Latest update: 26th Nov 2008
For purposes of close study this is my developing personal list of Eckhart Tolle quotes gathered from various sources. Not all were properly sourced. A few might be listed more than once.
Q. Close study?
A. I know I know I know – but it keeps me off the streets, and I try to be as well!
I have numbered the quotes and suggested. Not all quotations were properly sourced. A few quotations might be listed more than once.
1 How easy it is for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons. Stillness p.15
2 Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.
3 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.
4 Reincarnation doesn’t help you if in your next incarnation you still don’t know who you are.
5 “I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten”
6 “Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance”
7 “Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within”
8 “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be”
9 “Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place”
10 “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”
11 “[Relationships] do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you”
12 “Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time”
13 “Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disappointments before you realize that truth”
14 “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 non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence”
15 To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now.
16 For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
17 Instead of asking “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?”
18 If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.
19 Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
20 Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.
21 You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.
22 Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. … When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative.
23 All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
24 If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me
25 Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
26 Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.
27 Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become “I.”
28 Space has no “existence.” “To exist” literally means “to stand out.” You cannot understand space because it doesn’t stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the Unmanifested.
29 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.
30 Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
31 The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
32 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.
33 “How” is always more important that “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
34 The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.
35 To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.
The Power of Now
36 Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
The Power of Now
37 See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
The Power of Now
38 To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
The Power of Now
39 Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.
The Power of Now
40 The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body – to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform your life. The more consciousness you direct into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes
The Power of Now
41 True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found. Stillness Speaks
42 As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you.
Soul Needs - One Garden 