“Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 86)
“Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside. To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you move, work, run — do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer splitting yourself in two. Just moving, running, working—and enjoying it. Or you can drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench. But when you do, watch your mind. It may say: ‘You should be working. You are wasting time.’ Observe the mind. Smile at it.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 84)
“Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their ‘here’ is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 82)
“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 82)
“You may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems. You believe that they are caused by specific situations in your life, and seen from a conventional viewpoint, this is true. But until you have dealt with the basic problem-making dysfunction of the mind—its attachment to past and future and denial of the Now—problems are actually interchangeable. If all your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go. Ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 61)
“Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. What you perceive as future is an intrinsic part of your state of consciousness now. If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future—which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 60)
“If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. 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 (Page 58)
“The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now—that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. Slipping away from the present moment even for a second may mean death. Unfortunately, they come to depend on a particular activity to be in that state. But you don’t need to climb the north face of the Eiger. You can enter that state now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 51)
“The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 49)
“To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 49)
“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 40)
“If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that 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.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 35)
“Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered ‘speechless,’ sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 29)
“The harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ‘problem.’ Imagine a chief of police trying to find an arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. You will not be free of that pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say from ego.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 28)
“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. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 26)
“If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 25)
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 16)
The Power of Now [Book]
Book Overview: To make the journey into The Power of Now you need to leave your analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Access to the Now is everywhere – in the body, the silence, and the space all around you. These are the keys to enter a state of inner peace. They can be used to bring you into the Now, the present moment, where problems do not exist. It is here you find your joy and are able to embrace your true self. It is here you discover that you are already complete and perfect. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle offers simple language in a question and answer format. The words themselves are the signposts to guide you on your journey. There are new discoveries to be made along the way: you are not your mind, you can find your way out of psychological pain, authentic human power is found by surrendering to the Now. When you become fully present and accepting of what is, you open yourself to the transforming experience of The Power of Now.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- 32 Deep and Insightful Eckhart Tolle Quotes from The Power of Now
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Joy and How Your Frequent Desire To Travel Might Be Limiting The Joy You Feel (Beyond the Quote 294/365)
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Understanding Who You Are and How You Might Best Influence Others (Beyond the Quote 257/365)
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Love and How Love Isn’t Selective or Exclusive (Beyond the Quote 170/365)
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Taking Responsibility and Making the Present Moment Your Ally (Beyond the Quote 82/365)
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Finding The Life Underneath Your Problems (Beyond the Quote 53/365)
- Eckhart Tolle Quote on Monitoring Your Mental-Emotional State To Keep Your Inside Right (Beyond the Quote 38/365)
- Goals Should Increase Present Joy—Not Move It Further Into the Future (Beyond the Quote 2/365)
