When Awareness Becomes Natural by Sayadaw U Tejaniya

You can know or see the mind through various functions – knowing, thinking, experiencing, feeling, wanting, focusing. 

We have to work to be aware, to remain aware, but we mustn’t use the awareness to change the experience.

You either have feelings, or they have you.

By simple observation with a calm and aware mind, we will soon see the mind as nature, not “I”, not self, not personal.

Objects are just objects, not personal, just nature.

Think of our experiences as nature.  Nature is not personal. Nature is just a process of cause and effect.

Don’t be a gong-following yogi; look at your motivations and attitudes and ask the question “Why am I doing this?” Be alive to your being, your own experience.

Remember that every experience is fine.  Nothing is actually wrong; nothing is a disturbance.

Mindfulness meditation is not about stopping a process that is happening; it is about understanding the reality or truth of the process.

Remember that it doesn’t matter how many times the mind thinks, wanders off, or gets annoyed about something, it is ok, just as long as you can become aware of this .

If greed arises, just recognize “this is greed”, every time it arises. Your job is not to prevent greed.

Delusion is the defilement that tells us “this is fearful” or “this is hateful” or “this is beautiful”.

Delusion does two things: first it camouflages reality, and then it gives us the illusion to take as reality what we are thinking reality is.  It hides what is real and then throws up an illusion for us to see and fools us into believing that is the reality.

Look at consequence and the sequence of events leading up to what is happening right now.

[Karma] is not a reward or punishment dished out by a higher authority; it is not stamped into our destiny; it is not fate. It is our own actions acting out on our selves.

Greed will always be there wanting you to have a better experience.

Because our bodies are bound by nature, we are always going to experience aches, pains, sickness, and disease.  How our mind reacts to these afflictions determines whether we have cause or suffer or not.

When we start bringing awareness to the way we live, it soon becomes apparent that we really have little understanding of ourselves or the environment we live in; we are facing a constant battle just to maintain a little happiness in our lives.

The problems that we create out of fear, boredom, loneliness, routine, despair, and repetition (to name just a few) are the reality we face.

It is only a quiet, dedicated, and meditative mind that can penetrate and find true understanding into these difficulties that we create in our lives, and from this see through the confusion and chaos that can dominate our lives.

Do not limit yourself.  Always leave the door open for new and deeper understandings.  No matter how experience you are or how much more knowledge you have than everyone else, never be satisfied with the understandings or depth of insight you have experienced.  Wisdom is limitless.  There is always room for more.

The innate nature of our mind is wakefulness, where nothing is created; there are no conditions, just bare awareness.

Your work is to keep the mindfulness continuous.

Let any experience arise.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

Most of us have two lives.  The life we live, and the unlived life within us.  Between the two stands Resistance.

If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get.  Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher.

We get ourselves in trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention.  Trouble is a faux form of fame.

If you find yourself criticizing other people, you're probably doing it out of Resistance.  When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are.  The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident.  The real one is scared to death.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.

The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference.

Success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.  The professional concentrates on the work.

Resistance loves "healing".  Resistance knows that the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have to do our work.

Rationalization is Resistance's right-hand man.  It's job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.

The professional is prepared at a deeper level.  He is prepared each day, to confront his own self-sabotage.

Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time by Dainin Katagiri

Seeing impermanence is not to face a kind of nihilism that leads to despair; it is to become yourself, as you really are, with joyful open eyes.

Saying that nothing is closed in the universe leads you to touch the core of your life, which is always present before you try to bring any concept or idea into it. 

Spiritual life originates from direct observation of impermanence.

In the domain of time in its naked nature, you cannot insert your own ideas or expectations into a moment, because by the time your mind works, the moment has already gone.

If you want to say something about what a moment is, say that moment is arising.  In Japanese the word for arising is ki.  Ki is a kind of energy, always coming up.

Conditioned origination is a complicated Buddhist idea that is difficult to understand.  But simply speaking, moment after moment conditions produce "the time has come", and beings appear.  What are conditions? Conditions consist of many physical and mental elements that become the five aggregates of worldly existence called Skandhas: form, or matter; sensation, or feeling; perception, mental impulses; and consciousness, or mind.

How do you handle yourself in a moment that is beyond your control? When a moment appears, there is only one thing that controls you: the capability that comes from your spiritual practice, your ability to face impermanence and deal calmly with the conditions of every moment.

If you want to live with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the flame of your life force in everything you do.

If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don't know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with.  This is sometimes called the absolute.  Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self.  Christians say God.

Time is identical with action, motion, or energy.  There is nothing to hold onto, because everything in the universe exists as arising only.

Buddhism tells us that if we misunderstand time, life doesn't work: we don't feel happy, we don't feel comfortable.

In daily life you experience time because something is always changing.

Emptiness is not negative; emptiness is letting go of fixed ideas in order to go beyond them.

Freedom from suffering is not found by looking at our lives from an egoistic point of view; it is found by seeing our lives from the point of view of moment.

In the realm of pain and suffering, we have to find the realm of peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain.  That is the purpose of spiritual life.

Silence is a great space where you can accept everything.

Prayer is egolessness supported by deep love for all beings. 

The real present is the full aliveness that exists at the pivot of nothingness before your conceptual thinking creates an imaginary world through human consciousness.   So, to understand the present as a pivot of nothingness, your concept of the present must be negated.  It must become no-present; then you can see the real present.

Life at the pivot of nothingness is nothing but motion and process.

In daily life we manifest the past as memory, heredity, or tradition, and the future as plan, prediction, hope, or perhaps ambition. 

Being-time means the complete oneness of time and space, dynamically functioning from moment to moment as illumination that is alive in the individual self.

Right in the middle of the busyness of daily life, you can find tranquility, because you know that your life is based on the quietness of timelessness.

Time gives everything the great power to emancipate itself from itself, then step-by-step we can make our lives mature.

If you deeply understand the meaning of the precept no killing life, you know that not killing the life of the table means not handling the table according to an egoistic view that separates you from the table.  No killing life means see the table as it really is and handle the table as a manifestation of eternal time, where there is no gap between subject and object.

Practice is like a filter: on one side is everyday life, and on the other side is direct experience of reality. This filter is not merely a device -- it must be functioning.

Real time is the harmony of the time process -- past, present, and future -- with the source of time: timelessness.

Everydayness perfumes the depth of life.

Most people are completely tossed away by good and bad feelings because they attach to them and then they suffer.  But in terms of causation, a feeling is just something to accept from your past life.  Then a feeling doesn't tie up your life -- it gives you a chance to deepen yourself.

Turning over a new leaf is called awakening to awareness.

Even though there is lots of karma interrupting your daily living, you can be free from your karmic life anytime, anywhere.  From moment to moment, just return to the source of karma, which is called emptiness. Emptiness means that the original nature of human existence is nothing but movement.  The content of emptiness is interdependent co-origination.

The purpose of spiritual life is just to go toward the future with great hope.

Dharma is inconceivable -- your mind cannot pin down what it is exactly.  If you try to explain it objectively, you cannot do it, but you can experience it and know that it is always with you.

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism by Joyce Green

Indigenous feminism draws on core elements of Indigenous cultures -- in particular, the nearly universal connection to land, to territory, through relationships framed as a sacred responsibility predicated on reciprocity and definitive of culture and identity. Joyce Green (Chapter: Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism: An Introduction)

In Canada, Indigenous women have been socially and legislatively deprived of their connections to their territories through colonial practices. Joyce Green (Chapter: Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism: An Introduction)

Indigenous men, governments and communities must also take personal and corporate accountability for their sins of omission and commission in respect of violence against women. Joyce Green (Chapter: Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism: An Introduction)

Indigenous feminism seeks an Indigenous liberation that includes women, and not just the conforming woman, but also the marginal and excluded, and especially the woman who has been excluded from her community by virtue of colonial legislation and socio-historical forces. Joyce Green (Chapter: Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism: An Introduction)

The territories and geographies that define our identity as Indigenous peoples provide the directive for our ways of knowing and being. Gina Starblanket (Chapter: Being Indigenous Feminists: Resurgences Against Contemporary Patriarchy)

We need to critique colonial and Indigenous patriarchy through resurgence to ensure that it isn't insulated as resurgence. Gina Starblanket (Chapter: Being Indigenous Feminists: Resurgences Against Contemporary Patriarchy)

Far from being an end goal, resurgence is an active process that looks to the past to inform a better future through change that takes place each and every day, from the ground up. Gina Starblanket (Chapter: Being Indigenous Feminists: Resurgences Against Contemporary Patriarchy)

Aboriginal women state that gender inequality is neither the only nor the most important form of oppression they face. Verna St Denis (Chapter: Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity)

We are American Indian women, in that order.  We are oppressed, first and foremost as American Indians, as peoples colonized by the United States of America, not as women.  Lorelai Means (Chapter: Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity)

You join us in liberating our land and lives.  Lose the privilege you acquire at our expense by occupying our land.  Make that your first priority for as long as it takes to make it happen.  Then we'll join you in fixing up whatever's left of the class and gender problems in your society, and our own.  Janet McCloud (Chapter: Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity)

Equality is not appropriate or relevant in the context of continuing colonization, in which the sovereignty and rights of self-determination of Aboriginal peoples is denied.  Verna St Denis (Chapter: Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity)

Colonization  has involved the appropriation of sovereignty, lands, resources and agency, and has included the imposition of Western and Christian patriarchy on Aboriginal peoples. Verna St Denis (Chapter: Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity)

Patriarchy isn't simply about relationships between women and men.  It encompasses an entire world organized around principles of control, domination and competition.  Allan Johnson

Aboriginal men have internalized white male devaluation of women.  Emma LaRocque

The Indian Act is a powerful and still operating instrument of colonialism and patriarchy.  The Act has made Indigenous women legal nullities, placed them outside the rule of law and the protection and benefit of the law and taken them from their families. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

The violence that permeates the lives of Indigenous women in Canada today is largely the result of the Indian Act, which functions to make Indigenous women a population of prey. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

The Indian Act creates an Indian world, the hub of which is the reserve, a piece of land "set aside" for a "band" of "Indians" and under the absolute control of the Minister [of Indian, now Indigenous, Affairs]. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

Only registered (also known as "status" Indians) can live on reserves.  The thousands of Indian women who have been rendered legally non-Indian are evicted from reserves and removed from the Indian registry.  The Indian Act controls who can be registered as an Indian and the practical consequences of being Indian. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

Indigenous women are more likely than non-Indigenous women to be killed by a stranger, and nearly half the murders are unresolved.  Indigenous women are also at least seven times more likely than non-Indigenous women to be murdered by a serial killer. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

The Indian Act creates bands, composed of "Indians" and provides that only band members may occupy or use the band's reserve.  If the band ceases to exist, the land is taken by the Crown. Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

The fewer Indians that Canada recognizes, the less land must be allocated as reserves.  Mary Eberts (Chapter: Being an Indigenous Woman is a "High-Risk Lifestyle")

Aboriginal liberation must be linked to compliance with International human rights regimes if Indigenous governments are not to run the risk of replicating the abuses they seek to transcend through decolonization. Joyce Green (Chapter: ReBalancing Strategies, Aboriginal Women and Constitutional Rights in Canada)

Colonialism destroyed the diversity of Indigenous peoples by regulating and producing state-approved Indigenous identity for the purpose of usurping their territories and resources.  Diedre A Desmarais (Chapter: Spare a Thought for Metis Women Elders: Illness and Poverty in Elderhood)

The federal and provincial governments have always deployed jurisdictional wrangling to avoid treating Indigenous peoples equitably. Diedre A Desmarais (Chapter: Spare a Thought for Metis Women Elders: Illness and Poverty in Elderhood)

Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life by Glennon Doyle Melton

Love is not something for which to search or wait of hope or dream.  It’s simply something to do. 

I don’t know much.  But I know that each time I see something heartbreaking on the news, each time I encounter a problem outside, the answer to the problem is inside.  The problem is always me and the solution is always me.  If I want my world to be less vicious, then I must become more gentle.

If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are… then we really are aiming quite low.  Traffic jams are to be tolerated.  People are to be celebrated.

Be confident because you are a child of god.  Be humble because everyone else is too.

The battles of life are best fought without armor and without weapons.

Life is equal parts brutal and beautiful.

Life is a quest to find an unfindable thing.  This is the problem.  Life is a bit of a setup.  We are put here needing something that doesn’t exist here.

Power & Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change by Adam Kahane

[Paul] Tillich defines power as "the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity"…. He defines love as "the drive towards the unity of the separated".

Power expresses our purposefulness, wholeness, and agency.

Power looks different to people who have to struggle for it.

The generative side of power is the power-to that Paul Tillich refers to as the drive to self-realization.  The degenerative, shadow side is power-over -- the stealing or suppression of the self-realization of another.

