Eckhart Tolle Quotes

In the unawakened state you don't use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.

Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean.

I call animals "guardians of Being," especially animals that live with humans. Because, for many humans, it's through their contact with animals they get in touch with that level of being.

Some people thought I was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore.

Spiritual awakening - is becoming awake to the aliveness of this moment.

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

True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. This inner alignment with Now is the end of suffering. Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. You would not be reading this now. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.

So it is essential to bring more consciousness into your life in ordinary situations when everything is going relatively smoothly. In this way, you grow in presence power. It generates an energy field in you and around you of a high vibrational frequency. No unconsciousness , no negativity, no discord or violence can enter that field and survive, just as darkness cannot survive in the presence of light.

Much suffering, much unhappiness arises when you take each thought that comes into your head for the truth.

You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.

...whenever there is inspiration...and enthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.

Although all spiritual teachings originate from the same Source, once they become verbalized and written down they are obviously no more than a collection of words-and a word is nothing more than a signpost.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

On all levels, evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking down or are not working anymore. On a personal level, this often means the experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of security.

Please open your eyes now, but keep attention in the inner energy field of the body as you look around the room. The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it.

Suffering needs time. It cannot survive in the now.

Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.

When you are aligned with the now internally, when you take responsibility for this moment, then life is helpful and tends to bring you what you need.

Space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer 'other.' In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness.

Every practice at some point will become a hindrance. No practice can ever take you there, to freedom, to liberation. That's important to realize.

One way of pointing to this realization is, when you think you have big problems, ask yourself, "What problem do I have at this moment?" Usually, you will find that you don't have a problem at this moment because you're sitting here and you're breathing, you're looking out the window, and it's fine.

We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet.

We can't escape from the world anymore; we can't escape from the mind. We need to enter surrender while we are in the world. That seems to be the path that is effective in the world that we live in now.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

Sometimes people need to experience great loss to really be driven deeper.

All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Non- reaction is not weakness, But Strength!

You may remember the paradox of time we mentioned earlier: Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary. Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.

The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.

Failures lies concealed in every success in every failure.

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

Life is an adventure, it's not a package tour.

Stress is a form of suffering. Look at your body and see what stress does to the body and its functions - what it does to the heart, the circulation, the immune system, the digestive function, the liver.

As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an "I," has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to completely transcend that sense of ego.

There's something in human beings, not all human beings, that is ready for the change in consciousness. It needs to happen now if humanity is not to destroy itself and the planet.

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.

Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.

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.

Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

The pas has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.

Now if a teacher gives you a practice, he or she would perhaps point out when you don't need it anymore or you realize yourself when you don't need it anymore.

The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.

Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.

When you drop your expectations that a person, a situation, a place, or an object should fulfill you, it's easier to be present in this moment because you're no longer looking to the next one. Most people want to get what they want, whereas the secret is to want what you get at this moment.

You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God

Work to recognize the primary importance of the present moment. A good little pointer toward that is to ask yourself, "What is my relationship with the present moment? How am I relating to it?"

All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no "I" except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted.