Yet even after being so close to misery in so many different places, on some level I still thought of most people's struggles as man against the world, rather than man against the self. But when you're in bed and not tired and it's bright outside and you can't seem to get your feet on the floor, you…
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Quotes tagged ‘The Art of Awareness’
When we're struggling, we don't need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto.
It’s a weird specific type of human arrogance to think that people can offset the great universal balance of positive and negative. It’s like trying to split an atom; we all know what happens when you do that. There are thousands of books out there trying to convince people that the secret to their…
Individualized politics have not-so-coincidentally evolved alongside moral decline and a general lack of discipline among individuals. Alongside this shift in the political consciousness of the masses, many of whom have been taught to perceive themselves as entirely singular free agents in the world…
The capacity for original and creative thinking is markedly stymied by stray thoughts, obsessive ruminations and other forms of ‘mental load.’ The mind’s natural tendency is to explore and to favor novelty, but when occupied it looks for the most familiar and inevitably least interesting solution.
Many psychologists assume that the mind, left to its own devices, is inclined to follow a well-worn path of familiar associations. But our findings suggest that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.
Falling in love for us meant falling into talk. We talked about our memories, broken bones, broken hearts and one broken marriage. We talked about our mothers, one Jewish and one Italian, constantly cooking and feeding. We talked about our fathers, neither of whom cooked or fed. We talked about frie…
Given how the human psyche operates, it's almost impossible not to parent ourselves similarly to how we were parented originally. If our caretakers dealt with us in a hurtful manner, as adults we'll find all kinds of ways to perpetuate that unresolved pain onto ourselves.
Though related, self-acceptance is not the same as self-esteem. Whereas self-esteem refers specifically to how valuable, or worthwhile, we see ourselves, self-acceptance alludes to a far more global affirmation of self. When we're self-accepting, we're able to embrace all facets of ourselves – not j…
Maybe the problem is not that we don’t have enough time but that we waste the time we have. Seneca famously thought this. (‘It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.’) Most of us seem unable to refrain from ‘wasting’ time. It is the rare person indeed who can be max…
Today I will lie in bed and drown in salt water. Tomorrow I will remember myself, drink milk to strengthen my bones, sharpen my nails like claws because if I’m supposed to be dangerous might as well play the part, ¿no? If I will be named dangerous, then I will wear it like armor to fight for my righ…
Venus, the planet of love and harmony has been in close vicinity of the sun, since April 26th and will continue to be until 15th July, paving the way for the love revolution when Jupiter enters Libra on September 9th until October 10th, 2017. We can see similarities now to 1969 when Jupiter was in L…
Something is happening to our species, and especially over the last 70 years. The years since 1945 have seen many horrors: the partition of India, China’s Great Leap Forward, the Vietnam War, the Biafran crisis, the Khmer Rouge and the Rwandan genocide, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, mass slau…
What we do now echoes in eternity.
Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.
There are stars you haven't seen and loves you haven't loved. There's light you haven't felt and sunrises yet to dawn. There are dreams you haven't dreamt and days you haven't lived and nights you won't forget and flowers yet to grow. There is more to you that you have yet to know.
I've often thought that there isn't any 'I' at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.
Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
We think of forest fires as these devastating events that we need to stop, but they are actually vital to ecological health of an area. There are plants that require the heat of a wildfire for their seeds to burst open and plant themselves in the earth. There are others that are meant to be flammabl…
Being passive is not the same as being peaceful. If you aren't doing what you know, in your heart, you want to do, you are NOT going with the flow. You are going against the flow. Your reactions, emotions, desires, and talents are all part of the flow of life. Ignoring them is passive resistance. Le…