Eckhart Tolle

When you are aligned with the now internally, when you take responsibility for this moment, then life is helpful and tends to bring you what you need.

In whatever way change comes, the important thing is to take responsibility for this moment. Then, life becomes cooperative.

I have spoken to many people who have begun to live in presence, and they find many changes come into their lives. Sometimes these changes happen as inner realizations - \'This is what I have to do\' - or they arise from the external when something suddenly happens.

Significant things often happen when you are present. Things come to you, and then you respond to what is required. The response very often comes without a premeditated idea of what you want. It is simply a response to the situation.

In the world of form, everything changes and evolves. So, there was a certain evolution of the teaching. Different pointers came in, different stories, different approaches to the truth, which always is the same.

You simply have to surrender to the present moment. Be alert. Watch something in a state of alertness. Always, continuously, bring that into everyday life, not spirituality here and getting on with your life there.

For most people on the planet, consciousness can be equated with thought. They haven't experienced what it means to be conscious without thought, or they have only for very brief instants.

One way to become aware many times during the day is to take a conscious breath. Doing so breaks the stream of thinking.

I do not put much emphasis on periods of meditation - if you do meditation, it's fine - but the important thing is to bring the awareness into everyday life, into every little action that you do, into the varied challenges of everyday life.

The goal has its importance. But the doing is what is truly fulfilling. Every enthusiastic person has a goal that may be important, but the doing is intensely fulfilling, and it is the essence of enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is intensified enjoyment of what you are doing.

Whenever you are engaged in something and there is an outpouring of energy, you are in enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm cannot be a continuous state. It comes in waves.

Enthusiasm is when the universe creates through you. You are involved in a creative act. You are bringing something new into this world. When that energy comes in, you feel an intense aliveness that flows into what you do. That is enthusiasm.

It is much more likely that help comes in when what you are doing is done while you are in a state of inner peace, rather than resistance.

Your car breaks down in the middle of the night. It's raining. It's cold. And you have to change the tire of your car. You cannot really enjoy that it is cold and wet, but you can bring acceptance to it. Peace flows into it.

Presence is needed to become aware of the Beauty, the Majesty, the Sacredness of Nature

You can't argue with what is.... Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

When life takes away the forms that you thought were the foundation of your life, what's left? The life that needs no foundation - that is the foundation. The formless. The essence.

So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.

If spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be dominated by the mind and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict. If stillness is there, it can contain anything.

Christ is your God-essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence.

True happiness is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things.

I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there's also complete stillness; there's no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There's simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that's beautiful.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry

All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous.<br />Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain body

Music bypasses the conceptual mind. Music does not give you food for thought...

Tragedy turns into comedy when you watch your own drama and realizing it as a mind-created fiction designed to create you a sense of identity.

Attention is the key to transformation- and full attention also implies acceptance.

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as \'My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,\' or Nietzsche's famous statmeent \'G