Lilie Zen Coach

Mindfulness is the foundation of a happy life.

Thich Nhat Hanh (via kimjungho)

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.

Cultivating awareness is indeed the preliminary activity in the “I-opening” experience of meeting your authentic self. Living your life oblivious to your thinking patterns and beliefs, day after day, year after year, is a habit that encourages and elevates your ego or false self… The way I see it, if you’re going to practice an Excuses Begone! life, your primary relationship needs to be 100 percent with your authentic self.

Wayne Dyer - See Philosopher’s Notes on Excuses Begone

We have the potential to be more kind, to practice mindfulness, and to experience well-being, but we only use a small fraction of the potential we have. So that’s what meditation is about: to cultivate the qualities that we have the potential for but that remain dormant, latent, unused, and to develop them to the best of our own potential.

Matthieu Ricard (via lazyyogi)

(Source: lazyyogi)

(Source: han-nara)

It is the nature of the mind to wander. You are not the mind. The mind springs up and sinks down. It is impermanent, transitory, whereas you are eternal. There is nothing but the Self. To inhere in the Self is the thing. Never mind the mind. If its source is sought, it will vanish leaving the Self unaffected.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi (from Talk 97)

(Source: yogaprivatelessons)

We’re living in an extraordinary time - when teachings, texts, and spiritual methods abound. There are so many books, workshops, teachers, and approaches.

How do you know where to start?

What to do next?

There’s no clear path forward. The plethora of choices and confusion of the spiritual marketplace turns walking the spiritual path into a game of fifty-two pick-up.

You pick-up a method here, a teaching there.

You go to a workshop with this teacher. Listen to a dharma talk from that teacher. Do some yoga. A little mindfulness. As beautiful as each of these experiences can be, pick-up style spirituality rarely turns into a practice that can transform your life.

It’s too haphazard. Too scattered.

So what’s the solution?

It’s knowing what comes first and what comes next.

There’s a sequence to spiritual growth.

There’s a way to start and then move forward step-by-step that builds your capacity to be present, dissolve obstacles, and live a fully engaged, spiritually alive life. When you follow the right sequence, your spiritual development proceeds naturally. And quickly. But sequencing isn’t enough. You also need personalization. What is personalization?

Personalization is designing a spiritual practice that fits your life.

If the practice doesn’t fit your life - it won’t work.

You’ll stop doing it. Or you’ll keep doing it - mechanically - without getting the transforming effects.

A practice may be time-honored, sacred, and wonderful - but if it’s not fitted to your unique life conditions - it won’t work.

Fitting the practice to your life is like fitting a key to a lock.

Eric from Wisdom Heart

With awareness there comes choice. And so you are able to say: “I allow this moment to be as it is”. And then, suddenly, where before there was irritation, there is now a sense of aliveness and peace. And out of that comes right action.

Eckhart Tolle (via buddhistwitchery)

vbshalom:

‎”When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ not being given the continuity.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti (via yogaprivatelessons)

I don’t know” is a fine state to be in. You are still busy working on your body-mind attachments. I would like you to leave all that behind. There is no end to that pruning, pull it up at the root. How? By staying as Awareness only. Stay as the Highest. Honour the Truth in yourself. This body was given to you so that you could discover your true nature, the Origin of all, the one unborn Self. To inquire, relentlessly contemplate and strive until you are fully free from the slimy quicksand of the ego-ridden mind. For this single purpose you have appeared into manifestation: to solve yourself by dissolving the you which is the non-self, and thereafter to effortlessly celebrate your discovery as Peace, Love, Light and Joy.

~ Mooji (via yogaprivatelessons)

The Distance Between Here & There

freshgypsy:

“What is it that you really, really want?

And what’s keeping you from it?

What is it that lies between where you want to be and where you are now?

What is it that stands between the person that you are today and the person that you most want to be?

Now, it’s not a someone, and it’s not a something. It’s not your circumstances, and it’s not your job. It’s not your childhood or even your kids. And it’s not fate or karma.

It’s your thoughts.

In particular, the thoughts of yours that do not include your wished-for reality in their images of who you are today. The ones hiding behind a fear or two, that see your dreams coming true in the future instead of the present.”

~ Mike Dooley, excerpt from Choose them Wisely (Thoughts Become Things)

You don’t have to make thoughts go away in order to enter stillness.
Just pause, look deeply, and you will see that thoughts depart on their own.

Eric from Wisdom Heart

You have the source of energy. Whatever happens in your life needs your energy. If you cut the source of energy and — in other words that´s what I call identification — if you don´t identify with anything, it immediately becomes dead, it has no energy of its own. And non-identification is the other side of watchfulness.

Osho