Tolle Quotes & Sayings

By learning to accept the small things immediately as they happen, you can be free of having to react to things at all. You still can respond when action is needed, but you can be free, internally, of events. — Eckhart Tolle

The end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end. — Eckhart Tolle

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought. — Eckhart Tolle

The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. — Eckhart Tolle

If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are
the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined. — Eckhart Tolle

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. Death is the opposite of birth. — Eckhart Tolle

To sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence. — Eckhart Tolle

The pas has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. — Eckhart Tolle

The most powerful state for a human to be in is the state of embracing completely the reality of what is - Now. It is to say "Yes" to life, which is now and always now. There is a vast power in that "Yes," that state of inner non-resistance to what is. — Eckhart Tolle

Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present. — Eckhart Tolle

In Zen, such a glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion. — Eckhart Tolle

The ego likes to emphasize the 'otherness' of others — Eckhart Tolle

Forgive yourself for not being at peace. — Eckhart Tolle

You become so overwhelmed by your life situation that you lose your sense of life, of Being. Or you are carrying in your mind the insane burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing that you can do now. — Eckhart Tolle

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. — Eckhart Tolle

What the world doesn't tell you - because it doesn't know - is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. — Eckhart Tolle

At the deepest level, an 'open heart' is spacious presence, in which the sense of separateness between yourself and the 'other' dissolves and there is the recognition of oneness, of shared consciousness. That recognition is love. Sensing the formless essence in another and recognizing it as one with your own essence - that's what love is. All this is an intrinsic part of the awakened consciousness and the revelation of the spiritual dimension of life. — Eckhart Tolle

Challenges are something that can only be tackled in the present moment and require action. — Eckhart Tolle

Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease. — Eckhart Tolle

Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is 'ride the wave'. — Eckhart Tolle

Or is there something that you "should" be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won't. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity. — Eckhart Tolle

One only needs to read twentieth-century history to see that it has been the climax of human madness, if it's measured in terms of human violence inflicted on other humans. — Eckhart Tolle

You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware. — Eckhart Tolle

Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. — Eckhart Tolle

As you read, a shift takes place within you. — Eckhart Tolle

DO NOT BE CONCERNED WITH THE FRUIT OF YOUR ACTION - just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. — Eckhart Tolle

Whereas the notion of purpose before was always associated with future, there is now a deeper purpose that can only be found in the present, through denial of time. — Eckhart Tolle

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state. — Eckhart Tolle

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. — Eckhart Tolle

If you were far out in space, you would see that the sun neither rises nor sets, but that it shines continuously. And yet, even after realizing that, we can continue to speak of the sunrise or sunset, still see its beauty, paint it, write poems about it, even though we now know that it is a relative rather than an absolute truth. — Eckhart Tolle

The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. 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 failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say on the level of form, everybody "fails" sooner or later, of course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent. — Eckhart Tolle

Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away. The — Eckhart Tolle

You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present. — Eckhart Tolle

When you recognise that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. — Eckhart Tolle

The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought. — Eckhart Tolle

Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. — Eckhart Tolle

Only by awakening can you know the true meaning of that word. — Eckhart Tolle

The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. — Eckhart Tolle

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. — Eckhart Tolle

Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking. — Eckhart Tolle

Reincarnation doesn't help you if in your next incarnation you still don't know who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -The Power of Now — Julie Kelly

Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That's secondary. Your true evolution is to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life. — Eckhart Tolle

I call animals "guardians of Being," especially animals that live with humans. Because, for many humans, it's through their contact with animals they get in touch with that level of being. — Eckhart Tolle

Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it's the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine' in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges. — Eckhart Tolle

Jesus points to this when he says, "Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole."1 The New Testament's "Be ye perfect" is a mistranslation of the original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don't need to become whole, but be what you already are - with or without the pain-body. — Eckhart Tolle

We could say that the totality, life wants the sapling to become a tree, but the sapling doesn't see itself as separate from life and so wants nothing for itself. It is one with what life wants. That's why it isn't worried or stressed. And, if it has to die prematurely, it dies with ease.. — Eckhart Tolle

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you're waiting for the elevator - instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence. — Eckhart Tolle

When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you're doing, you become stressed. — Eckhart Tolle

The present moment is all you will ever have. — Eckhart Tolle

Whatever you want to achieve is secondary: the business, the exchange of information, whatever it may be. Yes, you do that also, but there is a deeper foundation - meeting that human being in a state of shared presence. — Eckhart Tolle

Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become I. — Eckhart Tolle

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. — Eckhart Tolle

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. — Eckhart Tolle

The reality is there is only each present moment: You are called to give a talk. You get out of a building and into a car. You look out of the window. You arrive at the venue. You sit in the chair; you wait; you step out onto the stage. Every movement is simple. There is only that. — Eckhart Tolle

