Eckhart Tolle
The fires of suffering become the light of consciousness.Collection: Light
We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other.Collection: Fighting
Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present.Collection: Inspirational
When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self. This is the ego, a mind-made "me." That mentally constructed self feels incomplete and precarious. That's why fearing and wanting are its predominant emotions and motivating forces.Collection: Freedom
Instead of creating expectations of what should or should not be happening, cooperate with the form that this moment takes.Bring a 'yes' to the isness, because it's pointless to argue if it already is.A greater intelligence is available to you when you no longer reject, deny, or 'don't want' what is.Collection: Creating
Man made God in his own image.Collection: Men
A work of art comes out of a state of deep stillness.Collection: Art
The thinking mind can be so noisy that it cannot relate to stillness. It doesn't even recognize it and certainly can't remember it.Collection: Thinking
Enthusiasm is intensified enjoyment of what you are doing.Collection: Enthusiasm
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.Collection: Mind
On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. 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.Collection: Life Changing
Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs the drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within that theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?Collection: War
Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.Collection: Time
The difference between you, if you consider yourself not enlightened, and an enlightened master is not that the enlightened master has more knowledge. University professors have knowledge, and many enlightened masters have very little knowledge. Jesus probably had less knowledge than any university professor alive today in terms of raw information. Even a relatively uneducated person has more information than Jesus or Buddha ever had about things, such as political things and so on.Collection: Jesus
A group needs enemies, because without enemies its identity cannot continue to be defined.Collection: Enemy
The consciousness of the animal begins to change when it interacts with a human who's gone beyond thinking. It's not only the animals assisting us; we are also assisting the animals.Collection: Animal
The most important healing - realizing who you are. The healing on the outer level is fine, but it's not the essence of healing.Collection: Healing
In fact, people think you have to be stressed to be successful. They think if you are not stressed, something is wrong with you.Collection: Successful
It is quite possible even that the planet would no longer be able to sustain human life. Probably, the planet eventually would regenerate and produce some other life form. Consciousness would flow into some other life form and express itself through that, whatever that would be.Collection: Would Be
For spiritual teachers, it is important not to identify with the image people inevitably have of them.Collection: Spiritual
Oprah [Winfrey] and I share a similar consciousness of spirit that is manifested in what some may call God or simply Spirit but others call it the Godhead manifestation of karmic virtue.Collection: May
Humanity as a species must change dramatically and radically or our survival is at stake.Collection: Humanity
Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.Collection: Spiritual
Because we all carry the Truth within us as our essence, we recognize it immediately.Collection: Essence
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.Collection: Letting Go
Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice.Collection: Spiritual
It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.Collection: Spiritual
One could say that everybody in this world has a spiritual teacher. For most people, their losses and disasters represent the teacher; their suffering is the teacher.Collection: Spiritual
Some people when I speak of awareness of the "inner body" call it a technique. I would not call it a technique because it is too simple for that. When the oak tree feels its roots in the earth, its connectedness with the earth, it is not practicing a technique.Collection: Simple
When you observe yourself reacting to what are minor things in your life, you will find that the mechanism is the same as when major things seem to go wrong in your life and there is upset.Collection: Upset
For a long time humans probably were in touch on a deeper level with the depths of their being, unconsciously so, the same way an animal or a tree is. Gradually, though, more and more of their identity went into the movement of thought. They identified more and more with the movement of thinking.Collection: Animal
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.Collection: Fighting
The evolutionary impulse is towards disidentification from thinking and the arising of awareness or presence, but the gravitational pull of the old consciousness, or rather unconsciousness, is still quite heavy. It's been around for thousands of years.Collection: Thinking
For most people on the planet, consciousness can be equated with thought. They haven't experienced what it means to be conscious without thought, or they have only for very brief instants.Collection: Mean
A self - a me - exists in every thought and every emotion. Suffering arises through complete identification with thinking and emotions.Collection: Thinking
Life always is now, but the form the now takes changes continuously. Most people equate the form the now takes with the now itself, and so they believe there are many different moments.Collection: Believe
For a relationship to deepen, at some point the spiritual dimension needs to come in. You don't even need to be fully awakened for this to happen, but if it does happen it certainly means you are awakening.Collection: Spiritual
I have spoken to many people who have begun to live in presence, and they find many changes come into their lives. Sometimes these changes happen as inner realizations - "This is what I have to do" - or they arise from the external when something suddenly happens.Collection: People
In whatever way change comes, the important thing is to take responsibility for this moment. Then, life becomes cooperative.Collection: Responsibility
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.Collection: Responsibility
Pay attention to the gap - the gap between two thoughts, the brief, silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath. When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of 'something' becomes - just awareness. The formless dimension of pure conciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with form.Collection: Two
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.Collection: People
Not to be able to stop thinking is an affliction, but we don't realise this because almost everybody is suffering from it.Collection: Thinking
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.Collection: Running
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.Collection: Inspirational
People look to the future for salvation, but the future never arrives.Collection: People
When you listen to the voice in your head, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.Collection: Here I Am
Loss is very painful, because any kind of loss leaves a hole in the fabric of one's existence.Collection: Loss
Give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting...snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be and enjoy being.Collection: Giving Up