Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one’s own way, and not the way one was taught.

For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy.

The aware person is alive because he knows how he feels, where he is and when it is. He knows that after he dies the trees will still be there, but he will not be there to look at them again, so he wants to see them now with as much poignancy as possible.

Awareness is like space, always free, always present, always pure, unaffected by weather. It's behind all the thoughts, emotions, perceptions and feelings.

This Self-awareness is different from knowing. Some people know everything but are aware of nothing, like the man in the Thurber cartoon about whom one woman whispered to another, "He doesn't know anything but facts." Others are aware of everything but know nothing. The first are informed fools, the second uninformed sages. The first are intellectuals without moral insight, the second are simple people with intuitive moral insight.