Eckhart Tolle Quotes

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

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.

Awareness means to listen to me unfocused - alert of course, not fallen asleep, but alert to these birds, their chirping, alert to the wind that passes through the trees, alert to everything that is happening. Concentration excludes much, includes little. Awareness excludes nothing, includes all. Awareness is a state of no-mind. You are, yet you are not focused. You are just a mirror reflecting all, echoing all; see the beauty of it and the silence and the stillness.

Real action is in silent moments.

Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.

As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.

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.

Any action in which you can be total becomes meditation.

You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method - you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment... the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That's what enlightenment is!

The master action, to move forward is a form of inaction; being still and quiet.

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.

Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope.

The command is "Do no work." Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don't have to DO to BE. accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming.

Presence is a state of inner spaciousness

To be aware of little, quiet things, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

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.

There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

It is only in alert silence that truth can be.

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day.

If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

So for a period of time each day, try to sit, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.