care for your family, you soon realize that you can't grasp that process just by thinking about it. As Norman puts it, "Consciousness also has a qualitative, sensory feel. If I say, 'I'm afraid,' it's not just my mind talking. My stomach also knots up.” - Winifred Gallagher

35. “The Universe contains three things that cannot be destroyed; Being, Awareness and LOVE” - Deepak Chopra

36. “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” - Amit Ray

37. “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

38. “Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” - Voltaire

39. “You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.” - Amit Ray

40. “One never sleepwalks through grizzlyland, dreaming of other places to be.” - William Stolzenburg

41. “Each one's no longer consciousOf the high wall, or the rest:Since the one enduring fortress,Is the soldier's iron breast.If you’d live unconquered,Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:Every wife an Amazon bred,And every child a hero.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

42. “Instinct's aware of reflex when mind ain't yet.” - Toba Beta

43. “The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.” - Malcolm X

44. “The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life. The music tapped the back of our terrors, too. Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat. Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprisingly pleasures. No, we can't live at that pitch. But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware. And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it.” - Louise Erdrich

45. “Anna's eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in.” - Kendare Blake

46. “Sometimes the best advice comes from those whom you least expect…therefore take no one for granted” - Jeremy Aldana

47. “If a man seeks you to understand him; listen closely, for what is really going on is nothing more that you manifesting your desire to seek yourself on a plateau of awareness that is not tangible” - Jeremy Aldana

48. “Every day, you get the opportunity to change your life. Change what you do not want. Change what makes you unhappy.” - Rodolfo Costa

49. “Awareness makes us emotionally brilliant.” - Lorii Myers

50. “When the awareness of what is achievable brushes your life, your journey has begun.” - Lorii Myers

51. “All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.” - Zoe Weil

52. “Bringing to light what had been hidden in darkness should not overwhelm you, but EDUCATE you.” - Solange nicole

53. “How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?""You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.” - Paul Hoffman

54. “It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.” - Tim O'Brien

55. “Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.” - John Cage

56. “Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.” - Eric Berne

57. “Most men's awareness doesn't extend past their dinner plates.” - Scott Westerfeld

58. “To be able to possess a machine in such a way is the ultimate show of determination and awareness. It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.” - Garth Stein

59. “Erase from your vocabulary the word “someday.” Do not save things for “special occasions.” Take into account the fact that every day is special. Every day is a gift that we must appreciate and be thankful for. Wear your attractive clothes, wear your nice perfume, use your fine silverware and dishes, and drink from your expensive crystal glasses … just because. Live every day to the fullest and savor every minute of it.” - Rodolfo Costa

60. “There had been a time when I owned my life and now I felt like I was coming around to myself again. It's like I've finally discovered bones in myself I never knew I had. I discovered that it takes bravery to be one's self. I now know that the only thing I needed to be afraid of was of not finding my true self and having the courage to be me.” - Benilde Little

61. “We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.” - Sebastian Faulks

62. “There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, and when both and neither surround you.” - Diana Gabaldon

63. “Life wants each of us to live on the 'A Team' -      Wider, ever more intense Acceptance of good in our lives.      Wider, ever more intense Awareness of good in our lives.      Wider, ever more intense Action for good in our lives.www.upwardjoy.com” - Laura Teresa Marquez

64. “I learned long ago that when change comes, you gotta slow down and take note of it. In the midst of that change is all the possibility in the world.” - Bertice Berry

65. “Shepherds, did they but know it, walk through greater halls than kings.” - Charles Boardman Hawes

66. “The desire to live life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic treadmill, are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness, the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and unshakable.” - Edgar Mitchell

67. “And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.” - Robert James Waller

68. “To live without love for others is to live in aridity, to be self-serving and fruitless. To live without understanding is to live without sense or purpose. To live without awareness is to live as the deaf, blind and dumb in a world of vibrant light and sound.” - Belsebuub

69. “When you are soul-centered, you can focus your attention where and when you want to, easily, without distraction. You know to look for what you want to see and experience. You know that what you seek you shall find, and what you focus on in life will be more prominent in your awareness. You know your awareness is powerful and creative." ~ Sarah McLean” - Sarah McLean

70. “Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness.” - Deepak Chopra

71. “People don't want to know. They have to be made to know. Whether they act on what they know is up to them. But they have to know.” - Anthony Burgess

72. “My next fight would not be measured in rounds, but throughout a lifetime. It would sustain and fulfill me longer than anything in the cage could. My opponent, my fight, would be against the slipping aspects of American society.” - Cameron Conaway

73. “I became aware of Jews in my early teens, as I started to pick up the signals from the Christian church. Not that I was Christian – I’d been an atheist since I was five. But my father, a Congregational minister, had some sympathy with the idea that the Jews had killed Christ. But any indoctrination was offset by my discovery of the concentration camps, of the Final Solution. Whilst the term 'Holocaust' had yet to enter the vocabulary I was overwhelmed by my realisation of what Germany had perpetrated on Jews. It became a major factor in my movement towards the political left. I’d already read 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, the Penguin paperback that would change my life. The story of the gas chambers completed the process of radicalisation and would, just three years later, lead me to join the Communist Party.” - Phillip Adams

74. “Though you recite much scripture, If you are unaware and do not act accordingYou are like a cowherd counting others' cattle, Not a sharer in the wanderer's life.” - Anonymous

75. “True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.” - Kathleen Norris

76. “The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.” - J.Krishnamurti

77. “The word God can mean whatever you believe it to mean, for me it is the conscious stream of life from which we all come, and to which we can stayconnected throughout our lives as a source of peace, wisdom, love, support, knowing, inspiration, vitality, security, balance, and inner strength.I think that awareness is paramount, because in awareness we gain understanding, which then enables us to regain our feeling of empowerment.We need to feel empowered to make our choices conciously, about how to deal with changes in life, rather than reacting in fear (which tends to make us blind and weak).If we are aware, we can be realistic yet postive, and we can properly focus our intentions.Awareness can be quite sensual (which can add to your sense of feeling empowered). Think about how your body moves as you live your life, how amazing it is; think about nature, observe the intricate beautiful details of natural thngs, and of things we create, and breathe deeply to soak it all in.. Focus on the taste of food, the feel of textures in cloth, the feel of you partner's hand in yours; smell the sea breeze, listen to the wind in the trees, witness the colours of the leaves, the children playing; and be thankful for this life we are experiencing - this life we can all help to keep wonderful. Feel the wonder of being alive flood into you anytime you want, by taking a deep breath and letting the experience of these things fill you, even just by remembering.We all have that same stream of life within us, so you are a part of everything. Each one of us has the power to make a difference to everything.Breathe in that vital connection to the life source and sensual beauty everywhere, Feel loved and strong.” - jay woodman

78. “A 65 year old woman questioning herself is no different than a 15 year old girl launching herself.” - Linda Robinson

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

80. “The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us - these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road - aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and calls consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.” - Pirsig, Robert M.

81. “A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes.I screamed aloud, as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind.The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.You left me in the dark.No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight.In the shadow of your heart.And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat.I tried to find the sound.But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness,So darkness I became.I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map.And knew that somehow I could find my way back.Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too.So I stayed in the darkness with you.” - Florence Welch Isabella Summers

82. “Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.” - Idries Shah

83. “Stay positive, all other choices are pointless punishments to your psyche.” - Joe Peterson

84. “Our tomorrows must be met at the time of their arrival... with the HOPE they are as BEAUTIFUL as today!” - Joe Peterson

85. “I shrugged. “I guess that guys who’d never do something like that have a hard time believing some other guy would,” I said, but I could see her point. Awareness and apologies were fine and good, but they could come too late.” - Tammara Webber

86. “Being aware is being aware of one's own mind and the games it plays on itself.” - Robin Macnaughton

87. “Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” - John O'Donohue

88. “Stay present for the “now” of your life. It’s your “point of power.” - Doug Dillon

89. “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” - Eckhart Tolle

90. “Our life stories are largely constructed and without mindfulness can prove destructive.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

91. “Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.” - Robert McKee

92. “Engagement is the conscious inhabitation of your body and mind. Practice is happening when your open awareness is moving with, in and through your embodied activity. Intrinsic to practice is your conscious participation with your life. Engagement is the conduction of your free and open awareness through your activities, whatever they may be.” - McNamara, Robert

93. “No matter what your spiritual condition is, no matter where you find yourself in the universe, your choice is always the same: to expand your awareness or contract it.” - Thaddeus Golas

94. “The human tendency toward confirmatory thinking - all of us are bias to seek information that fits what we already believe.” - Valerie Tarico

