Meister Eckhart Quotes

At times I think and at times I am.

If you are aware, you speak with awareness. But the awareness comes from the inward being. It flows from the inner being towards others.

The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.

Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.

There is a difference. You watch television, you don't witness it. But, while watching television, if you start witnessing yourself watching television, then there are two processes going on: you are watching television, and something within you is witnessing the process of watching television. Witnessing is deeper, far deeper. It is not equivalent to watching. Watching is superficial. So remember that meditation is witnessing.

I can see myself before myself - a being through dark scenery.

The Self is the heart, self-luminous. Illumination arises from the heart and reaches the brain, which is the seat of the mind. The world is seen with the mind; so you see the world by the reflected light of the Self.

From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

Things and persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. How unconsciously we judge others by the light that is within ourselves, condemning or approving them by our own conception of right and wrong, honor and dishonor! We show by our judgment just what the light within us is.

Experience shows that Being is the essential, basic nature of the mind; but, since It commonly remains in tune with the senses projecting outwards toward the manifested realms of creation, the mind misses or fails to appreciate its own essential nature, just as the eyes are unable to see themselves.

One must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

You are a dynamic being of Light that at each moment informs the energy that flows through you. You do this with each thought, with each intention.

If you don't take the lamp of awareness with you, you are going to create a hell around you. Light your lamp wherever you gocourting, not courting, that is not the point. Wherever you go, whatsoever you do, always do it in the inner light, with awareness.

A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time.

You have no need to travel anywhere - journey within yourself. Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light.

I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.

Learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being - that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavor of it.

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

Hoyt was by himself right under one of the portable lights rigged up for the occasion. He had his hands thrust in his pockets, and he looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. There was something strange about the sight, and after a second I figured out why. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen Hoyt alone.

A long time ago, Descartes sad, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you are not thinking, what?

In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it.

Right awareness is awareness of one's own being in its totality: all that is good and all that is bad. But as you become aware, the bad starts disappearing - just as when you bring light into the room, the darkness disappears. When light is in the room, darkness cannot exist there. Sin is darkness, forgetfulness, unconsciousness.

I love to be alone with life. I love to study simple things: the light as it filters in a window; the music of a room full of people chatting; a horizon.