Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion

by Sam Harris

Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.

Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now.

How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.

I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble.

Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.

Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.

There is barely time enough in a book—or in a life—to get to the point.

there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves;

On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice.

civilization is a vast machine invented by the human mind to regulate its states.

“I started my journey in sackcloth and ashes, and came back rather proud of being a European.”

There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.

there is a time and a place for everything—unless, of course, there isn’t.

The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.

Most people who believe they are meditating are merely thinking with their eyes closed.

Most of us spend every waking moment lost in the movie of our lives.

Meditation is a technique for waking up.

you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents, passing through various stages of wakefulness and sleep, from cradle to grave.

However, the most important implications are for our view of consciousness: It is divisible—and, therefore, more fundamental than any apparent self.

The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand—that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this moment—is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in the first place.

And every morning, we are chased out of bed by our thoughts.

[you] use phrases like ‘self conscious’ when you really mean that you are conscious of others being conscious of you.”19

“a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything:

Many people renounce the world because they can’t find a satisfactory place in it,

We need not come to the end of the path to experience the benefits of walking it.

the true discipline is to remain committed, throughout the whole of one’s life, to waking up from the dream of the self.

Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events.

It is within our capacity to recognize the nature of thoughts, to awaken from the dream of being merely ourselves and, in this way, to become better able to contribute to the well-being of others.

the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound.