Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolleis a German-born resident of Canada, best known as the author of The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to your Life's Purpose. In 2011, he was listed by Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world. In 2008, a New York Times writer called Tolle "the most popular spiritual author in the United States"...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth16 February 1948
CityLunen, Germany
CountryGermany
When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, 'I don't have time.' But that's the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.
Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.
Memories are thoughts that arise. They're not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it's just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.
I've always enjoyed being in the background, sitting in a cafe, watching people. But now, when I sit in a cafe, sometimes people watch me. It's a challenge. But it's usually people who want to say 'your book transformed my life', or something... so then I'm joyful. One moment before, I didn't want them to recognise me, but when they do, I'm glad.
Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.
When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what's around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.
Thinking fragments reality - it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.
To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody's mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.
I believe that Jesus realized his oneness with God and he showed, what he attempted to do was show the way to all of us, how to realize our own onenes with God also, so he's a precursor.
Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of 'I know.' Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.
If there are people you haven't forgiven, you're not going to really awaken. You have to let go.
If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.
Life is an adventure, it's not a package tour.