95. “We humans are prone to err, and to err systematically, outrageously, and with utter confidence. We are also prone to hold our mistaken notions dear, protecting and nourishing them like our own children. We defend them at great cost. We surround ourselves with safe people, people who will appreciate our cherished views. We avoid those who suggest that our exalted ideas, our little emperors, have no clothes.” - Valerie Tarico

96. “The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control.” - Kelly McGonigal

97. “You can change the place you live, your clothes, your interests, your friends, your religion and even your partner. However, if you forgot to change your mind, attitude, beliefs about the world, how you treat people and how you plan to be different this time around, why did you even bother?” - Shannon L. Alder

98. “After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering?” - Nancy Farmer

99. “Awareness Makes a Cure Possible.” - Sydney Davies

100. “Empowerment is being aware that there is no one to blame for my choices and actions; that I have a personal choice and responsibility for my life.” - Steve Maraboli

101. “A fish cannot be aware of the ocean, before jumping up out of water.” - Rixa White

102. “Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special—and then you will be special.” - Osho

103. “We attract what we're meant to because we're aware & self-empowered enough to choose most of the time. Other times we have lessons to learn” - jay woodman

104. “Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow. Awareness of others is a healthy antidote to this self-focus.” - Kevin Malarkey

105. “deathAloneness has been my constant companion in life. I lost early the people that I loved: first when my young and unmarried biological mother had to leave me because of outer circumstances. I was adopted by a very loving couple, who could not concieve a child. I have always felt naturally loved by them, and I have never really felt that I was adopted. Instead, I have always felt that I did a little detour to be able to be adopted by my real parents. Then my mother died when I was 15 years old after a long sickness. On her funeral I took the decision to never depend on anybody again. Her death created such a deep pain in me that it was also the death of relationships for me. Then my father died when I was 21 years old – and I was completely alone in the world. This created a basic feeling of being alone and unloved in me, it created early a feeling of independence and self-suffiency in me. It also created a basic feeling of not trusting that I am alright as I am, and of not trusting that life takes care of me. This created such a pain in me that I simply repressed the pain for many years in order to survive. These early meetings with death also created a thirst in me to discover a quality, an inner awareness, that death could not take away. Now I can see that these early painful experiences are a blessing in disguise. It liberated me from relationships. I relate with people, but there is always an aloneness within me. I realize that a seeker of truth needs to accept that he is totally alone. It is not possible to lean on other people like crutches. When we totally accept our aloneness, it becomes a source of love, joy, truth, silence, meditation and wholeness. I shared these experiences with a beloved friend and her thoughtful comment was: “I have my own aloneness.” Aloneness is to be at home in ourselves, to be in contact with our inner source of love, while loneliness is to hanker for other people, to hanker for a source of love outside of ourselves. Aloneness is to come home.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

106. “Meditation is the way to be with ourselves and to learn to accept our own aloneness. In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, you are not. I have always been comfortable with my own aloneness as an inner source of love, joy, truth, silence and wholeness. When we depend on other people, it becomes a bondage - instead of a freedom. I took this sunday as a meditation to be consciously alone, and to accept all feelings of pain, of not being loved and the fear of being nobody that would come up during the meditation. This meditation goes up and down during the day: at certain moments, I can totally accept my aloneness. It feels fine to accept that I am alone and that I am nobody. At other moments, I feel the pain of not being loved, when the meditation brings up how dependence on other people is a barrier to totally accept my aloneness. I take a coffee at a restaurant. I am the only person that sits alone in the restaurant, while the other guests are couples and families eating sunday dinner. It brings up painful feelings of not being loved and wanting to be needed by other people, when I see how much people cling to each other in the couples and the families. Escaping your aloneness through relationships and needing other people's attention through being a teacher, a politician or by being rich or famous, are ways of escaping the pain of aloneness. But then the relationships are not really love. Only when you are capable of being alone, you can really love. When we can be alone, we discover the inner source of love, which is our true nature. When we can be alone, it open the door to be one with the Whole.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

107. “Every day we’re given opportunities, some of us see them and some are too busy to notice.” - Rachael Bermingham

108. “The human heart operates from two premises: "I Am Responsible" and "Only Love Works.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

109. “Love is what creates the freedom and relaxation to be who we really are.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

110. “The greatest gift we can give to another person is our love.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

111. “Intuition is a capacity of our heart. Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us, instead of being directed by our ideas, desires and expectations. Since the days of Aristotle’s, we have been taught that logic is the only way to reach a solution. But while logic works in a step-by-step-process to reach a solution, intuition simply takes a quantum leap to a solution without any intermediate steps.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

