Author: Mike Turner

“The most common Ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.” – Eckhart Tolle

“The moment you become aware of the Ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the Ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness.. Awarenesss and Ego cannnot coexist.” – Eckhart Tolle

“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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“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 the moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“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. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Man made God in his own image…” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Become conscious of being conscious.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You have so much to learn from your enemies.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“One thing we do know: 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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“In the eyes of the Ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The brain does not create consciousness, but conciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Each person’s life – each lifeform,in fact – represents a world, a unique way in which the universe experiences itself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form — or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Nothing has 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?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the Ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of Ego when it happens without attempting to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven’t been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming “less,” you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the Ego’s perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Deny yourself” or “Turn the other cheek.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You may remember the paradox of time we mentioned earlier: Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary. Whenever you
become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be…” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges–the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“… there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The “waiting to start living” syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“whatever you fight, you strengthen. What you resist, persists. “A New Earth”:War is a mindset” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Let me say it again: the present moment is all you ever have.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Deny thy self!” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“So love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Non-resistance, non-judgment, and non-attachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can’t let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of “negative growth”.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the Ego is in fact the only true strength.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“For what you do to others, you do to yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Nietzsche, in a rare moment of deep stillness, wrote, “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!…the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance—little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords. ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“This is most people’s reality: As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you’re doing, you become stressed.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“If you were far out in space, you would see that the sun neither rises nor sets, but that it shines continuously. And yet, even after realizing that, we can continue to speak of the sunrise or sunset, still see its beauty, paint it, write poems about it, even though we now know that it is a relative rather than an absolute truth.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are — the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The more negative emotion there is in a story, the heavier and more impenetrable it becomes.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“There is no substitute for finding true purpose. But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are—that is to say, your state of consciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I want to know the mind of God,” Einstein said. “The rest are details.” What is the mind of God? Consciousness. What does it mean to know the mind of God? To be aware. What are the details? Your outer purpose, and whatever happens outwardly.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Jesus points to this when he says, “Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole.” The New Testament’s “Be ye perfect” is a mistranslation of the original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don’t need to become whole, but be what you already are—with or without the pain-body.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don’t get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene; giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other people for Egoic reflection or as Ego enhancers; trying to make an impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary Ego inflation through angry reaction against something or someone; taking things personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to appear important.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now. Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your Ego. There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges—the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“psychological time, which is the mind’s deep-seated habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“earth drama has any purpose at all, it is an indirect one: It creates more and more suffering on the planet, and suffering, although largely Ego-created, is in the end also Ego-destructive. It is the fire in which the Ego burns itself up. In a world of role-playing” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Those who do not attempt to appear more than they are but are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who truly make a difference in this world.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“There is nothing that strengthens the Ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position – a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the Ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“It is everywhere, not just in places where people don’t have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough. Is that surprising? No. The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The good news is: If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You are then like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“they are no more than unconscious players in the Egoic game, a game that looks so important yet is ultimately devoid of true purpose. It is, in the words of Shakespeare, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Amazingly, Shakespeare arrived at this conclusion without having the benefit of television.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“When there is stress, it is usually a sign that the Ego has returned, and you are cutting yourself off from the creative power of the universe.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Unhappiness or negativity is a disease on our planet. What pollution is on the outer level is negativity on the inner. It is everywhere, not just in places where people don’t have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“And then, just when you thought you made it or that you belong here, the return movement begins. Perhaps people close to you begin to die, people who were a part of your world. Then your physical form weakens; your sphere of influence shrinks. Instead of becoming more, you now become less, and the Ego reacts to this with increasing anxiety or depression.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“And it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being, emanates.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the Ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The Ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the Ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Instead of trying to be a mountain, teaches the ancient Tao Te Ching, “Be the valley of the universe.” In this way, you are restored to wholeness and so “all things will come to you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“in it. It means consciousness is lost in its own dream. You get taken in by every thought, every emotion,” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“fed up with being unhappy.” Some people may feel, as I did, that they cannot live with themselves anymore. Inner peace then becomes their first priority.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Neither concepts nor mathematical formulae can explain the infinite.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“the end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Why does the Ego play roles? Because of one unexamined assumption, one fundamental error, one unconscious thought. That thought is: I am not enough. Other unconscious thoughts follow: I need to play a role in order to get what I need to be fully myself; I need to get more so that I can be more. But you cannot be more than you are because underneath your physical and psychological form, you are one with Life itself, one with Being. In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the Ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same. THE PATHOLOGICAL EGO In a wider sense of the word, the Ego itself is pathological, no matter what form it takes. When we look at the ancient Greek root of the word pathological, we discover just how appropriate that term is when applied to the Ego. Although the word is normally used to describe a condition of disease, it is derived from pathos, which means suffering. This is, of course, exactly what the Buddha already discovered 2,600 years ago as a characteristic of the human condition. A person in the grip of Ego, however, does not recognize suffering as suffering, but will look upon it as the only appropriate response in any given situation” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the Ego in place.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“just as without silence there could be no sound, you would not exist without the vital formless dimension that is the essence of who you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The law that outflow determines inflow is expressed by Jesus in this powerful image: “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Violence is a primitive but still very widespread way in which the Ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labelling of people and adds even more energy to the Ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The Ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the Ego ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The other more serious reason for the illusion of separateness is compulsive thinking. It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Making it” in whatever field is only meaningful as long as there are thousands or millions of others who don’t make it, so you need other human beings to “fail” so that your life can have meaning.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Then what is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system—a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth—does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many “religious” people are stuck at that level. They equate truth with thought, and as they are completely identified with thought (their mind), they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an unconscious attempt to protect their identity. They don’t realize the limitations of thought. Unless you believe (think) exactly as they do, you are wrong in their eyes, and in the not-too-distant past, they would have felt justified in killing you for that. And some still do, even now.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the Ego with its image-making and self-seeking.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“His name was Jean-Paul Sartre. He looked at Descartes’s statement “I think, therefore I am” very deeply and suddenly realized, in his own words, “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.” What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” 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. You would be as identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the dream. Many people still live like that, like sleepwalkers, trapped in old dysfunctional mind-sets that continuously re-create the same nightmarish reality. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religions. There were always pockets of spirituality even in mind-dominated religions, although the institutionalized hierarchies felt threatened by them and often tried to suppress them” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Love and do what you will,” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“you are. Even if people agree with it, it is ultimately a fiction. Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I try to find myself in things but never quite make it and end up losing myself in them. That is the fate of the Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“In many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The world always makes sure that you cannot fool yourself for long about who you really think you are by showing you what truly matters to you. How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work. The Ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“As you read, a shift takes place within you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” 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. You would be as identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the dream. Many people still live like that, like sleepwalkers, trapped in old dysfunctional mind-sets that continuously re-create the same nightmarish reality. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Non-reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the Ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If you consider the Ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived “enemies”—his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can recognize someone’s behaviour as coming from the Ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Complaining is one of the Ego’s favourite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some Egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an Ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don’t know what you are doing.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The thinking mind cannot understand Presence” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“As I was walking with a friend through a beautiful nature reserve near Malibu in California, we came upon the ruins of what had been once a country house, destroyed by a fire several decades ago. As we approached the property, long overgrown with trees and all kinds of magnificent plants, there was a sign by the side of the trail put there by the park authorities. It read: danger. all structures are unstable. I said to my friend, “That’s a profound sutra [sacred scripture].” And we stood there in awe. Once you realize and accept that all structures (forms) are unstable, even the seemingly solid material ones, peace arises within you. This is because the recognition of the impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimension of the formless within yourself, that which is beyond death. Jesus called it “eternal life.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The Ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to and often worse than the one that was defeated.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I don’t know” is not confusion. Confusion is “I don’t know, but I should know” or “I don’t know, but I need to know.” When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system—a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth—does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Ego’s unconscious core feeling of “not enough” causes it to react to someone else’s success as if that success had taken something away from “me.” It doesn’t know that your resentment of another person’s success curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it.” ― Tolle, Eckhart, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you—praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on—give it to them. You don’t have it? Just act as if you had it, and it will come. Then, soon after you start giving, you will start receiving. You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow. Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you already have, but unless you allow it to flow out, you won’t even know that you have it. This includes abundance. The law that outflow determines inflow is expressed by Jesus in this powerful image: “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form—or a species—will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“All creativity comes out of inner spaciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The peace that comes with surrendered action turns to a sense of aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Nothing makes sense anymore, because all the meaning and purpose that life had for them was associated with accumulating, succeeding, building, protecting, and sense gratification. It was associated with the outward movement and identification with form, that is to say, Ego. Most people cannot conceive of any meaning when their life, their world, is being demolished. And yet, potentially, there is even deeper meaning here than in the outward movement.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“when they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behaviour, as one of the evils of our times; but you won’t find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I don’t have enough yet,” by which the Ego really means, “I am not enough yet.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“if you live in a culture that to a large extent equates self-worth with how much and what you have, if you cannot look through this collective delusion, you will be condemned to chasing after things for the rest of your life in the vain hope of finding your worth and completion of your sense of self there.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“deeper, true I. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance. I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness. The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!…the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance—little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defence. The light or sound does not care about what you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Catholic and other churches are actually correct when they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behaviour, as one of the evils of our times; but you won’t find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories. What do all of these have in common? They are made up of thought.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“To be in alignment with what is means to be in a relationship of inner non-resistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Don’t try to let go of the grievance. Trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the Ego in place.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, delusion. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as you needs and what matters to you in life – and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“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. The Spanish language is the most honest in regard to conventional notions of love: Te quiero means “I want you” as well as “I love you.” The other expression for “I love you,” te amo, which does not have this ambiguity, is rarely used—perhaps because true love is just as rare.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Ego-generated emotions are derived from the mind’s identification with external factors which are, of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Almost every thought you think is then concerned with past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfilment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the time-bound state of consciousness. There are three ways in which the Ego will treat the present moment: as a means to an end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy. Let us look at them in turn, so that when this pattern operates in you, you can recognize it and—decide again. To the Ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Whatever the Ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the Ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine’ in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond Ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels and images.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the Ego in you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and Ego cannot coexist.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the Ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“It is through knowing who you are not that the greatest obstacle to truly knowing yourself is removed.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The very reason for our existence in human form is to bring that dimension of consciousness into this world.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“This is most people’s reality: As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the Ego. They are imprisoned in thought forms, in object consciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do. And, of course, you cannot be present unless you become friendly with the present moment. That is the basis for effective action, uncontaminated by negativity.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Thought can at best point to the truth, but it never is the truth. That’s why Buddhists say “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What cannot be seen with the eye, but that whereby the eye can see: know that alone to be Brahman the Spirit and not what people here adore. What cannot be heard with the ear but that whereby the ear can hear: know that alone to be Brahman the Spirit and not what people here adore…. What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think: know that alone to be Brahman the Spirit and not what people here adore.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“According to Christian teachings, the normal collective state of humanity is one of “original sin.” Sin is a word that has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Literally translated from the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written, to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to live unskilfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering. Again, the term, stripped of its cultural baggage and misinterpretations, points to the dysfunction inherent in the human condition.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Egos only differ on the surface. Deep down they are all the same. In what way are they the same? They live on identification and separation.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“know: 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.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: Become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative. One decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again—until it becomes natural to live in such a way.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the Ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I didn’t realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Who was responsible for this fear of the feminine that could only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say: Of course, men were responsible. But then why in many ancient pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Celtic were women respected and the feminine principle not feared but revered? What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving Ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

On a collective level, the mind-set “We are right and they are wrong” is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,” that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of “accommodating a competing narrative,” but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“There is nothing that strengthens the Ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position—a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the Ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other words: You need to make others wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of “I” in your mind and whatever the “I” has identified with.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“In most ancient cultures, there must have been an intuitive understanding of this process, which is why old people were respected and revered. They were the repositories of wisdom and provided the dimension of depth without which no civilization can survive for long. In our civilization, which is totally identified with the outer and ignorant of the inner dimension of spirit, the word old has mainly negative connotations. It equals useless and so we regard it as almost an insult to refer to someone as old. To avoid the word, we use euphemisms such as elderly and senior. The First Nation’s “grandmother” is a figure of great dignity. Today’s “granny” is at best cute. Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The particular Egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality. It doesn’t know it is just a thought. To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means “I am in danger,” and it responds accordingly, even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable bed at night. The heart beats faster, muscles contract, breathing becomes rapid. There is a build-up of energy, but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the energy has no outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious thought. The rest of the energy turns toxic and interferes with the harmonious functioning of the body.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS All of the above are assumptions, unexamined thoughts that are confused with reality. They are stories the Ego creates to convince you that you cannot be at peace now or cannot be fully yourself now. Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The Ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace—if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that. Or it says: I can never be at peace because of something that happened in the past. Listen to people’s stories and they could all be entitled “Why I Cannot Be at Peace Now.” The Ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now. Or maybe it does know, and it is afraid that you may find this out. Peace, after all, is the end of the Ego. How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else. Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or rather what life does through you. There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Once the Ego has found an identity, it does not want to let go. Amazingly but not infrequently, the Ego in search of a stronger identity can and does create illnesses in order to strengthen itself through them.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“It is always the case that both victim and perpetrator suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, ‘Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable.” The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“In normal everyday usage, “I” embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the Ego. The illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space and time, but also into human nature, referred to as “an optical illusion of consciousness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords of the thought of “I” in your mind and whatever the “I” is identified with.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The unconscious compulsion to enhance one’s identity through association with an object is built into the very structure of the Egoic mind.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Being must be felt. It can’t be thought.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“In many cases, you are not buying a product, but an “identity enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid. What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work. The Ego satisfaction is short-lived, and so you keep looking for more; you keep buying and keep consuming.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“What the world doesn’t tell you—because it doesn’t know—is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You might say, “I know I am an immortal spirit,” or “I am tired of this mad world, and peace is all I want”—until the phone rings. Bad news: The stock market has collapsed; the deal may fall through; the car has been stolen; your mother-in-law has arrived; the trip is cancelled, the contract has been broken; your partner has left you; they demand more money; they say it’s your fault. Suddenly there is a surge of anger, of anxiety. A harshness comes into your voice; “I can’t take any more of this.” You accuse and blame, attack, defend, or justify yourself, and it’s all happening on autopilot. Something is obviously much more important to you now than the inner peace that a moment ago you said was all you wanted, and you’re not an immortal spirit anymore either. The deal, the money, the contract, the loss or threat of loss are more important. To whom? To the immortal spirit that you said you are? No, to me. The small me that seeks security or fulfilment in things that are transient and gets anxious or angry because it fails to find it. Well, at least now you know who you really think you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Awareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“You might say, “I know I am an immortal spirit,” or “I am tired of this mad world, and peace is all I want”—until the phone rings. Bad news: The stock market has collapsed; the deal may fall through; the car has been stolen; your mother-in-law has arrived; the trip is cancelled, the contract has been broken; your partner has left you; they demand more money; they say it’s your fault. Suddenly there is a surge of anger, of anxiety. A harshness comes into your voice; “I can’t take any more of this.” You accuse and blame, attack, defend, or justify yourself, and it’s all happening on autopilot. Something is obviously much more important to you now than the inner peace that a moment ago you said was all you wanted, and you’re not an immortal spirit anymore either. The deal, the money, the contract, the loss or threat of loss are more important. To whom? To the immortal spirit that you said you are? No, to me. The small me that seeks security or fulfilment in things that are transient and gets anxious or angry because it fails to find it. Well, at least now you know who you really think you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“How you are seen by others becomes the mirror that tells you what you are like and who you are. The Ego’s sense of self-worth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness. And A New Earth is its direct reflection in the physical realm.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“inner state. You need to be extremely alert and absolutely present to be able to detect them. Whenever you do, it is a moment of awakening, of dis-identification from the mind.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying “The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What you react to in another you strengthen within yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“see the sameness of being in every human.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is Ego.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Enthusiasm and the Ego cannot coexist.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Nature exists in a state of unconscious oneness with the whole. This, for example, is why virtually no wild animals were killed in the tsunami disaster of 2004. Being more in touch with the totality than humans, they could sense the tsunami’s approach long before it could be seen or heard and so had time to withdraw to higher terrain.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge. How could an insane person like her be part of this?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Mind isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The word “identification” is derived from the Latin word idem, meaning “same” and facere, which means “to make.” So when I identify with something, I “make it the same.” The same as what? The same as I. I endow it with a sense of self, and so it becomes part of my “identity.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living—” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“All utopian visions have this in common: the mental projection of a future time when all will be well, we will be saved, there will be peace and harmony and the end of our problems. There have been many such utopian visions. Some ended in disappointment, others in disaster.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“I try to find myself in things but never quite make it and end up losing myself in them.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“In Zen, such a glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What could be more heavier and more impenetrable than a rock, the densest of all forms? And yet some rocks undergo a change in their molecular structure, turn into crystals, and so become transparent to the light. Some carbons, under inconceivable heat and pressure, turn into diamonds, and some heavy minerals into other precious stones.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“You cannot receive what you don’t give.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the Ego. Non-reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the Ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Enthusiasm brings an enormous empowerment into what you do, so that all those who have not accessed that power would look upon “your” achievements in awe and may equate them with who you are. You, however, know the truth that Jesus pointed to when he said, “I can of my own self do nothing.” Unlike Egoic wanting, which creates opposition in direct proportion to the intensity of its wanting, enthusiasm never opposes. It is non-confrontational. Its activity does not create winners and losers. It is based on inclusion, not exclusion, of others. It does not need to use and manipulate people, because it is the power of creation itself and so does not need to take energy from some secondary source.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. You become a giver. Ask yourself often: “What can I give here; how can I be of service to this person, this situation?” You don’t need to own anything to feel abundant, although if you feel abundant consistently things will almost certainly come to you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Enthusiasm “wants” nothing because it lacks nothing. It is at one with life and no matter how dynamic the enthusiasm-inspired activities are, you don’t lose yourself in them. And there remains always a still but intensely alive space at the center of the wheel, a core of peace in the midst of activity that is both the source of all and untouched by it all. Through enthusiasm you enter into full alignment with the outgoing creative principle of the universe, but without identifying with its creations, that is to say, without Ego. Where there is no identification, there is no attachment—one of the great sources of suffering.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not happening, beyond form. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“And the Ego’s greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The more you make your thoughts and beliefs into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as “my god” or “our god.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are those that are aimed at the good of all.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“A large part of many people’s lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This is why the ills of our times is object proliferation” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“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?” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“What “I” could there be apart from life, apart from Being? It is utterly impossible. So there is no such thing as “my life,” and I don’t have a life. I am life. I and life are one.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“Some churches, sects, cults or religious movements are basically collective Egoic entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all—from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Ego doesn’t know that mind and mental positions have nothing to do with who you are because the Ego is the unobserved mind itself. In Zen they say: “Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Ego’s greatest enemy is the present moment, which is to say, life itself” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“A large part of many people’s lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This is why one of the ills of our times is object proliferation. When you can no longer feel the life that you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The Ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the Ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself. Non-reaction to the Ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond Ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human Ego. But you can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can recognize someone’s behavior as coming from the Ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“Don’t ask your mind for permission to enjoy what you do.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the Ego. The Ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns out to be eventually self-defeating. Cleverness divides; intelligence includes.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“conscious manifestation of form when he said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If you feel your life lacks significance or is too stressful or tedious, it is because you haven’t brought that dimension into your life yet. Being conscious in what you do has not yet become your main aim. The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness. The joy of Being is the joy of being conscious.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“Complaining is one of the Ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“They are more inward looking by nature, and for them the outward movement into form is minimal. They would rather return home than go out. They have no desire to get strongly involved in or change the world. If they have any ambitions, they usually don’t go beyond finding something to do that gives them a degree of independence. Some of them find it hard to fit into this world. Some are lucky enough to find a protective niche where they can lead a relatively sheltered life, a job that provides them with a regular income or a small business of their own. Some may feel drawn toward living in a spiritual community or monastery. Others may become dropouts and live on the margins of a society they feel they have little in common with. Some turn to drugs because they find living in this world too painful. Others eventually become healers or spiritual teachers, that is to say, teachers of Being. In past ages, they would probably have been called contemplatives. There is no place for them, it seems, in our contemporary civilization. On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet. I call them the frequency-holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through “just being.” In this way, they endow the seemingly insignificant with profound meaning. Their task is to bring spacious stillness into this world by being absolutely present in whatever they do. There is consciousness and therefore quality in what they do, even the simplest task. Their purpose is to do everything in a sacred manner. As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“What did Jesus tell his disciples? “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes a prediction that to this day few people have understood.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“What did Jesus tell his disciples? “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes a prediction that to this day few people have understood. He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” In modern versions of the Bible, “meek” is translated as humble. Who are the meek or the humble, and what does it mean that they shall inherit the earth? The meek are the Egoless. They are those who have awakened to their, essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others,” all life-forms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source. They embody the awakened consciousness that is changing all aspects of life on our planet, including nature, because life on earth is inseparable from the human consciousness that perceives and interacts with it. That is the sense in which the meek will inherit the earth. A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the Ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the Ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the Ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the Ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and Ego cannot coexist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but every time it is recognized, it is weakened.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it…this will miraculously transform your whole life.” – Eckhart Tolle

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