50 Inspirational Quotes from Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle is one of the most popular and influential New Age spiritual leaders in the world. He brings alive the ancient wisdom of present moment, mindfulness, and inner joy of stillness through the practice of meditation. In fact, he contributes to a prodigious extent in popularizing the practice of meditation in the North America and the Western Europe.
Until the age of 30, Eckhart had been suffering from prolonged periods of unbearable anxiety and bolts of suicidal depression. At the age of 29 in 1977, a sudden epiphany and awakening dawned on him and he experienced a phenomenal “inner transformation”.
He felt drawn into an energy vortex and then his entire being was sucked into that void. His inner voice told him “resist nothing”. He was unconscious after entering the spiritual void.
When he woke up the next morning, he was transformed. All the past miseries were disappeared into thin air. He experienced deep inner peace and bliss, otherwise known as a profound sense of presence of “beingness”, as his lesser self was completely dissolved.
Thereafter he spent the next 2 years “in a state of deep bliss” on park benches just “watching the world go by” in Russell Square, Central London, He bunked in with friends, stayed in a Buddhist monastery, or otherwise slept rough on Hampstead Heath. Tolle also changed his first name from “Ulrich” to “Eckhart” because of his admiration to the German philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart.
Eckhart published numerous internationally acclaimed best seller such as
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Stillness Speaks, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose etc.
Here are 50 inspirational quotes extracted from his works:
Quote #1:
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #2:
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #3:
“If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #4:
“Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #5:
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #6:
“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #7:
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #8:
“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #9:
“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #10:
“Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #11:
“As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #12:
“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #13:
“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, Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now
Quote #14:
“Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #15:
“You are not in the universe, you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #16:
“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #17:
“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #18:
“Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #19:
“With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #20:
“True Power is within, and it is available now.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now
Quote #21:
Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #22:
“The ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in the transcendence of the world”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #23:
“In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #24:
“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
Quote #25:
“Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #26:
“You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The “waiting to start living” syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #27:
“Whatever you accept completely, you go beyond…If you fight it, you’re stuck with it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Realizing the Power of Now
Quote #28:
“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Quote #29:
“Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #30:
“You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #31:
“When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #32:
“Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #33:
“If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #34:
“Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #35:
“There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who you are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Quote #36:
“The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth
Quote #37:
“The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life
Quote #38:
“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #39:
“Let go of excessive thinking and see how everything changes. Your relationships change because you don’t demand that the other person should do something for you to enhance your sense of self. You don’t compare yourself to others or try to be more than someone else to strengthen your sense of identity.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat: Stillness Amidst the World
Quote #40:
“Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #41:
“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 a 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, Stillness Speaks
Quote #42:
“Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.” You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #43:
“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #44:
“If you find the here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: Remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”
― Eckhart Tolle, From Stillness to Presence
Quote #45:
“You are the sky. The clouds are what happens, what comes and goes.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat: Stillness Amidst the World
Quote #46:
“And it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being, emanates.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #47:
“Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Quote #48:
“True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Quote #49:
“Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Quote #50:
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Books by Eckhart Tolle:
