Eckhart Tolle Quotes

Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.

Humans are potentially capable of living in a state of consciousness compared to which normal wakefulness is like sleeping or dreaming.

It is always the case that both victim and perpetrator suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality.

Love and do what you will,

Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet

When you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence.

Get out of your head and into the moment.

A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.

People can't live with themselves much longer. The planet cannot live with humans much longer! We have the weaponry, destruction of the planet, pollution, destruction of forests, countless manifestations of humans using their intelligence in the service of the dysfunction, the madness. It's a strange juxtaposition. Humans are intelligent, but if you look at history or even watch TV, they're also incredibly stupid.

Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point, they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other.

Whatever you do, whatever you're working with, whether it's manual work or talking to people or buying or selling, every little thing encompasses the power and simplicity of presence.

Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? ... Become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative ... But that one decision you have to make again and again and again - until it becomes natural to live in such a way.

If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

You can marry the Buddha, and after a few months you will find on the human form the Buddha, too, has his limitations. There may be things that the mind reacts to and irritates you about the Buddha. "Why is he sitting over there in meditation?"

There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness. One With Life.

How can we drop negativity, as you suggest? By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand? How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don't want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.

Where ever you are, be there totally.

Even in a moment of stress, you can say, "OK, can I enjoy the doing itself? Can I enjoy the flow of energy of this moment?" And of course you can!

Bring awareness to the many subtle sounds of nature - The rustling of leaves in the wind, Raindrops falling, The humming of an insect, The first birdsong at dawn.

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.

There is no substitute for finding true purpose. But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are - that is to say, your state of consciousness.

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself.

A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it happens without attempting to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming "less," you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego's perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Deny yourself" or "Turn the other cheek.

The voice in the head that never stops speaking becomes a civilization that is obsessed with form and therefore knows nothing of the most important dimension of human existence: the sacred, the stillness, the formless, the divine.

"Getting away from it all," many people want that, and of course ultimately the only way to get away from it all is to go within, now.

You cannot have a desire to surrender because that's non-surrender. Surrender arises spontaneously sometimes in people who don't even have a word for it. And I know that openness is there in many people.

So whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the "madness" in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the light. It is an opportunity for salvation. Every moment, hold the knowing of that moment, particularly of your inner state. If there is anger, know that there is anger. If there is jealousy, defensiveness, the urge to argue, the need to be right, an inner child demanding love and attention, or emotional pain of any kind - whatever it is, know the reality of that moment and hold the knowing. The relationship then becomes your sadhana, your spiritual practice. If you observe unconscious behavior in your partner, hold it in the loving embrace of your knowing so that you won't react. Unconsciousness

The voice in your head also creates a huge amount of problems that aren't really problems. They're just things that haven't happened yet, things that could happen tomorrow or next week. Listening to unreal problems has another name: worrying. That's what the voice in your head does. It what-ifs. It frets. It agonizes, and you can no longer sense the joy of life.

The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else.

The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself.

I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened.

Instead of trying to be a mountain, teaches the ancient Tao Te Ching, "Be the valley of the universe."4 In this way, you are restored to wholeness and so "all things will come to you.

Above all, the only thing you have to heal is the present thought. Get that right and the whole picture will change into one of harmony and joy.

The word Buddha comes from the Sanskrit word Budh, meaning, to be awake. So Buddha is not a name and ultimately not a person, but a state of consciousness.

One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe

Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don't believe that the light is outside you or that it can only come through one particular form. If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised. Use the master's presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no "mine" or "yours" in presence. Presence is one.

Be alert and present and see that your identity is not from your past story; who you truly are is the alert presence that is inseparable from the present moment. You are this, which has no name and no form.

There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and dissolving past pain - this is what I want to talk about now.

But as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as a kind of signal that reminds you to be more present.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.

The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.

If you are trying to get from here to there, and you already are late, you know that you are late, and yet you are aligned with the present moment while you are stuck in a traffic jam. You are totally accepting of the moment.

The ego's form of happiness can't exist without unhappiness. The ego will be happy when something good happens but unhappy when it ends.

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now - that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.

If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For

Mastery of life is not a question of control, but of finding a balance between human and being ... Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven.

