“Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 228)
“I don’t call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 224)
“When there is no way out, there is still always a way through. So don’t turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it—don’t think about it! Express it if necessary, but don’t create a script in your mind around it. Give all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to have caused it. Don’t let the mind use the pain to create a victim identity for yourself out of it. Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in suffering. Since it is impossible to get away from the feeling, the only possibility of change is to move into it; otherwise, nothing will shift. So give your complete attention to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, observe it but don’t act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present—present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 222)
“When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally. If they are unconscious, they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 222)
“Illness is not the problem. You are the problem—as long as the egoic mind is in control. When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything ‘bad’ that happens in your life—use it for enlightenment. Withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense present-moment awareness—and see what happens. Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 218)
“The ego is cunning, so you have to be very alert, very present, and totally honest with yourself to see whether you have truly relinquished your identification with a mental position and so freed yourself from your mind. If you suddenly feel very light, clear, and deeply at peace, that is an unmistakable sign that you have surrendered. Then observe what happens to the other person’s mental position as you no longer energize it through resistance. When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 215)
“Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does—do not resist what is. If there is no action you can take, and you cannot remove yourself from the situation either, then use the situation to make you go more deeply into surrender, more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being. When you enter this timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 210)
“If you feel called upon to alleviate suffering in the world, that is a very noble thing to do, but remember not to focus exclusively on the outer; otherwise, you will encounter frustration and despair. Without a profound change in human consciousness, the world’s suffering is a bottomless pit. So don’t let your compassion become one-sided. Empathy with someone else’s pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the ultimate illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 203)
“One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there—the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 196)
Mark Manson Quote on How Being Desperate For Something Doesn’t Help You Get It
“The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.”
Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Beyond the Quote (177/365)
The more desperate you are, the more intense your feelings of lack become. Sometimes desperation comes from a lack of a need. These intense feelings are legitimate survival mechanisms designed to keep you alive. When you are desperately hungry, it implies that you would do just about anything for food. When you are desperately ill, it means that you would sacrifice almost anything for health. When you’re desperately sad, it means you would likely try anything for happiness again. But, desperation can be self-imposed from a lack of a want, too.
Read More »Mark Manson Quote on How Being Desperate For Something Doesn’t Help You Get ItIain Thomas Quote On Giving People A Chance and How Everyone Is Someone
“Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends. Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was. Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill. Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia. Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He’s an old man on a factory line. You wouldn’t recognize him. Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor. And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance.“
Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
Beyond the Quote (176/365)
What do you see when you look into the eyes of another human being? Do you see a person for what they appear to be? Do you see them for who they were? Do you see them for who they could be? It depends on the person, I suppose. When I look into the eyes of another human being, I try to see someone who, when given a chance, can become somebody. Somebody who has limitless potential inside that is only but waiting to be molded and realized. Somebody who is capable of great things. Somebody who can make a real difference in their world. I see this in almost everyone. But, not everybody sees it in themselves or others.
Read More »Iain Thomas Quote On Giving People A Chance and How Everyone Is SomeoneLeo Babauta Quote on Expectations and Our Attachment To Ideals
“It’s the nature of dealing with other people that we all get frustrated and angry from time to time. We take offense at the other person’s actions. But the other person’s actions aren’t the problem—it’s our attachment to the ideal we have of how they should behave, which of course is unrealistic, and the real problem is the Childish Mind wanting so badly for that ideal to be true.”
Leo Babauta, Essential Zen Habits (Page 188)
Beyond the Quote (175/365)
It’s one of the beautiful flaws of the human condition. Our ability to envision a life beyond where it is right now. A life that is filled with people, places, and things that excite us. A life that is filled with ideal situations and circumstances and opportunity. A life that would be a dream come true if only things played out how they’re supposed to according to what we see in our minds.
Read More »Leo Babauta Quote on Expectations and Our Attachment To IdealsMerle Shain Quote on How Loving Someone Should Help Them To Be More Themself
“Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can be different from being what you’d like them to be, although often they turn out the same.”
Merle Shain, Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others
Beyond the Quote (174/365)
Never forget that who you want someone to be is none of your business. Love doesn’t manipulate. Love doesn’t control. Love doesn’t place expectations. Love doesn’t try to change people for who they are. Love is never selfish. Love is a pure manifestation of presence, compassion, gratitude, and joy that is shared with the world. Love is patient. Love is free. And love is always kind.
Read More »Merle Shain Quote on How Loving Someone Should Help Them To Be More Themself“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.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 194)
“I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats. Even ducks have taught me important spiritual lessons. Just watching them is a meditation. How peacefully they float along, at ease with themselves, totally present in the Now, dignified and perfect as only a mindless creature can be. Occasionally, however, two ducks will get into a fight—sometimes for no apparent reason, or because one duck has strayed into another’s private space. The fight usually lasts only for a few seconds, and then the ducks separate, swim off in opposite directions, and vigorously flap their wings a few times. They then continue to swim on peacefully as if the fight had never happened. When I observed that for the first time, I suddenly realized that by flapping their wings they were releasing surplus energy, thus preventing it from becoming trapped in their body and turning into negativity. This is natural wisdom, and it is easy for them because they do not have a mind that keeps the past alive unnecessarily and then builds an identity around it.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 190)
“The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 188)