Quotes on Mindfulness

[Daniel E.]

“If you have a fight with yourself, who can win?”

“Trying to change how we actually feel by ordering ourselves to do so is a strategy that goes nowhere, fast.”

― Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

“In the practice of mindfulness, the ego’s usual insistence on control and security is deliberately and progressively undermined. This is accomplished by steadily shifting one’s center of gravity from the thinking mind to a neutral object like the breath, or in the case of my workshop, the random sounds of the environment.”

― Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life

 

[Daniel E.]

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, bk. 1, chap. 2

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

“I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist.”

― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

 

[Daniel E.]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508619.2013.795821?scroll=top&needAccess=true

"In Buddhist psychology, security is conceptualized as freedom from static or rigid views of self and others, and is cultivated by countering, often through formal meditation practices, our habitual tendencies of reifying or solidifying aspects of our ever-changing phenomenal experience."

~ Baljinder K. Sahdra & Phillip R. Shaver

 

[Daniel E.]

"You can't start a new chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one."

~ unknown

 

[Daniel E.]

“All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you’re in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it as you move back into your social world again. That’s not an easy thing to do.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

 

[Daniel E.]

“Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud--falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I’m not the only thing that falls apart. It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter.”

― Lone Alaskan Gypsy

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Interesting quote. I find the sound and scent of rain very soothing.

 

[Daniel E.]

"Most people stumble through life coping with the darker side of reality through some mixture of ignorance, indifference and avoidance."




~ Brian Treanor, author of Melancholic Joy (2021)

 

[Daniel E.]

"When I use the word "body," I mean more than the physical machine. Not only do you physically live the circumstances around you but also those you only think of in your mind. Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people–-in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside."

~ Eugene T. Gendlin, Focusing

 

[Daniel E.]

"If you want to be in the future, here you are."

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

 

[Daniel E.]

Notice You're Alright Right Now

Notice You're Alright Right Now by Rick Hanson, PhD June 12, 2011 To keep our ancestors alive, the brain evolved strong tendencies toward fear, including an ongoing internal trickle of unease. This little whisper of worry keeps you scanning your inner and outer worlds for signs of trouble...

forum.psychlinks.ca

The brain's default setting of apprehensiveness is a great way to keep a monkey looking over its shoulder for something about to pounce. But it's a crummy way to live. It wears down well-being, feeds anxiety and depression and makes people play small in life...

Noticing that you're actually alright right now is not some kind of cosmic consciousness (usually), nor laying some positive attitude over your life like a pretty veil. Instead, you are knowing a simple but profound fact: In this moment I am alright. You are sensing the truth in your body, deeper than fear, that it is breathing and living and OK. You are recognizing that your mind is functioning fine no matter how nutty and not-fine the contents swirling through it are.

Settling into this basic sense of okayness is a powerful way to build well-being and resources in your brain and self. You're taking a stand for the truth -- and against the lies murmured by "Mother Nature."

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

"Distraction is an old problem, and so is the fantasy that it can be dodged once and for all. There were just as many exciting things to think about 1,600 years ago as there are now. Sometimes it boggled the mind."

~ Jamie Kreiner

 

[Daniel E.]

“We think about that screwup at work or misunderstanding with a loved one and end up flooded by how bad we feel. Then we think about it again. And again. We introspect hoping to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead.”

“The mind is flexible, if we know how to bend it. If you have a fever, you can take something to bring it down. Likewise, our mind has a psychological immune system: We can use our thoughts to change our thoughts—by adding distance.”

“The voices of culture influence our parents’ inner voices, which in turn influence our own, and so on through the many cultures and generations that combine to tune our minds. We are like Russian nesting dolls of mental conversations.”

― Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It