By locating the mind’s pause button we can come to know the voice that resides deep within us. This voice is the ultimate guide. It’s our intuition, timeless wisdom, and the voice of our heart. It always knows what’s best for us because it’s our greatest supporter, most attentive lover and dearest friend. What it has to tell us is more important than anything we could ever learn from the outside world – Sasha Manes
“For most of us, a typical day involves hurrying from task to task, forgetting that there are other possibilities for us. Even a tiny bit of mindfulness, brought to any moment, can wake us up, thus subverting the momentum of doing for at least one moment — and that’s all we need to be concerned about. We don’t have to stop what we are doing. We simply bring greater moment-to-moment, non-judging, wise awareness to our unfolding moments. The solution to our mood problems may not require heroic attempts to change our inner feeling world or the outer world of people, places, and jobs. Rather, it may simply involve a shift in the way we pay attention to all of them.” — Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindal Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, “The Mindful Way Through Depression”
“When we find ourselves caught up in the compelling and complex inner screen of our mind, we need to remember that we have an option. We can shrink or ‘minimize’ the current screen down to a small icon on the bottom of the mind-screen and open up the serene blue sky of our inherently boundless, clear mind. A few thoughts drift across the screen, like wispy white clouds. We are lifted above the narrow world of ‘I, me, and mine’ to a place of serenity. The small icon of our worries and plans can be opened up whenever we wish.” — Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant, and Other Adventures in Mindfulness
“We use the word ‘practice’ to describe the cultivation of mindfulness, but it is not meant in the usual sense of a repetitive rehearsing to get better and better so that a performance or a competition will go as well as possible. Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no ‘performance.’ There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Identification is what gives thoughts and emotions the power to take you over – because you believe they are who you are. Awareness that frees you from identification with any thought or emotional form it separates you from the thought or emotion. When you become aware of a thought or emotion in this way, you see these thoughts and emotions are not you. They becomes forms that you are simply aware of. This removes your identification with them, and they weaken and disappear by themselves. Once you lose your identification with thought and emotional forms you feel the inner peace that is within the awareness of what you are.
The Voice of Silence 