Quotes about Self-awareness

Before complaining that you are a slave to another, be sure that you are not a slave to self.

Like most ministers, Peter was not the best judge of his own sermons. Almost invariably when he thought he had written one of his best, the rest of us did not rate it so highly. And, when on Saturday night he was bemoaning a terrible sermon, he could be pretty sure his congregation would think it terrific. How other people rated his sermons was a constant source of astonishment to him. That's what keeps me humble, he often said.

I'm much calmer as I get older, but I'm still just as capable of getting that strung-out stressed-out feeling of mental and spiritual unwellness.

When you use concentration to run away from yourself or your situation, it is wrong concentration. Sometimes we need to escape our problems for relief, but at some time we have to return to face them. Worldly concentration seeks to escape. Supramundane concentration aims at complete liberation.

Our children learn reading, writing, math, science, and other subjects in school that can help them earn a living. But ver few school programs teach young people how to live - how to deal with anger, how reconcile conflicts, how to breathe, smile, and transform internal formations. There needs to be a revolution in education

You don't have to run anywhere to become someone else.

Before you do the work of reconciliation with another, you need to restore communication with yourself.

Some days we may feel hollow, exhausted, and joyless, not really our true selves. On such days, even if we try to be in touch with others, our efforts will be in vain. The more we try, the more we fail. When this happens, we should stop trying to be in touch with what is outside of ourselves and come back to being in touch with ourselves. We should be alone.

We do not produce mindfulness to chase away or fight our anger but to take good care of it.

I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punished him who gives in to it. And it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.