Depression must be avoided, no matter what the cost. Depression is lying on the Edwardian couch for six months, too tired to unlace your shoes. Depression is awakening each morning feeling as if someone near and dear and closely related died the night before. Bad news. Don't tempt depression.
When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.
The discipline which I have imparted to you will lead you when I am gone. Practice mindfulness diligently, to attain the goal of awakening.
The true test of maturity is not how old a person is but how he reacts to awakening in the mid-town area in his shorts.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.
A global awakening can only happen from a spiritual awakening that is of global dimensions.
The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.
If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.
Spiritual awakening is the difficult process whereby the increasing realisation that everything is as wrong as it can be flips suddenly into the realisation that everything is as right is it can be. Or better, everything is as It as it can be.
Having never left the house you are looking for the way home
Free yourself from the psychological structure of society, which is to free yourself from the essence of conflict.
In my second year of Harvard Divinity School, where I was studying to be a minister like my father, I met a guy named Robert Cox, who had been the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the Dirty War in Argentina. Bob used to print the names of those who had been disappeared the day before, above the fold in his newspaper. It was a kind of an awakening to me to see what great journalism can and should do.
You know how a lot of people say, 'I lose myself in music,' or 'I like to escape,' but I want my music to be more of an awakening. I want it to make people to be aware of life; I don't want my music to be a distraction. I want to light a path.
During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.
We talk about people being narrow-minded when they have a limited sense of possibility. Well, that's exactly what they are. They are narrow-frequencied, if you like. When we talk about people awakening, it's awakening to a greater range of possibilities, of awareness and frequencies.
Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man's-land between two worlds. They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not merged.
The offering up or cleaning up ego stuff is called purification. Purification is the act of letting go. This is done out of discriminative awareness. That is, you understand that you are an entity passing through a life in which the entire drama is an offering for your awakening.
A soulmate is the one person whose love is powerful enough to motivate you to meet your soul, to do the emotional work of self-discovery, of awakening.
There's something in everybody that longs for that awakening to be more true to yourself.
A teacher or teaching is not essential for spiritual awakening, but they save time.