Eckhart Tolle Quotes

In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.

Any action in which you can be total becomes meditation.

Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply, and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing.

True creativity flows only from stillness. When stillness becomes conscious, the spiritual dimension enters your life and you begin to be guided by an intelligence far greater than the human mind.

"What is the secret of your serenity?" Said the master: "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

Once I opened my mind to the concept of a greater power, I never struggled with it. Everywhere I went, I felt and saw the existence of a creative intelligence in this universe, of a loving power larger than myself in nature, in people, everywhere.

Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred.

Big mind is something to express, not something to figure out. Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for.

By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.

There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.

For most people on the planet, consciousness can be equated with thought. They haven't experienced what it means to be conscious without thought, or they have only for very brief instants.

Meditation should not be regarded as a learning process. It should be regarded as an experiencing process. You should not try to learn from meditation but try to feel it. Meditation is an act of nonduality. The technique you are using should not be separate from you; it is you, you are the technique. Meditator and meditation are one. There is no relationship involved.

Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them. They might say, 'What a pretty flower,' but that's just a mechanical mental labeling. Because they are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't feel it's essence, it's holiness-just as they don't know themselves, don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.

Create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

If people would just wake up to what's real, there would be no misery in the world. I guess chanting's a pretty good place to start.

When the mind is opening to that unbounded pure awareness, the field of pure intelligence, simultaneously the body is losing stresses and strains, and thereby the clouds that were hindering the use of inner full creative intelligence in action, they begin to wither away.

It's a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.

Nothing has to happen immediately, this minute, or right now. It's okay to pause for just a moment. Just take a breath. Then go quietly inside. Ask life itself to lead you to your best outcome. There's nothing you have to do, really, except get out of your own way.

Just two small things: meditation and let-go. Remember these two key words: meditation and surrender. Meditation will take you in, and surrender will take you into the whole. And this is the whole of religion. Within these two words Buddha has condensed the whole essence of religion.

Because of watching your breath and thoughts you have come to know now that you are neither thoughts nor your breath, you are the watcher, the witness. This is awareness. This is what I call meditation. Once you have known this awareness you are unidentified with your body, with your mind. Now you experience a vastness inside you, in one sense utterly empty and in another sense overflowingly full. Because of its emptiness you will remain calm and quiet. And because of its overflowing fullness you will be creative.

What would it be like if, right in the midst of this busyness, we were to consciously take our hands off the controls? What if we were to intentionally stop our mental computations and our rushing around and, for a minute or two, simply pause and notice our inner experience?

But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.

Withdraw your awareness from everywhere and just let it rest within yourself, and you have arrived home.

Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.

Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.