112. “Presence is the capacity to be present for another person with an open heart and to be grounded in our inner being. It is to be present for another person as a supporting light, as a supporting presence – and simply to be present with another person can help.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

113. “Presence is to meet another person in meditation. Presence is to invite another person in meditation. It is a meeting in love, joy, acceptance, sincerity, truth, silence and oneness.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

114. “When we are authentic, when we act out of presence and awareness, it also gives nourishment to the inner being of people around us.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

115. “In the therapeutic process based on awareness, there exists no ”I" – it just exists a presence, a light, a love and a silence.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

116. “In situations where I feel unclear or I do not know what to say or do, I turn my attention within myself. Then I listen to what my intuition and to what Existence within myself wants in this moment. Through listening within in this way, an answer often comes in the form of a creative and authentic impulse to say or do something or simply being silent until Existence is ready to respond.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

117. “Emptiness and the not-“I” is the quality that arises when the therapist consciously moves out of his own way without hindering the therapeutic process through his own ideas, attitudes, expectations and concepts. He is present, available and responds with the truth in the moment.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

118. “Presence is about how every action can arise from the quality, which we call awareness – the presence of our inner being, the presence of our soul. It is a large difference between working with people from the inner being and working with people from duty or a specific technique. Through working from the inner being, we can touch the soul of the other person, while we can only touch the personality of the other person, his surface and periphery, if we just work from a technique.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

119. “It's not the world that needs to change - it's our consciousness we must raise” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

120. “We're merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

121. “It was a child's awareness, never spoken or even fully acknowledged, but deeply felt.” - Donna Woolfolk Cross

122. “Outer relationships with a man or a woman are a mirror of the relationship between our own inner man and woman. Embracing our own inner man and woman means to understand the inner drama that happens between our male and female aspects, which manifests on the outside as relationships.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

123. “When we have developed a trust in both our inner man and woman and they can nourish, support, communicate and cooperate with each other, a love begins to flow between them.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

124. “When both the inner man and woman takes responsibility for themselves and lives their own truth, a joy and love begins to flow naturally between them. Through understanding both the inner man and woman, we understand that outer relationships simply mirror the relationship between our inner man and woman. This understanding gives us the opportunity to take conscious responsibility for our choices and our further steps towards spiritual maturity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

125. “Through becoming aware of how the inner man and woman relates and communicates inside ourselves, it creates a joy and satisfaction in the three life areas that they influence: our meditation and inner growth, our relationships and our work and creativity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

126. “It is when our inner male and female sides meets within ourselves that a new spark of love, joy, and wholeness arises within ourselves.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

127. “Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death. Through saying “yes” and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

128. “Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

129. “What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

130. “People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

131. “Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable.” - Peace Pilgrim

132. “The simple truth is that love is a part of who we are, not something that others "give" to us if we're worthy of it. We're taught that if we just find that right person, and that person "falls in love" with us, everything will be fine. We're not taught about recognizing the love that is a part of our spirits, the love that we radiate when we recognize the beauty and need in all the people that surround us. Love is ours to share, at all moments and in all situations, but for some reason we fear doing so.” - Tom Walsh

133. “Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way. I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. I woke at intervals until, by that September when Father went down the river, the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not. I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.” - Annie Dillard

134. “The moment we begin to define others and ourselves by how we are different, the seeds of separation are planted.” - Kim H. Krisco

135. “Wars are an outdated way to try to solve conflicts, which is unacceptable in the 21st century. Instead of trying to conquer yourself, wars are an unconscious way to try to conquer life. Wars are an unconscious way to try to conquer death, which is the basic fear in the West.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

136. “Silence is the invisible door to God. Silence is the inner door to become one with God.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

137. “We must reject the artificial and embrace what is real and true: truth in food, community, relationships and self.” - Bryant McGill

138. “We must question every inner-belief we possess without fear or attachment.” - Bryant McGill

139. “The most powerful tools of revolution through intention are humility and consciousness.” - Bryant McGill

140. “Successful continual learning means maintaining a balance and variety of success-oriented attributes, the most prominent being awareness, confidence, persistence, determination, courage, and focus. But curiosity, ingenuity, and creativity may be even more important as it is these traits that fuel the desire to continue to question and challenge the status quo.” - Lorii Myers

141. “I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart.” - Scott Russell Sanders

142. “What people resist the most about spiritual healing is changing their minds.” - S. Kelley Harrell