Reading Archives (Author)

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...

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14K reads, 4 comments

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...

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31K reads, 16 comments

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 ...

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46K reads, 24 comments

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...

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71K reads, 23 comments

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...

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29K reads, 10 comments

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...

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93K reads, 22 comments

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...

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29K reads, 12 comments

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...

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7K reads, 2 comments

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...

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15K reads, 9 comments

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...

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12K reads, 12 comments

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...

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19K reads

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...

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5K reads

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...

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13K reads, 3 comments

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...

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8K reads

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...

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9K reads

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...

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8K reads

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...

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16K reads, 7 comments

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...

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17K reads, 3 comments

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...

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5K reads

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...

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28K reads, 12 comments

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...

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28K reads, 26 comments

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...

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14K reads, 11 comments

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 ...

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13K reads, 7 comments

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...

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22K reads, 7 comments

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...

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4K reads

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...

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16K reads, 6 comments

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...

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9K reads

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...

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12K reads, 4 comments

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...

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178K reads, 57 comments

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...

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21K reads, 19 comments

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...

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22K reads, 13 comments

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...

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46K reads, 28 comments

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...

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62K reads, 7 comments

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....

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37K reads, 33 comments

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...

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14K reads, 31 comments

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...

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8K reads, 13 comments

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 ...

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8K reads, 13 comments

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...

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4K reads, 3 comments

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...

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18K reads, 5 comments

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...

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4K reads

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...

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16K reads, 12 comments

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...

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19K reads, 10 comments

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...

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23K reads, 13 comments

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...

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11K reads, 12 comments

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...

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23K reads, 5 comments

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?" ...

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18K reads, 10 comments

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...

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18K reads, 12 comments