Eckhart Tolle

Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.

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.

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.

Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.

To love is to recognize yourself in another.

Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

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

Life is the dancer and you are the dance.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.

A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.

Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

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.

Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

Accept - then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.

This, too, will pass.

Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.

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.

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.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

“Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.

Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.

If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.

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.

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.

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.

Don't Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.

All problems are illusions of the mind.

Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

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.

Being must be felt. It can't be thought.

“...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.”

If not now, when?

Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?

As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.

It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.

Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself.

“This is my secret," he said. "I don't mind what happens.”

The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.

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.

Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.

In today's rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being.

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.

The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

Become conscious of being conscious.

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.

All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. 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 nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn't very much.

Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past cant prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?

“...whenever there is inspiration...and enthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.”

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, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.

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.

You have so much to learn from your enemies.

Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

The human condition: lost in thought.

I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.

When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you. That is the love that redeems the world.

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.

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.

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.

To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.

Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.

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

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction.

Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.

On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.

In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.

Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

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.

Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.

Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called "God." As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s, f, g, and so forth. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?

If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.

With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.

Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind.

You are here to enable the divine purpose of the Universe to unfold. That is how important you are!

The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.

Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of nature and the vast negativity that has accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you some across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the humans mind and its insanity.

If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

That in you which recognizes madness as madness (even if it is your own) is sanity, is the arising awareness, is the end of insanity.

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.

Practice presence -- embrace the place where life happens.

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.

Each person's life – each life form, in fact – represents a world, a unique way in which the universe experiences itself.

The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.

What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.

Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
It is also insane.

The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.

Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.

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. All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind...”

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.

Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth.

All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.

The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of non-judgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to non-attachment. Nonresistance, non-judgement, and non-attachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.

True Power is within, and it is available now.

Die to the past every moment. You don't need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.

Inner resistance to whatever arises in the present moment pulls you back into unconsciousness. Inner resistance is some form of negativity, complaining, fear, aggression, or anger. This is important because whenever you complain about what somebody else does you're already beginning to fall into that trap of unconsciousness.

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.

Man Made 'God' in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as 'my god' or 'our god'.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.

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.

Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.

Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open. 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?

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.

When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create?

If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you're back in time.

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.”

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.

The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more ore you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind. 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.

Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not "fit in" with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.

The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.

The ego says, ‘I shouldn't have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.

Deny thy self!

When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. 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.

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.

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead.”

"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is”

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.

You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don’t have a life. You are life.

The present moment is all you will ever have.

If increased meta-knowledge is not counter-balanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness then the likelihood of psycho-spiritual dysfunction is great.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.

Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.

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.

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.

Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.

Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your Being in its purity, innocence, and power. What it sees as strength is weakness.

Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.

The philosopher Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.

“... there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”

Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet.

Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.

Suffering needs time. It cannot survive in the now.

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.”

Failures lies concealed in every success in every failure

When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently

If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.

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".

The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.

Instead of asking, “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?

By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords.

Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.

Just as the dog loves to chew bones, the human mind loves its problems.

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.

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 are.

You are awareness, disguised as a person.

Whatever you accept completely, you go beyond...If you fight it, you're stuck with it.

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 into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.

Humans have learned to split the atom. Instead of killing ten or twenty people with a wooden club, one person can now kill a million just by pushing a button. Is that real change?

Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the
waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave & ripple has a very short lived life - it is very fleeting

Do not identify with your thoughts - continued identification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious dysfunction in one's sense of identity...

And then one day, you too disappear. Your armchair is still there. But instead of you sitting in it, there is just an empty space. You went back to where you came from just a few years ago.

Everything is honored, but nothing matters.

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.

You are not your mind.

What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time -- surrendered to life.

You are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.

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.

The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.

Nonresistance, non-judgment, and non-attachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

Stillness
Is the only thing in this world
That has no form.
But then,
It is not really a thing,
And it is not of this world.

For what you do to others, you do to yourself.

“This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.”

“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.”

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

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.

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.

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.

Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.

The more negative emotion there is in a story, the heavier and more impenetrable it becomes.

If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow. Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it. When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.

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.

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.

When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed.

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.

If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.

Unless you learn to recognize the false as false — as not you — there can be no lasting transformation, and you would always end up being drawn back into illusion and into some form of pain.

The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space.

Every person carries the seed of enlightenment within.

A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.

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.

The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.

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.

When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you're doing, you become stressed.

Neither concepts nor mathematical formula can explain the infinite.

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.

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.

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.

You are only allowed to see a sanitized version of death.

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.

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?

You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present...

In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. “That’s dangerous,” says the ego. “You’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable.” What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

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.

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.

The peace that comes with surrendered action turns to a sense of aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing.

The Buddha says that pain or suffering arises through desire or craving and that to be free of pain we need to cut the bonds of desire.

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.

Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.

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

The past has no power over the present moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it's applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you're dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

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

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to - alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person - you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you're waiting for the elevator - instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

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

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

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future.

The only thing you ever have is now.

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

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

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.

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

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.

If there are people you haven't forgiven, you're not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

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

Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of 'I know.' Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

You are the universe, you aren't in the universe.

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

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

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

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

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

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

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

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

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

The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.

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

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

Thinking fragments reality - it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

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

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that's a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what's around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

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

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

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

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

I've always enjoyed being in the background, sitting in a cafe, watching people. But now, when I sit in a cafe, sometimes people watch me. It's a challenge. But it's usually people who want to say 'your book transformed my life', or something... so then I'm joyful. One moment before, I didn't want them to recognise me, but when they do, I'm glad.

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

Jesus said, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' I think if he lived nowadays, instead of 'kingdom,' he would have said, 'dimension.' And 'heaven' refers to a sense of vastness or spaciousness.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They're not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it's just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

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

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.

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

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say 'recognize' because you're not... it's not new.

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

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

The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.