Book detail: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book delves into the concepts of mindfulness and the importance of living in the present moment. It offers insights on achieving spiritual enlightenment and personal growth through self-awareness and understanding of one's thoughts and emotions.
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“The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. A portal is opening up.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting . . . snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says, “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” you can reply, “That's all right, I wasn't waiting. I was just standing”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Don't judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and dissolving past pain - this is what I want to talk about now.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no "I" except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“To stay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply rooted within yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag you along like a wild river.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“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.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You won't lose yourself in the external world, and you won't lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires may still be there to some extent, but they won't take you over.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Direct your attention inward. Have a look inside yourself. What kind of thoughts is your mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into the body. Is there any tension? Once you detect that there is a low level of unease, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding, resisting, or denying life-by denying the Now.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“You don't need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don't forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Be present as the watcher of your mind - of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point, they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency; otherwise, we will be destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“As you go about your life, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and your mind. Keep some within.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. That's why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting...snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be and enjoy being.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“My mind cannot know you, only labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you. Being alone knows directly.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be
present.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“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.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment