Best 1901 quotes in «mindfulness quotes» category

Many believe bliss and gratification to be synonyms, when in fact they are antonyms. Bliss is the nature of your most true Self and it is with you anytime you become still enough to listen. Gratification is what you seek to fill the imagined emptiness, and is generated by a false sense of self.

Many caregivers share that they often feel alone, isolated, and unappreciated. Mindfulness can offer renewed hope for finding support and value for your role as a caregiver…It is an approach that everyone can use. It can help slow you down some so you can make the best possible decisions for your care recipient. It also helps bring more balance and ease while navigating the caregiving journey.

Many look at the blessings in their lives—money, talent, love, abundance, and so on—and say, “I must be one of the chosen ones.”But the blessings in your life were not bestowed upon you to help you live a life of ease, but rather a life of service. You were chosen—chosen to serve.

Many of our current crises stem from an inherent flaw: the modus operandi is greater consumption.

Many of us have been unconsciously programmed to treat walking as a means to an end, especially while in the workplace. Naturally, a lack of mindfulness while walking leaves one hostage to self-perpetuating stress and anxiety. We rush (often while shouting into a mobile phone), completely missing the enjoyment of walking. Walking and breathing, if practised harmoniously, can be peaceful and thoroughly enjoyable. Even walking down a corridor or into an office or wherever we are working or being of service can be a harmonious action.

Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive; we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive.

Mastering our thoughts can only be achieved after we truly understand what reality is. Thus, it is time to shatter your pre-conceived concept of reality. First, the majority of what you perceive as reality exists only in your mind, and, chances are, you spend most hours of your life in this illusion.

Maybe (Taoist story) A classic ancient story illustrates the importance of equanimity and emotional resilience beautifully. Once upon a time, there was a wise old farmer who had worked on the land for over 40 years. One morning, while walking to his stable, he noticed that his horse had run away. His neighbours came to visit and sympathetically said to the farmer, “Such bad luck”. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The following morning, however, the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “Such good luck,” the neighbours exclaimed. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The following afternoon, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses and was thrown off, causing him to break his leg. The neighbours came to visit and tried to show sympathy and said to the farmer, “how unfortunate”. “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The following morning military officials came to the farmer’s village to draft young men into the army to fight in a new war. Observing that the farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they did not draft him into the war. The neighbours congratulated him on his good luck and the farmer calmly replied, “Maybe”.

Maybe what we really need is to change our relationship to what is, to see who we are with the strength of a generous spirit & a wise heart.

May you always remember the Beloved is your divine and sacred self.

May your sleep be your death, and your wakefulness be your heaven.

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way—with awareness, balance, and love

Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself. The watching is the holding. By watching your thoughts without being drawn into them, you can learn something profoundly liberating about thinking itself, which may help you to be less of a prisoner of those thought patterns (….)

Mediation on the Scriptures will renew your mind.

Meditation brings Nirvana, and Nirvana brings Buddhahood.

Medicate less and meditate more.

Meditation and mindfulness are tools for working with the mind, but where they have led me is to a blossoming of the heart...

Meditation can be a doorway to mindfulness.

Meditation alone cannot heal the world, but it can and does speed up the healing process.

Meditation has enabled me to transform from the soulless entity living on automatic to the being that could walk into the office with a big smile on my face for no good reason.

Meditation is a method-less act – an act of contemplation – an act of being. And this contemplation or this being is not a buddhist thing, a hindu thing or a jewish thing – it is simply a human thing. No pranayama, vipassana or kabala has any kind of exclusive authority over meditation whatsoever. All these ways are merely the means of the novice to begin the journey. But the means is not the real act itself. Seeing the method of meditation as meditation itself, is like confusing the menu for the meal. The real journey takes place when there is no means whatsoever – when the self does not need to make efforts to be the self – that’s real meditation – the meditation where you simply are who you are and do not seek methods to attain a superficial state of mind.

Meditation isn’t only the act of successfully keeping your attention on the breath, it’s the whole period of time you spend with the intention to observe the breath. It is this intention and its application — not your success at achieving perfect concentration — that is responsible for the benefits of meditation.

Meditation is our number one tool in the quest for greater mindfulness.

Meditation is the alchemist of the soul. It transforms disappointment into acceptance; betrayal into forgiveness; scarcity into abundance; loneliness into self acceptance; fear into love; despair into hope; anxiety into peace; and apathy into compassion.

Meditation may be done in silence & stillness, by using voice & sound, or by engaging the body in movement. All forms emphasize the training of attention.

Meditation is not about what's happening, it is about how we're relating to what's happening.

Meditation isn’t what most people think,’ she said. ‘You’re meditating right now, in the way that you’re focused on what I’m saying. If your mind was somewhere else—if you were thinking about the Saints game or what you might have for dessert—that’s not meditation. You have to be here, now. Inhabit the present moment, because that’s the only way to find lasting happiness. If you think happiness is somewhere out there, you’ll spend your whole life chasing it, and once you find something that looks like happiness, it will change without warning. You have to accept yourself as you are, happy to be breathing, to be present in this moment.

Meditation is the best tool for neutralizing the voice in the head. It's a muzzle for the ego. Being mindful is an innate but underused ability we all have, the act of being aware without judging. When you repeatedly go through the cycle of trying to focus on your breath, losing that focus, and noticing and returning to the practice, you are literally building your mindfulness muscle the same way dumbbell curls build your biceps. As this mind-muscle develops, you start being way more aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as what they really are: squirts of chemicals & hormones that enter, peak and then fade completely back to the nothingness of which they arose. In other words, mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so you're not a slave to whatever pops into your head. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of them.

Meditation is the brain's way to exercise.

Meditation on the self is the highest form of true method-less meditation, for it brings self-awareness – which is beyond the everyday joy and sorrow. True meditation does not put you in control of your sorrow, rather it takes your mind beyond that very sorrow, as well as joy, into the kingdom of contentment – a kingdom without ideology – without cognitive extremes, such as radical rationalism, radical romanticism or radical emotionalism. In that kingdom, you simply are a human, with no name, no nationality, no tradition, no culture, no religion, no gender and no social image – simply a human.

Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense…. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind—to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation.

Meditation is about mindfulness and learning to strip away the illusion, revealing your authentic self and connectedness to everything and everyone.

Meditation is a method-less act.

Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here & now.

Meditation is good for the elderly, great for adults, even greater for children, and greater still for pregnant women. So, meditate and be well.

Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.

Metta can only be founded in its most sympathetic and authentic form when it comes from the most humble and truest of intentions.

Mental illness is a bigger problem than obesity and cardiovascular diseases in the modern western world but still we pay no homage to the philosophy of watching what we watch. We only worry about what we put in the body in the form of food and care very little, if at all, with what we consume in our minds.

Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.

Mindfulness & Meditation help focus on the moment while at the same time knowing we cannot capture that moment, we are in a flow of moments we let flow. We can watch moments in detail without being attached to them. Non-attachment to past & future stems from this practice. Worry about past or future is wasted energy, however we can observe the past & learn from it without agonising over it & trust ourselves to handle the future better. We can celebrate the opportunity to grow as we gain understanding from observation & experience. We can watch ourselves & avoid being caught up in over-reactions. "I am loved, right now, in this moment, I love, and am part of love itself. I am aware of myself at every level - the mental slowing gracefully to sense the spiritual within & all around, and the physical being still, or moving. I tune in to the flow of life in my body & the flow of life everywhere. I circulate love with each breath - from without to within & from within to all around.

Mindfulness could also be described as "heartfulness" because it is really about a compassionate awareness.

[M]indfulness does not involve trying to get anywhere or feel anything special. Rather it involves allowing yourself to be where you already are, to become more familiar with your own actual experience moment by moment.

Mindfulness helps us to live in harmony with our thoughts, words and actions.

Mindfulness helps us to set boundaries by revealing what makes us unhappy & what brings us peace.

Mindfulness improves your capacity for self-discovery and empowerment.

Mindfulness increases the awareness of the Nature of the Mind. If we learn to Control our Mind and Listen to our Souls we can consciously choose to be Joyful instead of sad, Peaceful and Loving, Alert and Relaxed.

Mindfulness is an invitation to change that pattern and to become aware of where we are and how we got here. Mindfulness gives us a chance to listen to the wisdom of our hearts, to notice with more clarity where we get in our own way, and to shift from reacting out of habit to responding from our intentions.

Mindfulness is like entering a darkened room and turning on the lights of perception.

Mindfulness isn't necessarily about awakening within. Awakening wisdom teaches me how my exterior and interior life are not separate. What happens in the world is happening within me, and vice versa.

Mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic.