German spiritualist Eckhart Tolle has been quoted many times. The following 15 inspirational quotes attributed to him may not only inspire you also offer more ways to look at life.
Tolle refers to the recognition of the importance of the present, the release from dependence, and the renunciation of the ego as ways to achieve happiness, peace, and love. These words help some discover the tremendous power they have to anticipate and influence your future and to live your life with all the good that the world has to offer.
Many people do not realize that the present is all we have and tend to forget to enjoy, and appreciate the present moment. The past is a cluster of memories that give us identity, and the future is an expectation of a promise of fulfillment and salvation - in both cases, it is an illusion. According to Tolle, the surest way to miss your life is to believe that the next moment is more important than the present moment in which we are. Recognizing and cherishing the present instills in our moments the simplest sense of quality, affection, and love.
All our lives we are looking to be loved. For us, love can only come from an external source - parent, spouse, child, friend, etc. The fear of loss of love or of distance and rejection shakes us, and we are confident that we will need external approval for the rest of our lives. What we do not consider is that love exists within us - it is, in fact, a state of being.
You can wake up in the morning without a partner at your side and feel love for life, for existence, deep within you. Such love will never be lost and it will never leave you. If you think about it clearly, our need for someone to love us is first and foremost our desire to love ourselves through the way another looks at us.
Different people complain about difficult experiences that "plague" them throughout their lives. Why is their boss so mean? Why doesn’t their partner understand them? Why are their lives riddled with pain? Tolle claims that there is one clear answer to all these questions. Life gives us the lessons we need, not necessarily the ones we want, to bring about the development of our consciousness. This is not a fatalism - according to which fate is known in advance, but an inevitable fate for our mental and emotional state. If you will - this is the safest way to the future.
People tend to focus more on the negative than on the positive. If you want to go for a half hour walk, and finish "just" 20 minutes, you will probably focus on the 10 minutes you did not finish rather than the 20 minutes you did. The result of this focus is that the mind becomes obsessed with the negative, and without realizing it, it becomes a critical, accusative and stressful factor that adversely affects every step we take.
Getting ourselves used to not complaining sounds like science fiction, and it seems that we have adapted dissatisfaction as an ongoing coping mechanism. According to Tolle, complaining means not accepting what exists, and in this situation, there is an unconscious negative charge. When we complain we make ourselves a victim.
On the other hand, when we express our opinion, we give presence to our power. If you want to change a given situation - take initiative, talk, leave, get away or accept the situation as it is. Remember that what we react to in others is strong within us too, and everything we resent in others exists in us as well.
Sometimes we fear letting go of things from our past - our thought is that these things give us meaning and identity, and without them, we are lost. But in order to make room for new experiences and new people, we must let go of the past and put aside the things we have developed a dependence on alongside the understanding that we can lose something we have but not something we are.
This, of course, requires great courage, and there will be changes that might seem negative on the surface, but Tolle claims that we must recognize the past, learn from our mistakes, forgive ourselves - and then move on and focus on the present.
We live in a world of definitions, without which we do not seem to know how to think, what to watch out for, and where to belong, but the more we define ourselves and our environment, the more we create boundaries for everyone. Tolle argues that when we connect with people, we should not be there as a function or role, but as a field of conscious presence - this means giving ourselves the freedom not to burrow under one constant and absolute definition but to live and experience all the qualities and feelings that exist in us. We sometimes define people in a negative way, unaware that they may fear losing their identity, even if it has been established as "evil," and therefore those people will persist in denial and destroying the good in their lives.
The meaning of freedom, redemption, and enlightenment is to know ourselves under the thinking person in us, to go silent under the noise of the soul and to become familiar with the love and happiness that are under the pain. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not our personal states, but of the human mind.
The way to know the difference between them is by knowing that what is not personal comes and goes. We tend to identify ourselves with the thinking side because it is the side which we value the most in the society in which we live, but thoughts hold us in time - between memories and anticipation. There is a vast expanse of intelligence beyond thought. The things that really matter-beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace-stem from beyond the brain.
If you focus on the this quote it may change essential things in your mind and even in your life; in most of our relationships, there is an ego. We give, demand, keep score, and seek to satisfy our ego because "we can’t be spoken to like that.” Eckhart Tolle argues that in a sincere relationship, there is a flow of open and alert attention to the other person, without any desire (for compensation), and such a relationship is not controlled by the ego. This does not mean total devotion, but giving that is not controlled by fear.
If we do not express any objection to life we can reach a state of grace, calm, and enlightenment, and this frees us from dependence on the perception that things must be a certain way in order for us to be happy. When we fight, we strengthen the source of pain, and when we resist, we continue it.
The moment we relinquish resistance and dependence in form, material, or people, then the general state of our lives tends to improve greatly, people and things we thought we needed for our happiness will come to us without our struggle, and we can be free to enjoy and appreciate them. It is important to remember that all things that come to our lives will pass from them since we are in a cyclical movement, but when we live independently, we no longer have the fear of losing things.
Addiction is something that exists in most of our lives; we indulge in cigarettes, food, shopping, alcohol, gambling and even people. The common denominator of all these addictions is that they start with pain and end with pain, and stem from an unconscious refusal to deal with the anguish in us and move on. Addiction is to use something or someone to cover up suffering.
Spiritual people may talk a lot about their lives as a journey of exploration-a search for the self, a search for peace, a search for happiness. Eckhart Tolle claims surprisingly that the antithesis of happiness is the search, and that if we look for it we will not find it. According to him, there is a difference between happiness and inner peace, because happiness depends on conditions perceived as positive and inner peace does not.
If you are stuck for a long time in a state of unhappiness, sometimes taking action is preferable to inaction. If the action you have taken is a mistake, at least you will have learned something from it and then it will no longer be a mistake. If you remain in a state of stagnation and unhappiness, you will learn nothing.
Our brain can become a destructive tool when it is used for bad, and in fact, it is not that we use our brains incorrectly, but rather we don’t use our brains at all - it is the one who uses us. Many times we do not understand the illusion in the belief that we are our minds/our opinions. This tool (our brain) takes control of our lives and we must treat it with respect and suspicion, and keep the control in our hands.
Seriousness is perceived in society as having value and is evidence of wisdom, perseverance, and stability. On the other hand, silliness and humor are considered to be childish. But as Tolle emphasizes, the mind or thoughts that control us are what instill in us the belief that life is a very serious matter, and so should be taken as such. It is precisely from the vanity that exists in many things in life, from the suffering and injustice we all witness - that the only thing we can control and insist on is our happiness and tranquility.