You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light. — Eckhart Tolle

I sometimes get a distorted view of how quickly humans are evolving, because I meet many people who are evolving beyond ego. Then I have to switch on the TV to realize, "Oh, no, it is not happening to everybody yet." But it is happening. — Eckhart Tolle

Non-reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. — Eckhart Tolle

Christ is your God-essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence. — Eckhart Tolle

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small. — Eckhart Tolle

Enlightened groups can exist, as long as the individuals' sense of identity is not derived from a mentally defined image of us. — Eckhart Tolle

If I find here and Now unacceptable, I have three choices:
1-Totally accept it.
2- Change it.
3-Remove myself from the situation.
That is taking responsibility for my life. — Eckhart Tolle

There's something in human beings, not all human beings, that is ready for the change in consciousness. It needs to happen now if humanity is not to destroy itself and the planet. — Eckhart Tolle

There are situations when all answers and explanations fade. When you fully accept that you do not know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind. That is when the greater intelligence can operate though you. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing. — Eckhart Tolle

Is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, — Eckhart Tolle

Pain is the fuel that lights the flame of our enlightenment — Eckhart Tolle

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching. — Eckhart Tolle

Dimension comes a different kind of knowing, — Eckhart Tolle

A group needs enemies, because without enemies its identity cannot continue to be defined. — Eckhart Tolle

Be alert and present and see that your identity is not from your past story; who you truly are is the alert presence that is inseparable from the present moment. You are this, which has no name and no form. — Eckhart Tolle

Making it" in whatever field is only meaningful as long as there are thousands or millions of others who don't make it, so you need other human beings to "fail" so that your life can have meaning. — Eckhart Tolle

Nothing makes sense anymore, because all the meaning and purpose that life had for them was associated with accumulating, succeeding, building, protecting, and sense gratification. It was associated with the outward movement and identification with form, that is to say, ego. Most people cannot conceive of any meaning when their life, their world, is being demolished. And yet, potentially, there is even deeper meaning here than in the outward movement. — Eckhart Tolle

In the late seventies, I would have lunch every day with one or two friends in the cafeteria of the graduate center at Cambridge University, where I was studying. — Eckhart Tolle

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions. — Eckhart Tolle

Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly. — Eckhart Tolle

abundance comes only to those who already have it — Eckhart Tolle

The only thing you ever have is now. — Eckhart Tolle

The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else. — Eckhart Tolle

Whatever you do in your business comes out of a state of inner alignment with life and the source of life itself, so peace flows into whatever you do. — Eckhart Tolle

Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as you needs and what matters to you in life - and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you. — Eckhart Tolle

Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to have remained a secret. — Eckhart Tolle

"Going with the flow" is for some people an excuse for not taking action and it refers usually to one's life situation. — Eckhart Tolle

Vipassana is fine until it becomes a technique that has many stages and that takes time to develop. That can be okay for people for a while, but then you have to leave the technique behind. — Eckhart Tolle

Love and do what you will, — Eckhart Tolle

Even if they don't know it consciously, people can feel when you are making them into a means to an end only. And people are much less likely to do what you want them to do - for example, to buy the car - when they feel you are reducing them into a means to an end. — Eckhart Tolle

Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be "the awakened one," which is what the word buddha means. — Eckhart Tolle

People are amazed to realize they can enjoy the moment rather than be stressed by it when hurrying to an appointment. You can enjoy the energy movement of the moment when you do not have a mental projection of a future moment you need to get to. You still know that you need to get there, but it is the secondary consideration. — Eckhart Tolle

Action arising out of suffering is contaminated with suffering and causes further suffering, and that is karma. Action that arises out of a state of "acceptance" is totally free of karma. And there is a vast difference. — Eckhart Tolle

If you are not living this moment, you are not really living. — Eckhart Tolle

The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are those that are aimed at the good of all. — Eckhart Tolle

This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It — Eckhart Tolle

Enthusiasm is the power that transfers the mental blueprint into the physical dimension. — Eckhart Tolle

When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. — Eckhart Tolle

Inner state. You need to be extremely alert and absolutely present to be able to detect them. Whenever you do, it is a moment of awakening, of disidentification from the mind. Here is one of the most common negative states that is easily overlooked, precisely because — Eckhart Tolle

in it. It means consciousness is lost in its own dream. You get taken in by every thought, every emotion, — Eckhart Tolle

A built-in reminder is the simple understanding that whenever any kind of unhappiness arises, you know you've lost the now. That's a built-in alarm clock. The moment you realize you've lost the now, come back to the now. — Eckhart Tolle

Instead of asking, "what do I want from life?," a more powerful question is, "what does life want from me? — Eckhart Tolle

If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies" - his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals. — Eckhart Tolle

Observe your thoughts, don't believe them. — Eckhart Tolle

When great loss happens - deaths close to you or your own approaching death - this is an opportunity for stepping completely out of identification with form and realizing the essence of who you are, or that the essence of anyone who is suffering or dying is beyond death. — Eckhart Tolle

Being must be 'felt' it can not be 'thought. — Eckhart Tolle