Eckhart Tolle
Spiritual Psychology
Book: The Power of the NOW by Eckhart Tolle
"If you cannot be at ease with yourself when 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."--Eckhart Tolle (The Power of the NOW p145)
When you are enlightened, there is one relationship that you no longer have: the relationship with yourself. Once you have given that up, all your other relationships will be love relationships. (The Power of the NOW p145)
Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace...Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not. (The Power of the NOW p147 )
When ever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it....There may be sadness..but provided you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. That is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite...acceptance immediately frees you from mind dominance and thus reconnects you with Being. As a result, the usual ego motivations for "doing"---fear, greed, control...will cease to operate. An intelligence much greater than the mind is now in charge, and so a different quality of consciousness will flow into your doing,. (The Power of the NOW p147-9)
Most of the so-called bad things that happen in people's lives are due to unconsciousness.....they are self created, or rather ego-created...."drama". When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore....the basic ego patterns are designed to combat it's own deep seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defence, and attack. Some of the ego's strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of it's problems, simply because the ego is the problem itself. (The Power of the NOW by Eckhart Tolle p150)
"Whenever two or more egos come together, drama of one kind or another ensues. But even if you live totally alone, you still create your own drama. When you feel sorry for yourself, that's dram. When you feel guilty or anxious, that's drama. When you let the past or future obscure the present, you are creating time, psychological time--the stuff out of which drama is made. (The Power of the NOW p150-151)
Most people are in love with their particular life drama. Their story is their identity. The ego runs their life. They have their whole sense of self invested in it. Even their--usually unsuccessful---search for an answer, a solution, or for healing becomes part of it. What they fear and resist most is the end of their drama....You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person. An argument implies identification with your mind and a mental position, as well as resistance and reaction to the person's position. (The Power of the NOW p151)
The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realisation. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension....Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. (The Power of the NOW p 152)
the ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get away with it.....whenever you are unhappy, there is the unconscious belief that the unhappiness "buys" you what you want. If "you"--the mind--did not believe that unhappiness works, why would you create it it? The fact is, of course, that negativity does not work. Instead of attracting a desirable condition, it stops it from arising.....Its only "useful" function is that it strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it. (The Power of the NOW p156-7)
Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by-person. You will ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane. (The Power of the NOW p157)
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain...you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed , there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. they do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that. (The Power of the NOW p127)
Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. This happens because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past...You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life....if you are one of those people who have an issue with their parents, if you still harbour resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe they had a choice--that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity. Almost everyone is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realise this, there can be no more resentment. How can you resent someone's illness? The only appropriate response is compassion. (The Power of the NOW p 190.)
You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only by accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. this renders the past powerless, and you realise deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. the whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary. (The Power of the NOW p 191)