Professional Writer Quotes

“My sense of identity broke down and was replaced by something that is very hard to put into words. Awareness, Consciousness.”

“By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords." (p. 28)”

“When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life.”

“For many people, the first indication of a spiritual awakening is that they suddenly become aware of their thoughts. They become a witness to their thoughts, so to speak. They are not completely identified with their mind anymore and so they begin to sense that there is a depth to them that they had never known before.”

“Surrendering only refers to this moment, whatever "is" at this moment - to accept unconditionally and fully whatever arises at this moment.”

“With the egoic consciousness having become so dysfunctional, and now having at our disposal all these enormous technologies and scientific advances, if nothing changes the ego will use those things - as it already has been doing - and will amplify the technology that we now have. The scientific advances, to a large extent, will be used in the service of the ego, and they will become more and more destructive.”

“Significant things often happen when you are present. Things come to you, and then you respond to what is required. The response very often comes without a premeditated idea of what you want. It is simply a response to the situation.”

“Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life.”

“A teacher or teaching is not essential for spiritual awakening, but they save time.”

“Only by awakening can you know the true meaning of that word.”

“When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness.”

“The ego's form of happiness can't exist without unhappiness. The ego will be happy when something good happens but unhappy when it ends.”

“The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.”

“Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.”

“Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.”

“In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness.”

“The whole world accepts that being stressed is the normal way to live.”

“When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way... It is a shift from identification with form --the thought or the emotion-- to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form -- spacious awareness.”

“Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”

“Instead of 'watching the thinker,' you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.”

“Humans are potentially capable of living in a state of consciousness compared to which normal wakefulness is like sleeping or dreaming.”

“Now is all you ever have. There never is anything else. So, you might as well make the now your friend. Otherwise, you are out of alignment with life itself.”

“Not to be able to stop thinking is an affliction, but we don't realise this because almost everybody is suffering from it.”

“Don't wait to be successful at some future point, have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.”

“Use whatever challenge comes into your life as a kind of fuel for the flame of consciousness. That is done through surrender to what is. Some people may need more of that than others. If you choose presence in your daily life you may not need the drastic challenges.”