Reading Archives (Author)
Limitation Becomes Space
Eckhart Tolle
Allowing this moment to be as it is, just this moment, no more. Just this moment. Suddenly there’s an inner space around it which frees you from the limitation of the form. The greatest im...
Noticing the Gaps
Eckhart Tolle
In the first moment of seeing something or hearing a sound -- and more so if it is unfamiliar -- before the mind names or interprets what you see or hear there is usually a gap of alert attention in w...
An Ego Strategy to Avoid Surrender
Eckhart Tolle
What is conventionally called “love” is an ego strategy to avoid surrender. You are looking to someone to give you that which can only come to you in the state of surrender. The ego uses t...
The Place That is Free of Suffering
Eckhart Tolle
The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people feel, "Yes, now I have arrived," and then they realize...
Not Minding What Happens
Eckhart Tolle
J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and traveled almost continuously all over the world for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words - which are ...
Stillness Speaks
Eckhart Tolle
Silence is helpful, but you don't need it in order to find stillness. Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises. That i...
Relationships Make You Conscious, Not Happy
Eckhart Tolle
With the acknowledgment and acceptance of the facts also comes a degree of freedom from them. For example, when you know there is disharmony and you hold that "knowing," through your knowing...
The Basic Delusion
Eckhart Tolle
The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It says: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to realize that howev...
World of Objects
Eckhart Tolle
What is your relationship with the world of objects, the countless things that surround you and that you handle everyday? The chair you sit on, the pen, the car, the cup? Are they to you merely a me...
Anything Natural
Eckhart Tolle
Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, part...
Stillness Speaks
Eckhart Tolle
The mind exists in a state of "not enough" and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimu...
A Habitual Waiter
Eckhart Tolle
Are you a habitual "waiter"? How much of your life do you spend waiting? What I call "small-scale waiting" is waiting in line at the post office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for so...
Spare Some Change?
Eckhart Tolle
A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I hav...
The Off Button
Eckhart Tolle
Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in...
Problem In The Now?
Eckhart Tolle
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. You may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems. You believe...
Only One of Them Is Real
Eckhart Tolle
One night long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense t...
Perception Is A Mirror
Edited by Frances Vaughan and Roger Walsh
You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of...
Live Intentionally, In Freedom
Eknath Easwaran
Modern psychology commonly asserts that we cannot enter the unconscious fully aware. The mystic responds, "Oh, yes, you can! I have done it." The journey cannot be adequately described, but ...
Becoming Master Artists
Eknath Easwaran
We do not have to accept ourselves as we are. Genetic code or brain bio-chemistry, astrological configurations or Tarot readings, early traumas or upbringing- none of these can ever limit our potentia...
Reengineeing Our Patterns
Eknath Easwaran
When I recommend to someone that they slow down, they often raise a legitimate question: “There is so much that I have to do; how can I go through it slowly and get it all done?” I usually...
The Same Self Is in All of Us
Eknath Easwaran
The same spark of divinity–this same Self–is enshrined in every creature. My real Self is not different from yours nor anyone else’s. If we want to live in the joy that increases wit...
Full Effort is Full Victory
Eknath Easwaran
Gandhi wanted so deeply to help the world that he dedicated his life to siphoning every trace of self-interest out of his heart and mind, leaving them pure, radiantly healthy, and free to love. It too...
Tree Of Life
Eknath Easwaran
We are all familiar with the unflattering expression, "He can't see the forest for the trees". Similarly, it can be said that most of us don't see the tree for the leaves. We fail to see the Tree o...
Elephant in the Rock
Eknath Easwaran
In ancient India lived a sculptor renowned for his life-sized statues of elephants. With trunks curled high, tusks thrust forward, thick legs trampling the earth, these carved beasts seemed to trumpet...
Dinner in Silence
Elaine St. James
[ Five or six weeks ago, we started to eat the post-meditation dinner in silence. Here is a related thought on mindful eating ... ] "As a personal or family ritual, have a meal in silence from tim...
