Book detail: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book is a self-help guide that encourages readers to find fulfillment and joy in their current lives through mindfulness practices and a focus on the present moment.
The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.
Read more
“In truth, our aliveness depends on our ability to sustain wonder:
to lengthen the moments we are truly uncovered, to be still and quiet
till all the elements of the earth and all the secrets of the oceans
stir the aspects of life waiting within us.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“What we reach for may be different, but what makes us reach is the same.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“All the buried seeds crack open in the dark the instant they surrender to a process they can't see.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“In life as in water, when we curl up or flail we sink. When we spread and go still, we are carried by the largest sea of all: the sea of grace that flows steadily beneath the turmoil of events. And just as fish can't see the ocean they live in, we can't quite see the spirit that sustains us.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“If I dare to hear you I will feel you like the sun And grow in your direction.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Even if one glimpses God, there are cuts and splinters and burns along the way.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“…there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment--where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels--this moment shows us that what is real is sacred”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Grief can be a slow ache that never seems to stop rising, yet as we grieve, those we love mysteriously become more and more a part of who we are.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“We often move away from pain, which is helpful only before being hurt. Once in pain, it seems the only way out is through. Like someone falling off a boat, struggling to stay above the water only makes things worse. We must accept we are there and settle enough so we can be carried by the deep. The willingness to do this is the genesis of faith, the giving over to currents larger than us. Even fallen leaves float in lakes, demonstrating how surrender can hold us up.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of thingsstop being a glass. Become a lake.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Joy in what we do is not an added feature; it is a sign of deep health.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“I would rather be fooled than not believe.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The greedy one gathered all the cherries, while the simple one tasted all the cherries in one.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“It is the courage to be authentic that keeps us strong enough to withstand the heartbreak through which enlightenment can occur. And it is by honoring how life comes through us that we get the most out of living, not by keeping ourselves out of the way. The goal is to mix our hands in the earth, not to stay clean.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Tragedy stays alive by feeling what's been done to us, while peace comes alive by living with the results.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“We can never be prepared for everything. No one person can anticipate all of life. In fact, overpreparation is yet another way to wall ourselves in from life.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“No amount of thinking can stop thinking.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Who's to say the effort to be real isn't the beginning of wings?”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“We are born with only one obligation - to be completely who we are.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“We think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own true nature.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“To love by admitting our connection to everything is how we stay well.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Through the opened heart, the world comes rushing in, the way oceans fill the smallest hole along the shore. It is the quietest sort of miracle: by simply being who we are, the world will come to fill us, to cleanse us, to baptize us, again and again.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Walk long enough and we all trade places.”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)
“Pursue the obstacle
It will set you free”
Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)