Your mind is an instrument, a tool.

It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is

completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking

is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature,
much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a
You are not your mind serious leakage of vital energy.

Identification with your mind causes thought to become compulsive

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important.

The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious
resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the

emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of
resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified
with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words,

the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the
more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering -- and

free of the egoic mind.

Consciousness - The Way Out of Pain
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the

residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don't create any more time, or at least no more
than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How do you stop creating time?
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have

Accept -- then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will
miraculously transform your whole life.

Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you
ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is

it not? Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in
the future; it will happen in the Now.

All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present.
Moving Deeply into the Now Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry -- all forms of fear -- are caused by too much future, and

not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of
nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

You think that your attention is in the present moment when it's actually taken up completely by
time. You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you

unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it
totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three
options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity.

No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.

Die to the past every moment. You don't need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to
Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

"One day I'll make it." Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the
present moment to a means to an end? Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to
start living? If you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get, the present

will never be good enough; the future will always seem better. A perfect recipe for permanent
dissatisfaction and nonfulfillment, don't you agree?

As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you are free of thought. You are still, yet highly

alert. The instant your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in. The
mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back in time.

In a sense, the state of presence could be compared to waiting. Jesus used the analogy of
waiting in some of his parables. This is not the usual bored or restless kind of waiting that is a

denial of the present and that I spoke about already. It is not a waiting in which your attention is
focused on some point in the future and the present is perceived as an undesirable obstacle that
The State of Presence prevents you from having what you want. There is a qualitatively different kind of waiting, one

that requires your total alertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not
absolutely awake, absolutely still, you will miss it. This is the kind of waiting Jesus talks about.

Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for
them. They might say, "What a pretty flower," but that's just a mechanical mental labeling.

Because they are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't feel its essence, its
holiness -- just as they don't know themselves, don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.

The feeling of your inner body is formless, limitless, and unfathomable. You can always go into it
more deeply.

Whenever you are waiting, wherever it may be, use that time to feel the inner body. In this way,

traffic jams and line-ups become very enjoyable. Instead of mentally projecting yourself away
from the Now, go more deeply into the Now by going more deeply into the body. “The art of inner-
The Inner Body body awareness will develop into a completely new way of living, a state of permanent

The Power of Now

connectedness with Being, and will add a depth to your life that you have never known before.

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You

Eckhart Tolle won't lose yourself in the external world, and you won't lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and

emotions, fears and desires may still be there to some extent, but they won't take you over.

Chi is the inner energy field of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source.
It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the Unmanifested. Chi can be

likened to a river or an energy stream. If you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the
inner body, you are tracing the course of this river back to its Source. Chi is movement; the

Unmanifested is stillness. When you reach a point of absolute stillness, which is nevertheless
vibrant with life, you have gone beyond the inner body and beyond chi to the Source itself. the
Unmanifested. Chi is the link between the Unmanifested and the physical universe.”

Portals into the Unmanifested Now let your spiritual practice be this: As you go about your life, don't give 100 percent of your
attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within. I have spoken about this

already. Feel the inner body even when engaged in everyday activities, especially when engaged
in relationships or when you are relating with nature. Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the

portal open. It is quite possible to be conscious of the Unmanifested throughout your life. You
feel it as a deep sense of peace somewhere in the background, a stillness that never leaves you,
no matter what happens out here. You become a bridge between the Unmanifested and the

manifested, between God and the world. This is the state of connectedness with the Source that
we call enlightenment.

Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and

particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional. They may
seem perfect for a while, such as when you are "in love," but invariably that apparent perfection

gets disrupted as arguments, conflicts, dissatisfaction, and emotional or even physical violence
occur with increasing frequency.

Yes. Being present and intensifying your presence by taking your attention ever more deeply into
the Now: Whether you are living alone or with a partner, this remains the key.

Can we change an addictive The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or
she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond
relationship into a true one ?
Enlightened Relationships ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no

perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused, This is also the end of all codependency, of being
drawn into somebody else's unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue.

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.

If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you are alone, you will seek a relationship to cover
up your unease. You can be sure that the unease will then reappear in some other form within
the relationship, and you will probably hold your partner responsible for it.

Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although

you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and
unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn't.

Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing
consciousness, the watcher. The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe,

Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as

a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are
designed to combat its own deep- seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control,

power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego's strategies are extremely clever, yet they never
truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.

You can still be active and enjoy manifesting and creating new forms and circumstances, but you
won't be identified with them. You do not need them to give you a sense of self. They are not
your life -- only your life situation.

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to
rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is
something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you

find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating
positive action. Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing

the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to
surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation.

If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable, it is only by surrendering first that
The Meaning of Surrender you can break the unconscious resistance pattern that perpetuates that situation.

The ego is cunning, so you have to be very alert, very present, and totally honest with yourself to
see whether you have truly relinquished your identification with a mental position and so freed
yourself from your mind. If you suddenly feel very light, clear and deeply at peace, that is an

unmistakable sign that you have truly surrendered. Then observe what happens to the other
person's mental position as you no longer energize it through resistance. When identification with

mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.

“How will I know when I have surrendered?” When you no longer need to ask the question.