Eckhart Tolle Quotes

Ego means self-identification with thinking, to be trapped in thought, which means to have a mental image of "me" based on thought and emotions. So ego is there in the absence of a witnessing presence.

Attachment is the shadow of the ego. Attachments are immediately created wherever you see 'I am'.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.

The ego is just waiting to identify with anything. Whether it's your misery or being a great meditator, it seeks some identification.

The chief requirement of the good life, is to live without any image of oneself.

The ego is not a thing but a subtle effort, and you cannot use effort to get rid of effort - you end up with two efforts instead of one. The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine, and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying to get rid of it, which simply increases the effort of the ego itself

We are dominated by everything with which our self is identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. The normal mistake we all make is to identify ourselves with some content of consciousness rather than with consciousness itself. Some people get their identity from their feelings, others from their thoughts, others from their social roles. But this identification with a part of the personality destroys the freedom which comes from the experience of the pure “I”.

I am me, whatever that means. I am conscious.

Any material form, or thought, or feeling, past or present, should be regarded as, 'This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self.'

This is not a matter of virtue-it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you.

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

I don't mean to sound like a cheap prostitute, but you can call me what you like.

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as these stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic.

There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.

Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.

Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.

The damage, the fatigue, the imperfections. That's how they recognize me; Why I belong to them.

Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?

We are what we think.

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.

When your fulfillment and sense of self are no longer dependent on the future outcome, joy flows into whatever you do. You do what you do because the action itself is fulfilling. Whatever you do or create in that state is of high quality. This is because it is not a means to an end, and so a loving care flows into your doing.