#aware

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#death #life #mortality #death

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

#awareness #cognition #consciousness #focus #business

When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves. ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#body-and-mind #body-image #emotional-freedom #emotional-health #emotional-intelligence

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are. ↗

— Tara Brach

#buddhist-psychology #freedom #love #spirituality #freedom

I never knew I liked to be outside so much. I never knew I liked lochs and views and that, but I could seriously handle living in a cottage by the side of somewhere like this." The Panopticon ↗

— Jenn Fagan

#freedom #outdoors #self-awareness #vulnerability #freedom

Without awareness there is no freedom. Awareness is vital for any possibility of free choice. ↗

— Simon Boylan

#free-will #freedom #meditation #wisdom #freedom

While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#foreign #freedom #freedom-of-choice #freedom-of-thought #home

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#self-awareness #life

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

#music #imagination

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

#giving #inspirational #life #inspirational