ECKHART TOLLE QUOTES FROM THE POWER OF NOW AND A NEW EARTH ON LOVE, LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
- Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head-the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it-that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are. This is the egoic mind.This is unconsciousness, spiritually speaking.
- When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in.
- Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
- The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation.Both are illusions.The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.
- Ask yourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?
- The reason why you don't put your hand in the fire is not because of fear, it's because you know you'll get burned. You don't need fear to avoid an unnecessary danger, just a minimum of intelligence and common sense.
- “I am bored.” Who knows this?
“I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.
- Be there as the witnessing presence of your inner state. You don’t have to do anything. With the awareness comes transformation and freedom.
- Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not this moment? This one moment, now, is the only thing you can never escape from. The one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens. No matter how much your life changes. One thing is certain. Its always now. Since there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it.
- I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness.
- You say, “I want to know myself.” You are the I. You are the knowing. You are the consciousness through which everything is known and that cannot know itself. It is itself. There is nothing to know beyond that.
- By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form.
- If her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as she does. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion, peace.
- What a liberation to realize that the "voice in my head" is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.
- All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind.
- You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
- Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of the consciousness and the burning up of the ego.
- Life is the dancer and you are the dance.
- Right now we are being given the experience we need to raise our consciousness.
- The past has no power over the present moment.
- Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
- The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
- Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
- Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you.
- To love is to recognize yourself in another.
- Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.
- Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
- Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed.
- Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary.
- There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.
- Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" and find that there is no death.
- Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.
- Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life -and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
- This, too, will pass.
- I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.
- To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
- Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.
- The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
- Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.
- 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.
- When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you. That is the love that redeems the world.“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them."
- Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
- Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.
- There are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.
- Let me say it again:
"the present moment is all you ever have."
- True communication is communion- the realization of oneness, which is love.
- Every person carries the seed of enlightenment within.What is commonly called "falling in love" is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.
- Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
- Be present as the watcher of your mind of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.
- Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.
- Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I 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 your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.
- Fear arises through identification with form, whether it be a material possession, a physical body, a social role, a self-image, a thought, or an emotion. It arises through unawareness of the formless inner dimension of consciousness or spirit, which is the essence of who you are.
- Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego, which, in our Western society in particular, is out of control. It believes it is real and tries hard to maintain its supremacy. Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.
- Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.
- If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.
- When you look upon another human being and feel great love toward them, or when you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of that love or that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence. That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will.
