Who is Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle, who was born Ulrich Leonard Tolle on the 16th February 1948, is one of the most well known spiritual authors in North America, having released best selling books that have sold over 8 million copies between them by 2009.
Tolle was born in Germany but has spent the majority of his career living between Vancouver and California. He has discussed how he suffered from depression for most of his young life, until 29 years of age, when he experienced an “inner transformation”. This led him to travel and explore spirituality and the teachings of many religions, ultimately leading to 1997 when he began writing his first book The Power of Now.
Following the release of his two major titles, he began to appear on talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he delivered live webinars and as a result, has regularly been mentioned as one of the most influential spiritual teachers and leaders.
We have collected a variety of quotes from Tolle that truly make you question, debate and look at your inner self, such are the power of his words.
Eckhart Tolle Quotes
1. “The past has no power over the present moment.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
5. “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.”
6. “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.”
7. “The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.”
8. “All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present.”
9. “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.”
10. “Let me say it again the present moment is all you ever have.”
11. “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.”
12. “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
13. “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
14. “If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
15. “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?”
16. “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
17. “All problems are illusions of the mind.”
18. “There are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”
19. “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.”
20. “To love is to recognize yourself in another.”
21. “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”
22. “You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
23. “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
24. “So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.”
25. “Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.”
26. “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.”
27. “You are not the voice in your mind, but the one who is aware of it.”
28. “To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now.”
29. “If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.”
30. “The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.”
31. “To know another human being in their essence, you don’t really need to know anything about them — their past, their history, their story.”
32. “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
33. “Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
34. “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.”
35. “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.”
36. “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.”
37. “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.”
38. “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, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.”
39. “Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.”
40. “Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
41. “It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
42. “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
43. “Faith is the substance of whatever it is that we hope for. The important thing is that we teach that faith is connected to goof works and responsibility.”
44. “Life will give you whatever experience is the most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
45. “Be true to life by being true to your inner purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.”
46. “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.”
47. “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.”
48. “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.”
49. “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.”
50. “Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.”
51. “In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being.”
52. “If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.”
53. “Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
54. “Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”
55. “Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
56. “If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”
57. “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
58. of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
59. “Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness”
60. “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
61. “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.”
62. “Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. … When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative.”
