Howard > Howard's Quotes

“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, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. All the things that truly matter — beaut...y, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind...”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Each person's life – each lifeform,
in fact – represents a world, a
unique way in which the universe experiences itself.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s, f, g, and so forth. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?”
― Eckhart Tolle

“The brain does not create consciousness, but conciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.

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― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“◦"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don’t have a life. You are life.”
― Eckhart Tolle

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

“The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Throughout history humans have inflicted countless violent, cruel, and hurtful acts on each other, and continue to do so. Are they all to be condemned; are they all guilty? Or are those acts simply expressions of unconsciousness, an evolutionary stage that we are now growing out of?

Jesus’ words, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do,” also apply to yourself.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

“The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“... there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“You are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it happens without attempting to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming “less,” you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego’s perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Deny yourself” or “Turn the other cheek.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Inner resistance to whatever arises in the present moment pulls you back into unconsciousness. Inner resistance is some form of negativity, complaining, fear, aggression, or anger. This is important because whenever you complain about what somebody else does you're already beginning to fall into that trap of unconsciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.”
― Eckhart Tolle (Author)

“The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statmeent "God is dead.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.”
― Eckhardt Tolle

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Whenever any kind of deep loss occurs in your life — such as loss of possessions, your home, a close relationship; or loss of your reputation, job, or physical abilities — something inside you dies. You feel diminished in your sense of who you are. There may also be a certain disorientation. “Without this...who am I?” When a form that you had unconsciously identified with as part of yourself leaves you or dissolves, that can be extremely painful. It leaves a hole, so to speak, in the fabric of your existence. When this happens, don't deny or ignore the pain or the sadness that you feel. Accept that it is there. Beware of your mind's tendency to construct a story around that loss in which you are assigned the role of victim. Fear, anger, resentment, or self-pity are the emotions that go with that role. Then become aware of what lies behind those emotions as well as behind the mind-made story: that hole, that empty space. Can you face and accept that strange sense of emptiness? If you do, you may find that it is no longer a fearful place. You may be surprised to find peace emanating from it. Whenever death occurs, whenever a life form dissolves, God, the formless and unmanifested, shines through the opening left by the dissolving form. That is why the most sacred thing in life is death. That is why the peace of God can come to you through the contemplation and acceptance of death.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

“The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment