Eckhart Tolle (born Ulrich Tolle, 1948), is a German-born writer, public speaker, and spiritual teacher. He is the author of the bestsellers The Power of Now and A New Earth.
Tolle's books and teachings have received both praise and criticism from theologians and the mainstream media. He says he is not identified with any particular religion, but his work has been influenced by a wide range of spiritual teachings.
Humanity is trapped in thinking. Individuals derive a sense of identity from these thoughts, and it becomes impossible to achieve lasting happiness. As this sense of identity is fictional and static, it is subject to destruction and decay, a process as the main causal factor in human suffering. This sense of identity is the cause of unnecessary human conflict. The escape from this ongoing prison is a direct experience of the sublime, the infinite - that which stands outside, before and beyond the categorizations and divisions of conceptual thought. A key way this can be done is to focus one's attention on the
present moment.
"Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun ... this momentous event heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants". This is an analogy for a transformation in human consciousness, which sees is about to occur, and has already begun.
Tolle believes that the earliest such "flowers" or spiritual messengers were in the forms of Buddha, Jesus, Laozi and other such great teachers. At those particular time periods in history these great teachers’ messages were hazy and misunderstood.
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Ego" as an "illusory sense of self" based on one's memories and thoughts. It becomes obvious that the human ego in its collective aspect as “us” against “them” is even more insane than the “me,” the individual ego, although the mechanism is the same. By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego.
Our identification with things: things that we use every day for self enhancement or things we have become attached to and become obsessed with; how inferiority changes the way we act with other people and creates an ego that we didn’t normally have.
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Pain body” describes the human tendency to carry around "an accumulation of old emotional pain". The identification is what causes all the reoccurring pain in the individual. Being able to know where the pain is coming from will prevent the pain body to renew itself through you. Our inner consciousness can change the world by not just being satisfied with what you do. Our destinies can be determined by how we carry out our actions and how we can fulfill them with the best possible consciousness.
Knowing what is “Inner space, inner purpose and who you truly are” and making distinctions: between "knowing yourself and knowing about yourself"; between the "Dreamer" and the "dream"; between the objects of consciousness and the space of consciousness; between outer space and inner space; and between outer purpose and inner purpose.
There are several ways to finding a more peaceful way to live. There are three stages in the inner consciousness of an individual through:
Acceptance is when you may not enjoy what you are doing but you have to be able to accept it. This is essentially being able to take responsibility in your life and to take action with certain things that are not enjoyable at all and to find peace within these activities.
Enjoyment is the next modality and it is being able to make the present moment a pivotal part of your life. This doesn’t mean that if you want to do something that you will find enjoyment in it. It means that with everything you do that you need to enjoy it in the present; you can’t let the moments pass you by or tell yourself you will enjoy something in the near future.
Enthusiasm entails that there is a deeper enjoyment in the actions you do and being able to work towards a final goal, with a sense of urgency, but without stress.
"To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe."
