This is why very often you find educated people in the media who look at spiritual books but they are so identified with their thought process, they don't get it. They write reviews or articles and they miss the whole point. They can't see the essence. It's not their fault; it's not them personally. It's the human condition and its mind-identified state. And intelligence in itself doesn't help. You can have two or three Ph.D.s; it doesn't get you any closer to spiritual realization. In fact, you might be more distant.
One way of pointing to this realization is, when you think you have big problems, ask yourself, "What problem do I have at this moment?" Usually, you will find that you don't have a problem at this moment because you're sitting here and you're breathing, you're looking out the window, and it's fine.
For some people, it's the beginning of an awakening when they hear or read, "You have a voice in your head that never stops talking. Have you noticed that?" And suddenly they become aware that the thoughts go through their heads, whereas before they were so identified with them that they were those thoughts.
Thought alone cannot recognize spiritual truths no matter how highly developed thought is. It's impossible.
The reality is there is only each present moment: You are called to give a talk. You get out of a building and into a car. You look out of the window. You arrive at the venue. You sit in the chair; you wait; you step out onto the stage. Every movement is simple. There is only that.
Ultimately, every great endeavor consists of many little steps.
You pick up the phone and you talk to somebody. There's a voice on the other end and you say what you have to say. This is how I perceive my life. I don't see myself as "Oh, I'm doing this great thing because I'm going to give this talk, now everybody's going to be transformed."
Whatever you do, whatever you're working with, whether it's manual work or talking to people or buying or selling, every little thing encompasses the power and simplicity of presence.
[Visualisation] works most powerfully when you realize that it is already a reality on the unseen level. It's already there.
Even if you achieve your outer purpose, it will never satisfy you if you haven't found your inner purpose, which is awakening, being present, being in alignment with life. True power comes out of the presence; it is the presence.
Before I wrote The Power of Now, I had a vision that I had already written the book and that it was affecting the world. I had a sense there was already a book somehow in existence. I drew a circle on a piece of paper and it said "book." Then I wrote something about the effect the book had on the world, how it influenced my life and other people's lives, and how it came to be translated into many languages affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened.
Once bliss becomes normal it's no longer bliss, it's just peace.
Without perceiving things through the old filter of past conditioning and conceptualization, one can sense the universe is intensely alive. Even so-called inanimate objects - I often pick up little objects and just look at them and sense that they are alive. Physicists actually confirm that what we perceive as dead matter is not dead at all. Everything is an intensely alive energy field. That aliveness is only an aspect of the aliveness or life that I am.
It's interesting that stepping out of thought was actually triggered by a thought.
I've received more and more emails from teachers saying that they are beginning to teach presence in their classroom without necessarily calling it that or calling it anything, not as part of the official curriculum. It's like an underground movement not yet officially recognized by the educational authorities - at least not as far as I know!
It's harder for me, never having brought up a child, to enter the universe of the child.
I never went out and said, "I want to do this." I never do that. I wait for things to come to me, either within or without, and I go along with it.
People had been writing to me and saying, "Can you write something for children?" I felt I couldn't quite do it myself because I never had children.
My main life interest and purpose is to bring spiritual awakening into this world, to be a vehicle for the flowering of consciousness, to help people to live more consciously with less unnecessary suffering and self-generated unhappiness.
As the character changes in the movie, it rubs off on the viewer, so the viewer also goes through that change.
When the movie comes to an end, you are not totally the same person you are when you started the movie.
The characters get challenged. Through getting challenged, the character arrives at insights or discovers potentials that he or she didn't know they had.
The power of movies lies in the fact that it enables the viewer to enter the reality, to some extent, of the characters.
Movies really have replaced what traditionally were mythologies, that every culture had their mythological beliefs and their collective 'stories.' There is now the possibility for movies to embody that arising new state of consciousness.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: