Tag: Be fully present

Effortless

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Awareness is aware of itself as the nature of mind.

When local awareness becomes aware of spacious awareness, it begins to recognize itself. When local awareness and spacious awareness unite, they realize they have always been united. Awareness knows itself by being itself. We discover that awareness is already awake without our help.

If you can abide as awareness of itself – content-less, timeless, boundless, knowing – for even three to five seconds, that experience can shift you into the ground of Being.

Lock Kelly

Hunters and hunted

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The soul, in its longing to grow, will push us toward crisis points, bringing about a situation that will force us to leave behind the old toys and the worn-out ways of operating.

Our soul brings us these crises to remind us that we don’t have to remain stuck in the land of the hunters and the hunted.

We are called to draw ourselves up to our full height and confidence, even when terrified at the prospect of the unknown.


Alberto Villoldo, Cuban Medical anthropologist, writer on Shaminism, Psychiatry with Soul

Want, don’t want

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The more likes and dislikes we have, the more physical and psycho-somatic problems we are likely to develop, worst of all, the more turmoil we will feel inside.

People with strong likes and dislikes go about with a sign that says ‘upset me.’

Everywhere they go, they meet a lot of other people wearing the same sign who are only to happy to oblige

Eknath Easwaran, 1910 – 1999, Indian-born spiritual teacher, author, The  Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living

Just rest

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Once there was a man who hated his own shadow.
When he walked and found that his shadow was close behind him, he began to walk faster and faster.

But every time he put his foot down, there was another step, while his shadow kept up with him without the slightest difficulty.

He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough.
So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead.


Those who do not understand the Dao are just like this man who hated his shadow. It is actually very easy to be rid of one’s shadow – just rest under a tree.

Just rest.

Chuang Tzu, 369 – 286 BC, Chinese Philosopher

[The Tao or Dao is the natural order of the universe. Health and happiness comes from being in harmony with this natural way]

Activity Mind

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The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness. This is done by resting the attention on an external meditation support, and returning to it every time it drifts away into thought. This action is possible because one part of the mind observes and identifies with thoughts and feelings as they arise. If we did not have this capacity for self-reflective awareness we would not know or realize we were thinking when thinking happens. We call the part of the mind that observes “observer consciousness” and the part that thinks and gets observed as “activity mind”

Rob Nairn, Diamond Mind: A Psychology of Meditation

Directly knowing

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Direct knowing is one of the main purposes of meditation practice, dropping the filtering caused by busyness and distraction, regret and resentment, ideal worlds and future wishes

If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality.

If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both.

from the legendary, larger than life, Bodhidharma, 5th or 6th C, AD.