If your relationship to the present moment is not right,
nothing can ever be right in the future –
because when the future comes,
it’s the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle
Category: Be fully present
Live life to the full
If I had my life to live over again,
I would ask that not a thing be changed,
but that my eyes be opened wider.
Jules Reynard, French Author, 1864 – 1910
An accepting gaze
In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, non-intrusively, the way we are present with things in nature. We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: ‘I love looking at this birch’ becomes ‘I am this birch’ and then ‘I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.”
David Richo, When the Past is Present
Being with
Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different;
Enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will);
Being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).
James Baraz
Noticing ordinary perfection
To overcome perfectionism, you’d have to learn to accept reality for what it is at any given moment. I can imagine the objections: ” What? Accept the reality as it is? You must be kidding me!” Not at all. There are two reasons to accept reality as it is. First, there is no other reality at any given point in time than the one that there is. We can think of things being different from how they are at this period in time, but this hypothetically better, ideal reality exists only in our minds. In reality, there is just reality. So what is there to accept but this? The second reason for accepting the present reality as it is? It’s already perfect.
Pavel Somov, Present Perfect
Seeing through thoughts
Most of us are trained to believe that if we think something is good, it is good, and if we think something is bad, it is bad. But as we practice simply watching our thoughts come and go, such rigid distinctions begin to break down. If we continue to simply allow ourselves to be aware of the activity of our minds, we’ll very gradually come to recognize the transparent nature of the thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions we once considered solid and real. It’s as though layers of dust and dirt were slowly being wiped away from the surface of a mirror
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