Our Teachers in Nature
Elisabet Sahtouris
Looking at living systems over time, I came to understand that they all go through a cycle that's very like our psychological maturation cycles. We start with a unity, we're undifferentiated, we come...
Looking Over My Life
Elisabet Sahtouris
My excitement at life grows ever stronger; my health as I round the bend to my sixtieth birthday has never been better. I thank all my cells and all my subtle bodies daily for keeping me healthy, fo...
The Hardest Lesson
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The sole purpose of life is to grow. The ultimate lesson is learning how to love and be loved unconditionally. There are millions of people on Earth who are starving. There are millions who are ho...
When You Don't Choose Love You Choose Fear
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler
If we could literally reach into you and remove all your fears – every one of them – how different would your life be? Think about it. If nothing stopped you from following your dreams, yo...
Do A Nice Thing For Your Future Self
Elizabeth Gilbert
I grew up on a small family farm, with plants and animals needing care in every direction, so vacations were rare. But one summer my parents convinced a neighboring farmer to tend to our goats and chi...
Creative Living
Elizabeth Gilbert
This, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? Look, I don't know what's hi...
Agent Of Illumination
Elizabeth Gilbert
Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with...
Death: the Key to the Door of Life
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
There is no need to be afraid of death. It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves fro...
Don't Go Back to Sleep
Elizabeth Lesser
To be human is to be lost in the woods. None of us arrives here with clear directions on how to get from point A to point B without stumbling into the forest of confusion or catastrophe or wrongdoing....
There Are Many Voices Beside Ours
Ella Cara Deloria
We [Native Americans] know about silence. We are not afraid of it. In fact, for us, silence is more powerful than words. Our elders were trained in the ways of silence, and they handed over this knowl...
Don't Waste A Curse On The Universe
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Don't look for the flaws as you go through life; And even when you find them, It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind And look for the virtue behind them. For the cl...
What You Are Is Perfect Imperfection
Emannuel
Your less evolved areas have a right to be. They whisper of things past. They whisper of confusion, of unfulfillment and of the pain of the soul separated from its God and the longing for ...
A Search for Hidden Opportunity
Epictetus
When considering the future, remember that all situations unfold as they do regardless of how we feel about them. Our hopes and fears sway us, not events themselves. Undisciplined people, driven by...
Effects of Adversity
Eranda Jayawickreme
Adversity may help people distinguish between events they can really control by changing their environment versus uncontrollable events. While they cannot change the environment in the latter case, th...
The False Self From Childhood
Eric Jones
I ran across a developmental psychology theory not long ago that I’ve had bouncing around in the back of my head ever since. It comes from the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, wh...
In Search of the Treasure
Eric Lui
A parable. An old farmer, on his deathbed, tells his sons that there is treasure buried in the fields. After he dies, his sons dig and dig, turning the soil over in search of the treasure. They find n...
Questioning Our Questions
Eric Vogt, Juanita Brown, David Isaacs
"If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve...
Recognizing the Real Fear
Erich Fromm
In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any significant friendship or love. “Having faith” in another person means to be certain of the reliability and uncha...
Keeping Nothing Between
Eugene Gendlin
In a restaurant a little girl in the next booth turns to look at you. It is an open look, direct from her – to you. She doesn’t know that strangers are not supposed to connect. She does no...
One February Morning in Vietnam
Eugene Hilderbrandt
It was another morning in Chu Lai, Vietnam -- a large and ugly army base where I was. One February morning, as I avoided the mud puddles in my morning duty, I found myself standing on top of a d...
Real Security is a Process
Eve Ensler
Why are we suddenly a nation and a people who strive for security above all else? In fact, security is essentially elusive, impossible. We all die. We all get sick. We all get old. People leave us. Pe...
Becoming Free of Our Substitute Life
Ezra Bayda
A Zen student walked in to see the master. Sitting down, he blurted out, "There's something terribly wrong with me!" The master looked at him and asked, "What's so wrong?" ...
Finding the Deepest Joy in Relationships
Ezra Bayda
One very helpful tool in both clarifying and working with our relationship difficulties is to return to the three questions: Am I truly happy right now? What blocks happiness? Can I surrender to what...