Quotes from Eckhart Tolle

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind - in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Most people want to get what they want, whereas the secret is to want what you get at this moment.

Your primary purpose is to enable consciousness to flow into what you do. The secondary purpose is whatever you want to achieve through the doing.

How' is always more important that 'what.' See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.

"Getting away from it all," many people want that, and of course ultimately the only way to get away from it all is to go within, now.

...there are two ways of being unhappy: One is not getting what you want, and the other is getting what you want.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.

You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.

The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in darkness.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.

Some people thought I was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.

When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.

The past has no power over the present moment.

Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and listen. No more is needed.

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer the universe.

Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought