Eckhart Tolle citations

Page 8

“In the Bible, it says that God created the world and saw that it was good. That is what you see when you look from stillness without thought.”

“The ego doesn’t like to hear this, because if it cannot be reactive and righteous anymore, it will lose strength.”

“How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything.”

“How quick we are to form an opinion of a person, to come to a conclusion about them. It is satisfying to the egoic mind to label another human being, to give them a conceptual identity, to pronounce righteous judgment upon them.”

“To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.”

“Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural still exists.”

“We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be–to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.”

“We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds. We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating–lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.”

“Leave Life alone. Let it be.”

“Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.”

“The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.”

“It has been said: wherever you go, there you are. In other words: you are here. Always. Is it so hard to accept that?”

“How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to say, “I don't want to be where I am?” What does it feel like when you don't want to be where you are–the traffic jam, your place of work, the airport lounge, the people you are with?”

“When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.”

“The now is inseparable from who you are at the deepest level.”

“"No self, no problem,” said the Buddhist master when asked to explain the deeper meaning of Buddhism.”

“Can you see that this “I” is fleeting, a temporary formation, like a wave pattern on the surface of the water? Who is it that sees this? Who is it that is aware of the fleetingness of your physical and psychological form? I am. This is the deeper “I” that has nothing to do with past and future.”

“The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.”

“A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.”

“Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.”

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the “I Am” that is deeper than name and form.”

“Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.”

“Do you need more knowledge? Is more information going to save the world, or faster computers, more scientific or intellectual analysis? Is it not wisdom that humanity needs most at this time? But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? 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.”

“To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You don’t construct an identity out of it for that person.
That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego then no longer runs your relationships.”

“Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in certain ways– conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood experiences and their cultural environment. That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to be. When you pronounce judgment upon someone, you confuse those conditioned mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and that false identity becomes a prison not only for the other person but also for yourself.”

“Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being–completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.”

“It is true, of course, that some places are good places to walk out of–and sometimes that may well be the most appropriate thing for you to do. In many cases, however, walking out is not an option. In all those cases, the “I don't want to be here” is not only useless but also dysfunctional. It makes you and others unhappy.”

“Whenever you are able, have a “look” inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment–where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing–and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is?”

“Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something, and thereby become diminished and be less. These two movements obscure the fact that being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, now.”