John Desmond Bernal Quotes

Today, I choose awareness. I choose to be aware of the beauty of life and living. I choose to be aware of the simple pleasures in life. I choose awareness of joy, awareness of peace, and awareness of love.

I promised myself that no matter where I went, what I did, I'd never take anything for granted again.

I don't mean to be overly sensitive or anything like that, but you just have to take a minute in every day, and just reflect on where you are, and just realise what you've got, because you just never know where the next huge change in your life is going to come from.

Celebration... is self restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder - the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know all this.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we're continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

I don't take any day for granted anymore.

I am trying so hard to live in the moment and enjoy it while it's happening, because it feels like a moving freight train that I just got on, and I'm trying not to look back and get dizzy!

I have an intention to live each moment fully.

I don't take anything for granted anymore, I'll tell you that.

No matter what happens, it’s always now.

The part I enjoy most is not the doing, but the noticing.

Attention is the key to transformation- and full attention also implies acceptance.

There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don't want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

‎Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.

Wherever you are, be there. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well.

Sometimes we are only aware of how happy we are when the moment has passed. But now and again, if we are very lucky, we are aware of happiness when it is actually happening.

It is difficult to discuss... history.. it is more difficult to talk about today.. simple things…

A 'why' is a dangerous thing... It challenges old, comfortable ways, forces people to think about that they do instead of just mindlessly doing it. (Haplo) ... I think the danger is not so much in asking the 'why' as in believing you have come up with the only answer. (Alfred)

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out.

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.

You must ask for what you really want. / Don't go back to sleep. / The door is round and open. / Don't go back to sleep.

Be patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know.

Until we call attention to the moments of our lives, we miss our lives.