This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.

Being is central, and Being is now. The fulfillment of your life is not going to happen through anything. The outer activities in your life are secondary. What is Primary is Being.

Every challenge takes you a little deeper and awakens you again and again. Without the challenges, you probably would go to back to sleep. The challenges keep you awake.

Fed up with being unhappy. Some people may feel, as I did, that they cannot live with themselves anymore. Inner peace then becomes their first priority.

The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as "my god" or "our god.

Some people say it is hard to live in such a way, being completely one with the present moment. Of course, it is not hard. The opposite is hard. Not being one with life is hard, and that is how most people live.

True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship.

The future never comes. Life is always now.

When they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behavior, as one of the evils of our times; but you won't find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories.

You don't need fear to avoid unnecessary danger - just a minimum of intelligence and common sense.

On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.

Just as without silence there could be no sound, you would not exist without the vital formless dimension that is the essence of who you are.

It's interesting that stepping out of thought was actually triggered by a thought.

Occasionally people would come to me. I was sitting with a woman one day and she was telling me her story and I was in a state of listening, a state of bliss as I was listening to the drama of her story, and suddenly she stopped talking and said, "Oh, you are doing healing."

Sometimes people need to experience acute suffering before the thinking and the awareness of the consciousness separate. People then realize there is another dimension in them that is not thinking but the ability to be aware of thinking. It is not emotion but the ability to be aware of emotion.

It takes practice to hear your true desires. Your passion will often come as a whisper or serendipitous event that reminds you of what's important and what makes you happy.

In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. "That's dangerous," says the ego. "You'll get hurt. You'll become vulnerable." What the ego doesn't know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming "vulnerable," can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

Struggle or stress is a sign that the ego has returned, as are negative reactions when we encounter obstacles

You cannot do this in the future. You do it now or not at all.

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future.

To have your attention in the Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life. It is recognition of what is primary.

I am optimistic that humanity is going to make it, that humanity is going to reach, finally, a new state of consciousness which will then create a different kind of world.

You are then like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential.

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it's applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you're dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

That is the challenge of a spiritual teacher: not to take on board the projections of specialness people have. This is especially dangerous for spiritual teachers who only have contact with disciples or followers, who may live in an ashram.

Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.

Once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering. This seems to be everybody's path. Perhaps it is not everybody's path in this lifetime, but it seems to be a universal path. Even without a spiritual teaching or a spiritual teacher, I believe that everybody would get there eventually. But that could take time.

What you think of as they past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace
and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.

I had been anxious and depressed for years and suddenly I was deeply at peace

Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with fire

You are. Even if people agree with it, it is ultimately a fiction. Many people don't realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea ... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self - beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are.

Enthusiasm is the power that transfers the mental blueprint into the physical dimension.

Nothing that is of real value can be lost, only the false dissolves

Personally, I don't teach practices as such. The power of the teaching is sufficient without needing to go for any practice.

The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant.

You get there by realizing you are already there.

Psychological time, which is the mind's deep-seated habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment.

So really what it comes down to, it's God. Wherever you look, it's God appearing as this, that, that ... and what you really love and appreciate in each form is the divine formless out of which each form comes. But to be able to sense that you have to sense it in yourself first. And that is seeing the beauty in everything, that's really what it means.

Whatever you fight, you strengthyen. What you resist, persists. "A New Earth":War is a mind set

Jesus' words, "Forgive them for they do not know what they do," also apply to yourself."
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That's secondary. Your true evolution is to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life.

Whenever you are engaged in something and there is an outpouring of energy, you are in enthusiasm.

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn't have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not happening, beyond form. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.

The way I feel is that there is a balance in my life between being alone and interacting with people, between Being and doing.

Surrendering only refers to this moment, whatever "is" at this moment - to accept unconditionally and fully whatever arises at this moment.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion.

Once you have a theory, it's not too hard to find evidence to substantiate it, at least until some other theory comes along.

Ask yourself what problem you have right now. Not next year, tomorrow or five minutes from now. You can always cope with the now, but you can never cope with the future. Nor do you have to. The answer, the strength and the right action will be there when you need it. Not before or after.