the universe

Gracias, Lisa!

inseparable from stillness

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.

Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

- Eckhart Tolle

help or hindrance?

Neither "God" nor "Being" nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

- Eckhart Tolle

the insubstantiality of the past

Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.

- Eckhart Tolle

Our ability to forgive or not to forgive is a good gauge of how much control ego has of our psyche. The ego must be the pettiest of all prima-donnas. It typically holds on to a perceived slight with the same tenacity of a dog holding on to a bone.

Forgiveness has been a very challenging spiritual lesson for me. Doing better with it, though. As Tolle suggests above, it's a concept that is really only becomes necessary if we have empowered "the past" to affect our present moment. Tolle's wisdom suggests that "the past" is simply an illusion that exists only in our minds.

I'll repeat that brilliant nugget of wisdom for emphasis: "the past" is an illusion that exists only in our heads. And so is "the future." The present moment is all we have. Try to live your life 100% in it.

liberation

The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.

- Eckhart Tolle

single most vital step

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

- Eckhart Tolle 

a total reversal of the truth

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

- Eckhart Tolle

rising above thought

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.

- Eckhart Tolle

the silent watcher

Be present as the watcher of your mind -- of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don't judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.

- Eckhart Tolle

your inner state

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means Now.

- Eckhart Tolle

the secret to life

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die"--and find that there is no death.

- Eckhart Tolle

I find this to be one of Tolle's most enigmatic and intriguing statements.

cravings

All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.

- Eckhart Tolle 

be deeply rooted within

The Mind.

To stay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply rooted within yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag you along like a wild river.

- Eckhart Tolle

So true! The mind can suck us into a 'rabbit hole' in a millisecond! Common examples: "I'm not smart enough," "I'm not educated enough," "I'm not attractive enough," "He/She/They don't like me," "I'm not wealthy enough," "I'm not black enough," "I'm not tall enough," etc. Sometimes it can takes years to pull ourselves out of one of these bottomless mental 'black holes.' Many people spend an entire lifetime struggling to overcome one single thought. Way too many simply give up and accept some arbitrary and totally imaginary self-limitation(s). A classic example: "If I come out of the closet as a gay man/woman, I will lose all my friends and family. No one will ever accept me. My career will implode. I will be ostracized and cast aside." Crazy sh*t, isn't it? One of Tolle's wisest suggestions: "That voice in your head... that's not you. Who am I, then? The one who realizes that."

Rise above the voice in our head. It's a whole new level of living. Life 2.0.

life is now

The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.

- Eckhart Tolle

tolle on religion

Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them, they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others," the "nonbelievers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing.

- Eckhart Tolle

My thoughts exactly on this subject. [Speaker gets on his soapbox.] This Tolle quote is especially timely and relevent given the tragic events in Norway this weekend. A nightmare of hatred allegedly carried out by a religious fundamentalist. If fear, hate and killing are the results of any spiritual concept or idea, there is something fundamentally flawed with that concept or idea, and it should be discarded from the collective human consciousness. That's why I keep a safe distance from nearly all 'organized religions' and explore alternate ways to experience spirituality. I urge others to do the same.

Consider the dreadful track record of some religions thus far: the Inquisition, the Crusades, countless assassinations, rapes, massacres and wars, the eternal cauldron of hate that is the Middle East, the crimes of colonization, the crimes of slavery, Madrid 2004, 9/11, Oslo 2011, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Enough already! I look forward to a New Earth free of the insanity of these oppressive, hate-filled, farcical "I have the only answer" dogmas. There simply must be a better answer for humanity's spiritual needs than this absurd madness.

Time to wake up, folks. The emperor (religion) has no clothes. I know the collective change in consciousness needed seems monumental, but as Mahatma Gandhi wisely instructed us, "You must be the change you want to see in the world."  If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?

time and the mind

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

- Eckhart Tolle

you are one with all there is

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.

- Eckhart Tolle

you are life

Many expressions that are in common usage, and sometimes the structure of language itself, reveal the fact that people don't know who they are. You say: "He lost his life" or "my life," as if life were something that you can possess or lose. The truth is: you don't have a life, you are life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy.

Can you sense deep within that you already know that? Can you sense that you already are That?

- Eckhart Tolle

life is eternal

When you walk through a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life all around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step. Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life.

Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that the decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves. Microorganisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn't to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. What can you learn from this?

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.

- Eckhart Tolle

the nature of truth

The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: "All things are intrinsically one." That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.

- Eckhart Tolle