Mick Quinn (writer)
Mick Quinn is an Irish author, best known for Power and Grace - The Wisdom of Awakening.
Mick was born in Ireland. He spent 17 years living in the US before moving back to the EU. He is currently teaching workshops on awakened living and meditation in the USA, Ireland and Spain. Mick is a former Wall Street company director. His work was quoted recently in The Washington Times, The LA Times, ADDMag, and Woman's World. The Spanish EDition of Power and Grace, Poder Y Gracia was released in May, 2007 by Corona Borealis Publishing (Malaga, Spain) in Spanish for Spain and Latin America. Mick Quinn is currently teaching classes in Barcelona through both English and Spanish.
--- Endorsement:Hay House author Gary Renard describes this book as "informative and gripping".
--- Endorsement:Bestselling UK author Dr. Mario E. Martinez said: "Power and Grace lives up to its title and beyond."
External links
--- Excerpt from the Introduction to Power and Grace:
“It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once and for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure…”
Prologue: Ridding yourself of all opinions formerly accepted begins by creating new permanent structures in consciousness through which your awakening can be expressed with effervescent splendor. Bringing the influences of conditioning to your attention is one half of this task. The other half is to consent to letting go of these influences. This process of identification and renunciation—free of all requests to overcome or conquer— brings the little-self into the light of awareness, where it cannot survive.
Power and Grace consists of The Four Insights—The 4 R’s. They are: Renounce conditioned motives. Reclaim your consciousness. Recall your origin of oneness Relate beyond limitations.
According to internationally acclaimed author Dr. David Hawkins , you may never evolve past the states of consciousness at which you were born, or if you do, it can be relatively insignificant. The Four Insights will offer solace to those of you who wish to make massive leaps in both your states of awareness as well as your stages of development. The Four Insights also provide the tools to reclaim consciousness from conditioning, which, according to Eckhart Tolle is “one of the most essential tasks on [the] spiritual journey.” Because of this the Four Insights can have a profound impact, regardless of what stage of development you have attained. They present a direct avenue to your eternal motive in the context of contemporary life.
The assignments contained in the First, Second and Third Insights reveal many everyday situations that are unsuspectingly overlooked as being irrelevant to awakening. These exercises and their related chapters are purposely placed toward the end of the book. This design allows for both subtle and profound leaps in your awareness even before the application of the Four Insights are applied to your particular life situations. This process eventually brings “self-knowledge of the unconscious motivations of behavior,” —the goal of psychoanalysis.
THE FIRST INSIGHT - RENOUNCE CONDITIONED MOTIVES: The First Insight points to the symptoms of lower stages of development that you have yet to identify and transcend. Ego-based motives always propel actions and reactions that are detrimental to an outcome of authentic joy. Yet, curiously, many of these drives have much to do with your quest to for a liberated life.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: If you do not identify the little-self leading your quest, you will never be free.
The assessments in the First Insight uncover a significant number of such motives previously hidden across four aspects of life (closely related to the AQAL work of Ken Wilber). They are:
The Subjective: Thoughts, Emotions, and Spirituality. The Inter-Subjective: Relationships, Family, and Beliefs. The Objective: Home, Health, Money, and Knowledge. The Inter-Objective: Career and Social Status.
The First Insight is the beginning of the end of karma. Because most activities are based on conditioned motives, you unknowingly create both “good” and “bad” karma. By doing so, you remain lost in a continuous struggle to resolve those outcomes. Each one of these conditioned situations, however minor, contradicts your bid to awaken. Upon application of the First Insight, you traverse from identification to objectivity; from renunciation to final transcendence of karma. A powerful momentum is created, and those of you impelled by genuine aspirations are unstoppable.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: The First Insight lets you see where you are placing your attention; unsuspectingly on the ego or on wholesome motives to awaken.
The First Insight shows you how thoughts, emotions, and habits, devour most (if not all) of your attention—even before your feet hit the floor each morning. In the “unawakened” state there is no awareness of this weakening. This being the case, only a small portion of your awareness is available to “get through the day,” let alone create the conditions for awakened living. Even those who deem themselves spiritually advanced may be completely unaware of acquired ego-drives fully functioning in both their worldly and ethereal pursuits. The First Insight does not look for causes nor does it specifically seek to identify the meaning of the conditioned situations. Instead, the First Insight allows you to see if manifestations of the lesser-self—similar to those pointed to in the six-part exercise—are present in your life. When you clearly identify where the lesser-mind has a vested interest, you are endowed with an opportunity to transcend it. Each of the six areas is broken down into individual statements. While by no means comprehensive, these statements are sufficiently inclusive for you to discern the presence of covert conditioning in your words, actions, and relevant relationships .
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: The motives of the lesser-mind promote responses that are psychologically, emotionally, physically, and spiritually draining.
Do you currently live with confusion, doubt or anxiety? If so, it is quite likely that the ego is manipulating your purpose and simultaneously draining your awareness by keeping you focused on sustaining conditioned circumstances. These lesser-minded motives create a future that looks and feels much like your past. This is a common problem. Such an engagement with life can leave you with a lingering sense that your full potential is yet unrealized, you will be unable to sustain relationships free from personal conflict, and the true force of inherited ego-motives will always be clouded in intricacy.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: When you uncover the lesser-self, its manipulation of your destiny is brought within the power and grace of your free will.
Moving beyond conditioned coercions begins by disregarding thoughts that support those patterns, conversations, and relationships. You are already experts at this! You disregard irrelevant thoughts all the time without even knowing it. This natural skill can be applied to the lesser-self and its demands with great precision; but only after you know exactly what you are listening for. As you become conscious of this innate ability, you will see that it takes only one or two seconds—not years, or lifetimes—to recognize those thoughts that are not conducive to awakened living. Then you can disregard them swiftly and confidently. We will look at this later in the chapter on ‘spontaneous right-action’.
EVOLUTIONARY POINTER: As you identify and disregard conditioned patterns of cognition, the ego lessens its grip and eventually retreats.
Real-life example: Jenny genuinely wished to awaken. At first, the task of uncovering conditioned complexities in her relevant relationships was as daunting as it was bewildering. As she worked with the First Insight, however, Jenny was able to look with renewed clarity at the motives for her interpersonal interactions. She discovered that the basis for many of them was a fertile ground for the lesser-mind; some were based on nothing more than mindless gossiping or the relentless sharing of problems. She also found that sometimes there was no conscious basis at all, other than a connection to an individual as a result of her place of birth. Even the most cherished relationships—with her boyfriend, parents, and siblings—seemed to oscillate through various degrees of loyalty and disappointment, caring and discord, and of trust and even deceit.
As her awareness expanded, Jenny noticed that repetitive conflict was sustained by ego-motives around security, ambition, and money. Part of her awakening, she realized, was to accept and transcend all conditioning. Recognizing that freedom and conflict are mutually exclusive, Jenny saw that she could sustain relationships that were prone to repeated disagreements, or replace the expression of the lesser-mind with her with the expression of her potential. Subsequent efforts were wholeheartedly welcomed, rebuffed, or oddly ignored. As Jenny’s choice to express wisdom, (by disregarding the ego), was met with curiosity and openness, rather than hostility or indifference, those relationships began to awaken. With consistent effort Jenny evolved the basis for all of her relevant relationships to a point where they became a vehicle for the evolution of consciousness.
The First Insight is specifically designed to liberate an ample quotient of your attention from conditioning so that you may see the little-mind moving in your life situations. This brings us to the Second Insight in which you will learn to perfectly direct your intention to awaken.
End of Excerpt: Copyright 2007, Power and Grace ~ The Wisdom of Awakening.