If we push away or abandon our sense of connection with others -- our acknowledgment, our sensitivity, our love -- there is no limit to the sadness, terror, and pain that our unchecked power can produce.

Power has two sides, one generative and the other degenerative.  Our power is generative and amplifying when we realize ourselves while loving and uniting with others.  Our power is degenerative and constraining -- reckless and abuse, or worse -- when we overlook or deny or cut off our love and unity.

Power as the drive towards self-realization is manifested in a focus on self-expression and self-growth.  Love as the drive to unite the separated is manifested in a focus or relationship and connection. 

Love is the only emotion that expands intelligence.

Love without power -- unity without space for self-realization -- is not merely sentimental and anemic but is deceitfully reinforcing of the status quo.  Love creates opening, potential, and opportunity, but power is required for these to be listed and realized.

Love without power is dangerous because power is never absent -- only sometimes concealed.

Love has two sides, one generative and the other degenerative.  Our love is generative when it empowers us and others: when it helps us, individually and collectively, to complete ourselves and grow.  Our love is degenerative -- sentimental and anemic, or worse -- when it overlooks or denies or suffocates power.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, or worse, and love without power is sentimental and anemic, or worse.

What holds us back from exercising all of our power and all of our love?  Fear.  Because we are afraid of offending or hurting others, we hold back our purposefulness and our power.  Because we are afraid of being embarrassed or hurt, we hold back our openness and our love.  We dysfunctionally allow our fears to prevent us from becoming whole.

Next Level Thinking: 10 Powerful Thoughts for a Successful and Abundant Life by Joel Osteen

You're supposed to go further than the people who raised you.  You're supposed to live better, be more successful, and set a new standard.  You may be in an environment where people have addictions, low self-esteem, depression, and poverty.  You can't stop that.  But here's the key:  Don't let that become normal in your thinking. 

Run your race, and when somebody passes you by, don't be intimidated.  Be inspired.  If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

Freedom and Resolve: Finding Your True Home in the Universe by Gangaji

Vigilance comes from the word vigil, meaning to keep vigil.  Keeping vigil is a form of worship.  Vigilance is a sacred, quiet, peaceful vigil at the flame of truth.

Death is not the enemy.  Fear of death is the enemy.  Fear of death is the result of the misidentification of yourself as some particular entity.

Even in the most wonderful lives, usually a burden is being carried.  This burden is born out of identification with the so-called personal accumulations.  This life burden, or individual burden, is the story.

If there is still aggression or victim-hood or hero-hood; anybody doing anything to you, for you, or even with you; any scenario of escape, attainment, gain, loss, or position; recognize it as a  point of view, and tell the truth about it. This story can be subtle, and in its subtlety, it has the most power.  The most subtle story is called subconscious.  In your willingness to tell the truth, you see what story is being told over and over based on a particular individual called me.

All threads of the story are rooted in survival. 

When [the subconscious] is conscious, there is a choice to stop the obsessing, to stop the addiction, to stop projecting the story, to stop rehashing the story, and to trust that all the appropriate survival mechanisms are in place.

Right now you have the capacity in your life to recognize that this life stream, through whatever blessings and luck, has food and shelter, has leisure time, and has the support to actually consider what is deeper and even more meaningful than survival, procreation, and power.

The real challenge is to be peaceful, to be who you are, to honor what has somehow been given you in this lifetime. 

I am not recommending that you not feel emotions. I recommend experiencing them all the way to the core.  And when I say experience, I do not mean acting them out.

There can be no confusion unless you are trying to find yourself in your thoughts.

That mind can be a peaceful, open, satvic, welcoming, investigating mind, or it can be a closed, dissociated, blaming, strategizing mind.

The opportunity in this lifetime is to tell the truth about what is going on in the mind.

With any teaching you must be aware of the tendency for the mind to take that teaching and make it into another strategy, another excuse, or another attempt to escape.

Thought is just consciousness at play with itself.

The truth is that the ego doesn't do anything anyway.  The ego is a thought, like a garment.  It's not the garment that does anything.  The ego is inanimate.

The biggest obstacle to awakening I've seen so far is that awakening is actually wanted for something else.  Awakening is wanted for feeling better, or so that you don't have to be the same person you think you are now, or to get some recognition, or to forget all the bad things that you have done or that have been done to you.