Best 1901 quotes in «mindfulness quotes» category

I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days. It overwhelms me as I’m sitting on the bus; watching the golden leaves from a window; a sudden burst of realisation in the middle of the night. I can’t help it and I can’t stop it. I’m alone as I’ve always been and sometimes it hurts…. but I’m learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I’m learning to make things nice for myself. To comfort my own heart when I wake up sad. To find small bits of friendship in a crowd full of strangers. To find a small moment of joy in a blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk an early morning in December, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying ”I thought of you. I hope you’re well.” No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it’s a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don’t need anyone to confirm it. I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days, but I’m learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I’m learning to make things nice for myself. Slowly building myself a home with things I like. Colors that calm me down, a plan to follow when things get dark, a few people I try to treat right. I don’t sometimes, but it’s my intent to do so. I’m learning.I’m learning to make things nice for myself. I’m learning to save myself. I’m trying, as I always will.

I guess it's human nature to question yourself, to question why all the pain has had to happen? sometimes there isn't any answers it just is what it is and how we make ourselves feel and see through that, is what will determine how we move forward.

I have a fear of living a surface kind of life; barely existing, barely touching or tasting anything. That's why you'll always see me giving my all or walking away ~ I'm too full of depth to dance in the middle of anything.

I have been asked many times, "How do you stop thinking?" And I have found one way. The minute I can look at any person or condition and know that it is neither good nor evil, my thought stops, and my mind becomes quiet. That is the end of it because then there are no thoughts left for me to think about it: I do not think good of it and I do not think evil of it. All I know is that it is, and then I am back at the center of my being where all power is. Our mind is restless only when we are thinking about things or persons, either in terms of good or evil, but the mind is at rest when we surrender all such concepts.

I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

I have only been a ‘Poor Me’ once or twice in my life…. And that was my own fault.

I have only dwelt in my thoughts.

I honor you for every time this year you: got back up vibrated higher shined your light and loved and elevated beyond —the call of duty.

I honor truth I practice truth I live

In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel’s it’s impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human…we really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down…so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay!”

Ik kan de tijd niet langzamer laten gaan, maar ik kan hem wel beter besteden.

... I laughed simply because being this particular person in this particular world at this particular moment was cause for joy...

I learned that when we can be absolutely present like this, our mind, body and spirit become integrated and we are fully conscious, energised, peaceful, alive, at one with the true essence of what it is to be ourselves. In that moment, we can relate with compassion to those around us and to ourselves. It is when what we have satisfies us, and when what we don’t have doesn’t matter.

I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.

… I’ll feel the magic, in the blissful daylight I’ll listen to the cheerful songs of nature And I will heal my soul, with joy and love ... (Excerpted from My kind of resilience, chapter Resilience)

… I’ll celebrate the waltz of stars, in endless harmony I’ll dream with my angels, in far away lands And I will send love letters, to my future self ... (Excerpted from My kind of resilience, chapter Resilience)

… I’ll pray to God to give me strength and patience I’ll feel no pain, no vengeance, no regrets And I will learn to love again…myself, this time. ... (Excerpted from My kind of resilience, chapter Resilience)

Imagine you’re at a movie, and the person sitting in front of you is so huge and fat you can’t see the screen because he’s completely blocking your view. He’s also talking loudly, so you can’t hear the movie. That person is you. You can’t see the perfection of your life, as it is right now, because you’re in your own way.

Imagine a world where people were 10% happier and less reactive. Marriage, parenting, road rage, politics - all would be improved upon. Public health revolutions can happen rapidly. Most Americans didn't brush their teeth until after world war 2 after soldiers were demanded to maintain oral hygiene. Exercise didn't get popular until science proved its benefits. Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, “I wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my life”. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision. But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life. From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.

I mind the unmindful, but I mind my own mind too. Mine your mind, and mine the minds of others. Mind.. you are mine!

I’m helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are “near enemies” to every great virtue—reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can’t possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a “pathological empathy” of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can’t help but stay present

I'm glad to get home, but I have no worry. If we are in a hurry we die in the outcome.

Immersed in surrender and gratitude, celestial pearls of wisdom form rosaries of prayer that entangle with my soul.

I’m not here to disagree with people or try to change anyone’s mind. I’m just here to accept and love others right where they are – no matter their belief systems or backgrounds.

I'm not hugely experienced with relationships, but I am hugely experienced with myself - and more than anything I value my piece of mind. I don't like going to sleep with knots in my stomach, or ruining the present by worrying about the future. In a life that is pretty complicated, I like to keep my own head space as simple as possible.

