Eckhart Tolle Quotes [57 Enlightening Quotes; #21 is My Favorite]

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Internal and external are ultimately one. 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. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.

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.

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.

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.

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

18.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.

19.

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.

20.

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.

21.

The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now–to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.

22.

Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.

23.

Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment – the key to all inner transformation. Whenever you are conscious of the breath, you are absolutely present. You may also notice that you cannot think and be aware of your breathing. Conscious breathing stops your mind.

24.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

25.

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.

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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. The is the new earth.

32.

The human condition: lost in thought.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

To love is to recognize yourself in another.

40.

Love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally; not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

50.

The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.

51.

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.

52.

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

53.

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

54.

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.

55.

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

56.

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

57.

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.

58.