Maria Shriver Quotes

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

All of us are feeling scattered and distracted as we try to keep up with an accelerating world. But nearly all of us have an answer in our hands, in simply choosing to do nothing and go nowhere for a while.

In a strange way, I feel like we need to cultivate more boredom in our lives: like, boredom needs to be okay again. It needs to be seen as a good thing, and I think it's definitely a good thing for relationships.

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you're waiting for the elevator - instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

Before you find a way to channel your emotional energy, you must take time to be still and actually feel. Meditation is a simple tool for becoming present.

For me, if I didn't have reading I'd go absolutely crazy. It really helps me to unplug from the whole world, and keep my sanity, and be able to fill my time with something other than technology.

Stopping is a spiritual art. It is the refuge where we drink life in.

. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .

In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I think it's nice sometimes not to be plugged in 24/7 to email and the Internet and everything else. It's nice to get away.

I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.

You don't always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that's plenty.

Everywhere I go, I still have time to meditate. People think meditating is sitting there, nobody bothering you, but you can even talk and still meditate.

I've been busy and need to slow my little tail down and sit and meditate somewhere. I do my walking meditations every day, but just to sit still. Just to be in one place and just to be quiet.

Nowadays we have so many things that take our attention - phones, Internet - and perhaps we need to disconnect from those and focus on the immediate world around us and the people that are actually present.

Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance.

We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation.

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.

When you're at a lunch, enjoy being - I'm always on my phone when I'm at lunch or with things here or there. I've learned to put the phone down and be present.

It's all about balance and, I think, being in the moment.

I've never meditated in my life. I don't practice yoga nor any religion. I'm a tourist on the realm of stillness.

There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.

I'm also good at meditation. It involves doing nothing and everything at the same time.