Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Eckhart Tolle (German Spiritual Writer)

Eckhart Tolle (b.1948) is a German-born Canadian spiritual teacher and an exemplar of the modern self-help movement. He is one of the most popular spiritual authors in North America.

Born Ulrich Leonard Tölle in Lünen, Germany, Tolle was educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At age 29, he had a profound spiritual transformation while he was completing his doctorate at Cambridge. He devoted the next few years to understanding, integrating, and deepening that transformation, which he later identified as a classic self-realization experience described by such Hindu spiritual leaders as Ramana Maharshi. In response to Ramana Maharshi’s instruction to contemplate upon the formulation “Who am I?,” Tolle’s answer is that true being can only be experienced by living entirely in the present moment, without the burden and affliction of constant thinking.

Tolle is best known as the author of The Power of Now (1997) and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005.) Tolle’s central message, which is primarily influenced by Zen Buddhism, is that most of us spend our lives mentally fixated on the past or future when only the present is “actual.”

American TV celebrity Oprah Winfrey championed Tolle’s books. She also organized a 10-week online seminar series that was watched by 11 million people.

Tolle is a charismatic speaker and holds retreats that combine talks with periods of contemplation and meditation.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Eckhart Tolle

The past has no power over the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Worry

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.
Eckhart Tolle

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Ego

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
Eckhart Tolle

All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous.
Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain body.
Eckhart Tolle

A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by.
Spare some change? mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his baseball cap.
I have nothing to give you, said the stranger. Then he added, What’s that you are sitting on?
Nothing, replied the beggar, Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.
Ever look inside? asked the stranger.
What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.
Have a look inside, insisted the stranger.
The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw the box was filled with gold.
Eckhart Tolle

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power if within, and it is available to you now.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Weakness

The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Fear

All the things that truly matter—beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace—arise from beyond the mind.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Beauty, Creativity, Mind, Peace, Joy, Love

Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking. In other words, it means to act without seeking to enhance one’s sense of self through one’s actions or one’s interactions with people. Ultimately, it means not needing the future anymore for one’s fulfillment or for one’s sense of self or being. There is no seeking through doing, seeking an enhanced, more fulfilled, or greater sense of self in the world. When that seeking isn’t there anymore, then you can be in the world but not be of the world. You are no longer seeking for anything to identify with out there.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Spirituality

You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Spirituality

Listen to people’s stories and they all could be entitled ‘Why I Cannot Be At Peace Now.’.
Eckhart Tolle

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

I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there’s also complete stillness; there’s no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There’s simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that’s beautiful.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Walking

What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself.
Eckhart Tolle

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Ego

There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
Eckhart Tolle

The World can only change from within.
Eckhart Tolle

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.
Eckhart Tolle

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: The Present

With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.
Eckhart Tolle

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
Eckhart Tolle
Topics: Change

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