Michael Brown > Quotes

“A reliable indicator we have entered present moment awareness is if our experience, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable it may feel at any given moment, is infused with gratefulness.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“we mistakenly spend our experience trying to get something instead of simply receiving that which is already and eternally given.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“When we live in time, we spend our days seeking the meaning of life. In contrast, when we are present, we enjoy a life saturated with meaning.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“When we lack gratitude for simply being alive, it’s because we have strayed from the present into an illusory mental state called “time.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Presence knows no order of difficulty.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and attend them all: Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. – Rumi”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Presence has the miraculous capacity to manifest in our daily experience the exact circumstances required to integrate the dysfunction that currently prevents us from experiencing present moment awareness.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Even though the past has gone and can’t be altered, and the future isn’t yet manifest, we choose to mentally occupy these illusory places instead of fully entering and experiencing the one moment we actually occupy – this moment now.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Stop. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. There’s simply everything to be.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Reactive behavior is based on a belief that the world is happening to us, and it’s therefore our duty either to defend ourselves or to impose our will on what’s happening.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Our current time-based experience is a perceptual hell guarded by the bars of our unintegrated fear, anger, and grief. It doesn’t take us anywhere. It never did, and it never will.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Though we are addicted to instant gratification, we are seldom gratified because, although we are making everything possible now, we are seldom present to enjoy it now. The moment we attain our desire, our attention jumps out of the present and into planning our next acquisition. This creates a world that’s comfortable with living in debt, on borrowed time, and on somebody else’s energy. We no longer own our houses, cars, and clothes –the bank does. We have robbed ourselves of the satisfaction of organic accomplishment. There’s no more “rite of passage,” only the fast lane. Young children want to be teenagers, teenagers want to be adults, and adults want to accomplish a lifetime’s work before turning thirty. We spend each moment running ahead of ourselves, believing there’s a destination we are supposed to arrive at that’s saturated with endless happiness, acknowledgement, ease, and luxury. We are forever running away from something and toward something –and because everyone is behaving in this manner, we accept it as normal. We mentally leapfrog over the eternal present moment in everything we do, ignoring the flow of life.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“our intent isn’t to feel better, but to get better at feeling.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Behaving as a victim or victor means we either complain about our experiences with others or compete with them.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“The possibility we are invited to consider is “a 13th step” – a step not accomplished by moving outward into the world, but by returning into ourselves.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“We don’t yet realize that it’s our unconscious sense of faultiness – and our feeling of helplessness to do anything about it – that drives us to sacrifice ourselves in the name of helping others.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“I APPRECIATE WHAT I AM”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“An allergy is the polar opposite of an addiction. When we are addicted, we pull a specific experience toward us. When we are allergic, we repel a specific experience. The causes of both are an unintegrated charge.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Once we set off on our journey into present moment awareness, we realize how entrained we have been by our childhood experience.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“We are where our attention is.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“However, let’s be honest with ourselves: The precarious state referred to as “being in recovery” is one of ongoing quiet desperation.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“As long as we are wandering mentally through the haunted corridors of time, we render our awareness numb to this direct experience of Presence.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“It’s about becoming authentic, growing up emotionally, and reclaiming integrity. It’s about grasping life intimately, with both hands, and raising ourselves up from being “the emotionally dead.” The mental body finds a million excuses to quit this process – especially during weeks 5, 6, 7, and 8.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Consistency in any endeavor, despite external distraction, is the recipe for gathering personal willpower.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“However, as challenging as it is, it’s preferable to dependence on support group meetings. It’s also preferable to living with”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“The stories we tell ourselves, which we began telling once we started developing our mental capacity, established our current library of core beliefs. Because much of the charge that drives these beliefs was imprinted in our energy system before we had mental and hence conceptual capacity, none of these stories are valid. They are all effects, which means our beliefs form an illusory mental passageway we mistakenly walk along as a desperate means of making sense of the apparent chaos and unpredictability of our circumstances. To direct our attention and intent according to them is self-defeating. On a psychological level, it’s insanity. We appropriately call it “being mental.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“This is because the act of recovery is one of engaging in the artificial peace of quiet desperation.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“The consequences of entering our emotional body and integrating charged emotion through connected breathing, initiating mental clarity, and awakening felt-perception aren’t initially what we may expect. On the contrary, they are unexpected!”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Our inability to be still is evidence we are seeking to cover something up.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

“Reactivity is momentum driven unconsciously by an unintegrated felt-charge and emanates from suppressed inner discomfort. Responsive action is momentum rooted in taking charge of our inner discomfort, which involves simply “being with it,” allowing it to be fully in our awareness without placing conditions on it.”
― Michael Brown, The Presence Process - A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness