We are continuously bombarded with information, appeals, deadlines, communications... We are continually being squeezed or projected into the future as our present moments are assaulted and consumed in the fires of endless urgency. Jon Kabat-Zinn More Quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn More Quotes From Jon Kabat-Zinn You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you many not even know about. You are never alone. And you already belong. You belong to humanity. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath. Jon Kabat-Zinn circles mindfulness humanity Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that. Jon Kabat-Zinn loving-life compassion giving The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you. Jon Kabat-Zinn healthy pain strong You are only here now; you're only alive in this moment. Jon Kabat-Zinn alive live-in-the-moment life Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness. Jon Kabat-Zinn becoming-better focus attention Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next. Jon Kabat-Zinn being-yourself knowing meditation "What is my job on the planet?" is one question we might do well to ask ourselves over and over again. Otherwise, we may wind up doing somebody else's job and not even know it. And what's more, that somebody else might be a figment of our own imagination, and maybe a prisoner of it as well. Jon Kabat-Zinn imagination wind jobs In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention. Jon Kabat-Zinn wise kindness heart To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. Jon Kabat-Zinn giving-up letting-go life See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance , or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe. Jon Kabat-Zinn acceptance self blessing Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love. Jon Kabat-Zinn sanity stopping and-love One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection. Jon Kabat-Zinn technology meditation years Meditation is simply about being yourself and know about who that is. Jon Kabat-Zinn being-yourself meditation knows Meditation is really a non-doing. It is the only human endeavor I know of being where you already are. Jon Kabat-Zinn endeavor humans meditation Peace is something that we can bring about if we can actually learn to wake up a bit more as individuals and a lot more as a species; if we can learn to be fully what we actually already are; to reside in the inherent potential of what is possible for us, being human. Jon Kabat-Zinn individual wake-up being-human Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence. Jon Kabat-Zinn mother doors life Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature... But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma. Jon Kabat-Zinn karma confused destiny Writing can be an incredible mindfulness practice. Jon Kabat-Zinn mindfulness practice writing But when we start to focus in on what our own mind is up to, for instance, it is not unusual to quickly go unconscious again, to fall back into an automatic-pilot mode of unawareness. These lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing or feeling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change. Jon Kabat-Zinn focus spring fall See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging. Jon Kabat-Zinn satisfaction want letting-go
