20 Eckhart Tolle Quotes to Center Your Heart
Stressed? Worried? Unfocused? Life does that to you when you’re not staying mindful and grounded. Luckily, great teachers like Eckhart Tolle are there to help us remember where our mind should be.
Carve out a little time to meditate on some of these great words from Eckhart Tolle for a quiet moment of peace:
On Being You
-“Give up defining yourself — to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
-“Being must be felt. It can’t be thought.”
-“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.”
-“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”
-“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.”
Watch this full-length episode Modern Mystic with Eckhart Tolle
On Being Present
-“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”
-“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
-“The past has no power over the present moment.”
-“As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.”
-“Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past can’t prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”
On Living Life
-“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”
-“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.”
-“Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.”
-“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
-“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
On Relationships
– “To love is to recognize yourself in another.”
– “Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the “love” of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary.
There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.”
-“Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not ‘fit in’ with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.”
-“If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow.
Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, non-defensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it.
When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.”
-“What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself.”
A Guide to Center Your Heart
Learn the art of mindfulness and loving kindness — the foundations for living with an open heart — in The Yogi’s Heart, a guide for opening and connecting. For it is only when you approach life from a place of openness can you embody connectedness with all things.
About the Author
How to Use Symbols to Manifest Your Desires
All of us in some way or another, are connected to, or influenced by symbols. When a group of Rastafarians started carving a totem pole out of a tree in a New York park they made a statement that affected the whole community. Countless people passing through the park were drawn to the totem feeling the connectivity this project initiated. Unwittingly, they were challenged to question the meaning of symbolism.
Symbolic connections act like antennae that enable us to tune in to the whole and understand the self, almost like road signs connecting a traveler to a destination.
Imagine All the Symbols
Imagine all the symbols in life we are already familiar with. Everyone relates to a circle. For some, it may signify the constant cycle of changing life or unity, wholeness and infinity or eternity. A river represents life-force and the passage of time. It also represents yielding. The symbol of a cup shows that form cannot exist without space, and space without form. There’s the dove that represents freedom. Symbols are powerfully present in religion – the cross, the Star of David, the endless knot, the tree of life, or the plait is present and recognized in most of the world’s awareness.
A Source of Wisdom
Whether we wear our symbols close to our bodies inscribed in gold or silver, hang them in our homes or tattoo them onto our bodies they are strongly inscribed in our minds. Our symbols become a source of wisdom and power for us. They express things that cannot be explained verbally and we often call on them for healing, representation, and ritual. They’re said to appear to us to awaken the ancient wisdom in our DNA.
A Source of Positivity
Imagery and visualization are becoming more popular as a way to replace negative thoughts or fear and to actively draw in positivity. We can use symbolism in conjunction with imagery to create a powerful effect. Texan based psychologist Jeanne Achterberg explains that “Imagery is a wedge or an entrance into the ability to translate and transform the very nature of our being.”
