29 Life Changing Quotes from Eckhart Tolle to Help You Cultivate Peace and Awaken to Your Life's Purpose
Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher with multiple New York Times bestselling books, including The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. What is powerful about his books is the element of his own personal lived experience, in which he discusses his many years spent in a deep depression to a state of inner transformation and peace. Although our culture often promotes happiness as the result of reaching towards future goals, Eckhart Tolle teaches that happiness is available in the present and now, and that in fact, the gift of the present moment is all that really exists.
On the Present Moment
“The past has no power over the present moment.”
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”
“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
“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.”
“Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it - don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.”
On Anxiety and Peace
“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose”
“Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”
“All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.”
“Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight
of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.”
“In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being.”
“Don’t look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender”
“With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.”
On Change
“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
On Gratitude
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
“The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.”
On Awakening to Yourself
“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
“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.”
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
“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.”
“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
“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.”
“Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.”
“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the Universe to unfold. That is how important you are!”
“Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.”
“To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”
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