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Awakening Quotes

Browse 1768 quotes about Awakening.

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Awakening Quotes

“That which comes and goes is not real; quit chasing it. It doesn't matter. What haven't you lost? That is what‘s important. What always is? What is there in bliss and in misery? Who you are is always present and is always the same. That which doesn't come and go is real. That is where Freedom is found – nowhere else. (p. 31)”

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Book:The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts from the Teachings of Adyashanti
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“This (liberation) isn't something I can help you with. I can tell you what you need to do, but you have to do it. In the beginning, teachers can help a lot. But the deeper you go, all they can do is point, and clarify, and tell you what you need to do. Only you can take this step. Nobody can push you into this place. It's like Buddha's final night under the Bodhi tree. What did he do when confronted with this? He reached down and touched the ground and said, „I will not be moved.“ Finally – when everything that could be thrown at him was thrown, and he was still unmoved – it was done. He never looked back. (p. 99)”

EnlightenmentAwakeningZenLiberationAdyashanti
Book:The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts from the Teachings of Adyashanti
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“Every thought is a concept that divides reality in some way, and therefore is a mental abstraction that distorts the truth of what is. This is not to say that all thoughts are useless, though many of them seem to be, but it is clear that by being so consumed by this continuous stream of thoughts, we become disconnected from the reality of life that exists beyond our thinking minds.”

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Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“If we can understand that all thought is based on memory, that it is conditioned by the past, then we can see that it is of no use in helping us understand the true reality of the present moment, for every thought we have about reality will only distort reality according to our conditioned way of thinking.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“When I think about something that is happening in the moment, I am introducing my accumulation of the past into the immediate experience of the present. I am evaluating the situation based on my conditioned perspective, and projecting my internal workings onto the unconditioned reality of the present moment.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“When we are not awake to reality, we are living in the dream of the mind. When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing, and are unaware of what is happening within and around us. We are simply acting out of deep programming, behaving according to conditioned patterns, living as if on auto-pilot.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“There are many ways that the dream state operates, but it is primarily characterized by a lack of awareness to what is actually happening in the present moment, and the consequent dwelling in the mind and its endless thinking, reacting and behaving from unconscious conditioning and programming.”

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Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“The ego is not who we are, it is who we think we are. When we think of our name, our image, our history, and our life experiences as who we are, we become associated with an idea of ourselves, a mental image that is not at all who we are in reality.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“We all have an image of who we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we think others perceive us, but obviously this image is not really who we are; it is just a projection of the mind. When we mistake this illusory entity of thought to be who we actually are we do all kinds of strange and unnecessary things to maintain it and improve it. We feel the need to always state our point of view, push our beliefs onto others, tell them about our experiences, tell them who we are, what we like, what we dislike, and so on…always focused on “me.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“Language is an attempt to define life in linear words and symbols, but in reality, everything everywhere is happening all together at once, and to explain the totality of this with language is impossible. Thus, to awaken to the truth of reality, the truth of who we are, we must go beyond our language and intellectual way of understanding life.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“We do not need an ashram or church, some secret initiation, a guru’s blessing, or an intentional community. As helpful or supportive as those may be at times, ultimately, what we need is the willingness to look at ourselves honestly, to feel what emotions lie within us, to acknowledge our thoughts and actions, to choose to be aware of what we ignore or suppress, and to let go of what limits and distracts us so we can open ourselves fully to the truth of life in this moment.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“Our perception of reality is not reality itself, but it is the lens through which we view reality. It is like looking outside through a stained-glass window—if we look through red glass, the outside world will appear to be red; if we look through blue glass, the outside world will appear to be blue. The outside world isn’t changing, we are just observing it through different colors of glass, which make it appear to have the same color as whatever color glass that we look through.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“All human beings throughout the world are conditioned. It is an obvious and undeniable fact. Yet, many of us are unaware of this fact of our conditioning. We are unaware of the ways in which our culture influences our minds and shapes our perception of reality. We do not realize that most of our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs are not really our own, but were simply inherited by our family and the society that we were raised in.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“We all have only one true emotional need as human beings, and that is the need to feel loved. The majority of our actions aim towards this goal in one way or another. We seek relationships, we seek fame or success, we act (or don’t act) in certain ways simply because we feel the need to be accepted, the need to be recognized, the need to feel loved. This is a very powerful thing to realize.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“The psychological suffering of human beings on such a mass scale manifests as the physical suffering we see and experience in the world today. It is ignorant to objectify this suffering as if it were something outside of us, belonging only to the world and to those unfortunate beings who experience it. It is within each one of us, and to acknowledge our suffering is the only way to start to heal it, and by healing the suffering within ourselves, we help to heal the suffering of the world.”

MindSpiritualityConsciousnessMeditationAwarenessPerceptionMindfulnessThoughtsAwakeningZen
Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“If you have ever watched a football game, you will likely recall that while the game is being played, there is a commentator who is narrating the plays of the game and making interpretations. Our thoughts are just like this. In our mind, we have the direct experience and we have the commentator that narrates and describes our direct experience. The commentator of a football game isn’t really necessary, and he doesn’t affect the activity of the game in any way. He is just describing the game to the audience, and doing so from his perspective, with his own opinions, based on his mood, memory, education, past experiences and so on. In ourselves, the commentator is also unnecessary, and does not change the experience that it is commenting on. It merely describes it from its own biased perspective, with its own opinions, based on its mood, memory, education, past experiences, and so on. Our problem is that we have mistaken the comments of the commentator for the reality that is being commented on. We have confused our own identity as being that of the commentator, and we believe that what is being described is actually the truth of reality.”

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Book:Awake to What Is: Discovering Peace in the Present Moment
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“Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by The wind and rain, the snow and moon.”

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Book:Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Japanese Series)
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“The world exists because your mind exists. If your mind didn’t exist, there would be no world. As you look at these words, you see them in what appears to be a reality outside of you. What you are really seeing is the image that your mind is creating from the electrical signals being sent to your brain. While they may appear to be outside of you, this is an illusion, they exist within your own mind, and are being projected to appear as if they are outside of you. This apparent reality that is projected by our minds, is maya, and to believe that maya is the ultimate reality is a result of ignorance, or avidya in Sanskrit.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceIgnoranceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionSacredUnityAncientAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceMind Body SpiritNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“Examples of fractals are everywhere in nature. They can be found in the patterns of trees, branches, and ferns, in which each part appears to be a smaller image of the whole. They are found in the branch-like patterns of river systems, lightning, and blood vessels. They can be seen in snowflakes, seashells, crystals, and mountain ranges. We can even see the holographic and fractal-like nature of reality in the structure of the Universe itself, as the clusters of galaxies and dark matter resemble the neurons in our brain, the mycelium network of fungi, as well as the network of the man-made Internet.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeFractalsHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionSacredUnityAncientAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceMind Body SpiritNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“Have you ever had a dream that you were certain was real, only to wake up and realize that everyone and everything in the dream was really you? Well this is how many mystics describe the nature of our reality, as a dream in which we think we are individual personalities existing in the physical universe. But eventually, like in all dreams, we will wake up. Except in this dream we do not wake up to realize we are still in the world, we awake from the world to realize that we are God.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionSacredUnityAncientAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceMind Body SpiritNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“When we perceive the stars, the stars are the object of our perception—they exist within us. When we perceive the ocean, the ocean is also within us. The idea that things exist outside of our Consciousness is an illusion. Ancient wisdom traditions have known this for centuries, and even modern science has recognized that our sense organs merely receive information and project it within our own minds. Vision does not take place in the eye, but in an area located in the back of the brain. Everything that we perceive to be “out there” is being experienced “in here.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“In Advaita Vedanta, and in many other ancient wisdom traditions, the world is said to be an illusion. This illusion is commonly referred to as maya, a Sanskrit name which refers to the apparent, or objective reality which is superimposed on the ultimate reality in order to generate the phenomena of what we call the material world. Maya is the magic by which we create duality—by which we create two worlds from one. This creation is an illusory creation—it is not real—it is an imaginary manifestation of the one Universal Consciousness, appearing as all of the various phenomena in objective reality. Maya is God’s, or Consciousness’s, creative power of emptying or reflecting itself into all things and thus creating all things—the power of subjectivity to take on objective appearance.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionSacredUnityAncientAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceMind Body SpiritNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“Our beliefs shape how we perceive reality to be, and the belief that shapes our current perception of reality was adopted by the worldview of Newtonian physics, which asserts that reality is objective—that there is a material universe existing outside of our experience. But this isn’t true; there is no material universe outside of you; the Universe takes form through you.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“You are not a small and unimportant creature confined to the form of this physical body, contrary to popular belief. At the core of your being you are pure awareness, and this awareness is the same source from which everything in the Universe arises, exists as, and returns to. Consciousness is the dimension of yourself that you have forgotten you are, and of which you long to return to.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“Everything we perceive to be solid and static is made up of almost entirely empty space.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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“Everything exists as information in a field of infinite possibilities, and it is our Consciousness that renders the information and causes it to appear as the material world.”

LoveLifeMindHeartSelfGodWisdomRealityTruthHappinessSpiritualFormJoySpiritSpiritualityUniverseFearPeaceEnjoyNatureFreedomExistenceConsciousnessCompassionPathMysteryJourneyAwarenessAcceptanceEmotionalSourceBuddhismSelf LoveEvolutionGratitudeForgivenessEnlightenmentIllusionUnityAppreciationAwakeningZenOnenessBlissAweEmptinessConnectionHinduismNondualityMentalPresenceNowTantraSamadhiNirvanaWithinBrahmanInterconnectionMayaThird EyeHolographic UniverseSelf AcceptenceNon ResistenceFormless
Book:The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
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