Eckhart Tolle

Accept the present moment without judgement.

When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.

I enjoy going to Starbucks, having a cup of coffee, sitting in my car, driving from here to there, sitting at home looking at the trees, going for a walk with a dog. It's all very enjoyable.

People always form images of who others are, and they can be inflated images.

I have seen cases where people seemed to become totally free of ego, and at some point in their lives the ego came back. It has happened, for example, to some spiritual teachers. At some point in their lives, they began to identify again with form.

In fact, the collective energy field of presence can be very helpful when people come together. It can give you an enormous boost.

There can be associations - enlightened businesses, for example - that do not work on the basis of us against them or wanting profit as the main motivating force behind what they do.

If the individuals who make up a group have personal egos, and their identities lie in these egos, then their egoic identities will shift to the group. It might look as if they are losing their personal egos, but the ego simply shifts to the group.

Enlightened groups can exist, as long as the individuals' sense of identity is not derived from a mentally defined image of us.

To me, inner and outer are so strongly linked that any collective change that happens within human beings, within the human psyche, inevitably will be reflected externally in what happens on the whole planet.

I sometimes get a distorted view of how quickly humans are evolving, because I meet many people who are evolving beyond ego. Then I have to switch on the TV to realize, \'Oh, no, it is not happening to everybody yet.\' But it is happening.

Some groups and individuals still are immersed totally in the egoic consciousness. Others already are free or in the process of stepping out of ego. The arising of the new consciousness already has started for many people. They are not yet recognizable as groups, but they are here and there.

We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other.

The thing that gives you power also traps you.

Humans eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. Suddenly, they start cutting reality up into bits and pieces, which is what the thinking mind does.

On the new Earth, as the awakened consciousness comes in, I would say the ego would develop in children and quickly become outgrown when they reach adulthood.

So far for humans it has been the case that ego develops and then humans are stuck with it for the rest of their lives.

When one child says to another, \'I can do this, I bet you can't\'; \'My dad has a bigger car than yours\'; or, \'My dad is stronger than yours.\' Children identify with this or that, trying to build up a sense of self - a mentally defined sense of self.

As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an \'I,\' has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to completely transcend that sense of ego.

Everything flows with much greater ease when people live as one with the present moment.

Whatever you want to achieve is secondary: the business, the exchange of information, whatever it may be. Yes, you do that also, but there is a deeper foundation - meeting that human being in a state of shared presence.

Work to recognize the primary importance of the present moment. A good little pointer toward that is to ask yourself, \'What is my relationship with the present moment? How am I relating to it?\'

The energy that flows into what you do, although it may be high energy, is very peaceful energy. It is not out of alignment with life.

Even in a moment of stress, you can say, \'OK, can I enjoy the doing itself? Can I enjoy the flow of energy of this moment?\' And of course you can!

Stress is extremely harmful to the body.

Stress is a form of suffering.

Probably, if you are successful in this world you are stressed, and if you are a failure, you are bored!

Some people are stuck in tedious things, like their jobs, and they are bored. Other people experience one stressful thing after another.

Of course, most of the people in this world are stressed, and most of those who are not stressed are totally bored!

Stress means there is something wrong, and you are not aligned with life.