Eckhart Tolle Quotes

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.

Wherever you are, be there totally. 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.

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.

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

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

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. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Always say ‚yes‘ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‚yes‘ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.

You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Love is a state of being.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

Some people awaken spiritually without ever coming into contact with any meditation technique or any spiritual teaching. They may awaken simply because they can’t stand the suffering anymore.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

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.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

The only thing you ever have is now.

I believe that Jesus realized his oneness with God and he showed, what he attempted to do was show the way to all of us, how to realize our own onenes with God also, so he’s a precursor.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.

Was Jesus the son of God? Yes. But so are you. You just haven’t realized it yet.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.

When the dog looks at you, the dog is not thinking what kind of a person you are. The dog is not judging you.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

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.

People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Even the most seemingly unpleasant situations – if you become aligned with it, something good will emerge from that.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

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

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.