Quotes about Self-awareness

When they say "Be yourself," which self do they mean?

He realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.

I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure, he said to himelf.

I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.

What you seem to be, be really.

Please… tell me who you are and what you want. And if you think those are simple questions, keep in mind that most people live their entire lives without arriving at an answer.

It has often been argued, in fact, that mankind lost the happiness characteristic of his fellow-animals when he acquired self-consciousness. This is in fact the meaning of the legend of "The Fall." We have become as gods, knowing good and evil, and the price is that we live by labour, and—"In his eyes foreknowledge of death."

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

What we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And when we fail to notice that we have failed to notice there's nothing we can do to change. Until we notice that failing to notice is what forms our thoughts and our deeds.

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...
Suddenly I awoke...
Now, I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now a butterfly
dreaming that I am a man.

Missing link about Meditation - SirShree Tej Parkhi Ji

You don’t have to meditate….
You are meditation. There is no need to meditate.
You have to merely listen to the truth.
Listen by dropping all your false notions and concepts, without any comparison. Then you will come to understand that the meditation of Self is continuously happening.
The moment the mind falls - there is meditation of self — meditation of bright awareness - where there is awareness of consciousness and awareness of unconsciousness - both.
That is bright awareness. Bright awareness is meditation.
You don’t have to meditate - but just understand that

“You are meditation".

Everything is game of beliefs, Understanding is the whole thing

-SirShree TejParkhi ji

Take advantage of this human boat;
Free yourself from sorrow's mighty stream!
This vessel will be later hard to find.
The time that you have now, you fool, is not for sleep!

Examine thus yourself from every side.
Note harmful thoughts and every futile striving.
Thus it is that heroes in the bodhisattva path
Apply the remedies to keep a steady mind.

Examine thus yourself from every side.
Note harmful thoughts and every futile striving.
Thus it is that heroes in the bodhisattva path
Apply the remedies to keep a steady mind.

The fact is that those who do not see themselves but who see others, who fail to grasp of themselves but who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves. they are attracted to what others enjoy but fail to find enjoyment in themselves.

When I talk about having good hearing, I don't mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don't mean just looking, but looking at yourself.

On meditation:  Its all fun and games until someone loses an I.

The process of discovering oneself is usually the same as the process of inventing oneself as one discovers others.

Is leadership inherent or trainable? Both. You are born with characteristics that reside deep inside you: drive, an ability to influence and motivate, perseverance. But you have to develop those qualities through actual leadership experiences. A key quality is adaptability--facing unexpected obstacles, falling short of goals, reading the context, and changing your approach. Absent that, leaders will continue to repeat mistakes and will not grow and develop. That leads me to the essence of the question "Why is it so hard to lead yourself?" The answer, in my experience, lies in the differences between your idealized self--how you see yourself and how you want to be seen--and your real self. The key to growing as a leader is to narrow that gap by developing a deep self-awareness that comes from straight feedback and honest exploration of yourself, followed by a concerted effort to make changes.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know!

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear.

If aspects of the person remain undigested--cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated--they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

You are perfect as you are, and you could use a little work.

We must be willing to get rid of
the life we've planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

The new life created by the final integration is self-aware yet without ego, capable of inhabiting a body yet not attached to it, and guided by wisdom rather than emotion. Whole and virtuous, it can never die.

Invoking the letters of God's Name without presence of mind is invocation of the tongue; invoking with presence of mind is invocation of the heart; and invoking with an absence of self-awareness because of absorption in the Invoked is the invocation of the Self - this is the hidden invocation!

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

I agree that the fear of American cultural imperialism is shared by many people, and I agree with your point about the invasive nature of television culture. But I wouldn't draw the next inference: that this is negative and therefore it must be stopped. I feel that one should address this influence in a way that takes away the negative edge through a positive counter-response. This way, you reinforce and reaffirm your conviction in the inner values. You harness those beliefs and develop them with a greater degree of self-awareness. That's the kind of response people should have, instead of rejecting technology.