Impermanence means that everything changes and that nothing remains the same in any consecutive moments. And although things change every moment, they still cannot be accurately described as the same or as different from what they were a moment ago.

In 2017, I was invited to lead a mindfulness workshop and guide a live meditation on Mingus Mountain, Arizona, to over 100 men and women at a recovery retreat. On the eve of my workshop, I had the opportunity to join in a men's twelve-step meeting, which took place by the campfire in Prescott National Park Forest, with at least 40 men recovering from childhood grief and trauma. The meeting grounded us in what was a large retreat with many unfamiliar faces. I was the only mixed-race Brit, surrounded by mostly white middle-class American men (baby boomers and Generation X), yet our common bond of validating each other's wounds in recovery utterly transcended any differences of nationality, race and heritage. We shared our pain and hope in a non-shaming environment, listening and allowing every man to have his say without interruption. At the end of the meeting we stood up in a large circle and recited the serenity prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me". After the meeting closed, I felt that I belonged and I was enthusiastic about the retreat, even though I was thousands of miles away from England.

In a revolution of consciousness the windows slowly become mirrors. We will see that there was only an illusion of freedom and at the same time we are forced to look at ourselves and contemplate the consequences of our own actions.

In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain't many!

In a relationship, any interaction is really one of the heart.

In a world of multitasking, finding your focus is key to being productive and feeling grounded.

In any moment of time, you have three paths to choose from. You stand for something, you stand against something, or you drop both, and walk with your inner truth.

In a world of distractions we begin to ‘live’ on the outside.

Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, ’Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!’ In its wholehearted acceptance of what is;I feel as if he had struck me in the chest. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow-it’s quite enough! Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn’t that wonderful?

In East Asia generally, the notion of a Supreme Being, so essential to Western religions, is replaced by that of a Supreme State of Being, an impersonal perfection from which beings including man are separated only by delusion.

Infinity dwells in wisdom’s mind, eternity resides in joy’s heart, divinity rests in love’s soul. Infinity dwells in awareness’s mind, eternity resides in experience’s heart, divinity rests in virtue’s soul. Infinity dwells in reality’s mind, eternity resides in time’s heart, divinity rests in fate’s soul. Infinity dwells in a sage’s mind, eternity resides in a guru’s heart, divinity rests in a master’s soul. Infinity dwells in the world’s mind, eternity resides in the cosmos’s heart, divinity rests in the universe’s soul. Infinity dwells in God’s mind, eternity resides in God’s heart, divinity rests in God’s soul.

In every bend of time there is some surprise, joy and beauty. Mindfulness is the light to discover it.

In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying…the child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginning, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.

In fact, when you're mindful, you actually feel irritation more keenly. However, once you unburden yourself from the delusion that people are deliberately trying to screw you, it's easier to stop getting carried away.

In his book In This Very Life, the Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Pandita, wrote, "In their quest for happiness, people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness." We get excited when we hear good news, start a new relationship, or ride a roller coaster. Somewhere in human history, we were conditioned to think that the feeling we get when dopamine fires in our brain equals happiness. Don't forget, this was probably set up so that we would remember where food could be found, not to give us the feeling "you are now fulfilled." To be sure, defining happiness is a tricky business, and very subjective. Scientific definitions of happiness continue to be controversial and hotly debated. The emotion doesn't seem to be something that fits into a survival-of-the-fittest learning algorithm. But we can be reasonably sure that the anticipation of a reward isn't happiness.

Injuries happen on the yoga mat all the time, but they never happen when we are truly practicing yoga. For instance, most yoga-related neck injuries happen when you strain yourself trying to see what is happening on the yoga mat next to yours.

In life your expectations and disappointments are directly linked. So too is your heartfulness and your contentedness

In mindfulness, acceptance always comes first, change comes after.

In more ways than any of us can name, love is wrapped up with the idea of expectation.

In most forms of exercise one’s breath follows the movement—the faster and harder you work, the faster and harder you will breathe. In yoga, the exact opposite is true. Rather than changing the breath to match one’s movement, the movement is changed to follow the breath. In doing so, a yogi gains immediate and unconditional access to the deepest levels of consciousness, because just as breath and movement are connected, so too is the breath bound tightly to the mind.

In my personal recovery, mindfulness has helped me to become aware of my trauma responses and given me an anchor to stay present when I have been triggered. Being able to feel my triggers without reacting must be largely credited to learning to anchor myself in my body through mindful body scan meditation.

Inner Peace can be seen as the ultimate benefit of practicing patience.

In order to free ourselves from our assumptions about love, we must ask ourselves what long-held, often buried assumptions are and then face them, which takes courage, humility, and kindness.