Quotessence
Home / Books / A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Book by Eckhart Tolle · 20 quotes · Acceptance, Consciousness, Ego

Filter quotes by topic

AllAcceptanceConsciousnessEgoThoughtEmotionForgivenessHappinessLetting GoPeacePresenceRelationshipsSpiritualityAwakeningAwarenessChildhoodClarityCognitive DistortionsConfusionContentmentEarth

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose Quotes

“[The ego] cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event. Every ego is a matter of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness—not through thinking—can you differentiate between fact and opinion. Only through awareness are you able to see: There is the situation and here is the anger I feel about it, and then realize there are other ways of approaching the situation, other ways of seeing it and dealing with it.”

EmotionAwarenessEgo
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody's life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.”

HappinessJoyGreatnessContentment
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute nonreaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming "less," you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image.”

AcceptanceEgoNonreaction
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are in engaged in doing anything at all—from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.”

ConsciousnessAcceptanceAwakeningEnthusiasmEnjoyment
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“It requires honesty to see whether you still harbor grievances, whether there is someone in your life you have not completely forgiven, an "enemy." If you do, become aware of the grievance both on the level of thought as well as emotion, that is to say, be aware of the thoughts that keep it alive, and feel the emotion that is the body's response to those thoughts. Don't try to let go of the grievance. Trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place. The seeing is freeing.”

Letting GoForgivenessEnemies
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“If you think you are so enlightened," Ram Dass said, "go and spend a week with your parents." That is good advice. The relationship with your parents is not only the premordial relationship that sets the tone for all subsequent relationships, it is also a good test for your degree of Presence. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise you will be forced to relive the past again and again.”

RelationshipsConsciousnessParentsPresence
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images.”

ThoughtPresence
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“I don't know" is not confusion. Confusion is "I don't know, but I should know" or "I don't know, but I need to know." When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”

PeaceThoughtConfusionClarity
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“Many relationships go through violent and destructive pain-body episodes at regular intervals. It is almost unbearably painful for a young child to have to witness the emotional violence of their parents' pain-bodies, and yet that is the fate of millions of children all over the world, the nightmare of their daily existence.”

RelationshipsChildhoodTraumaInsanityStory Of My Life
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Non-reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.”

EnemyStrengthEgoForgivenessWeaknessPersonalizationNon Reaction
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image

“No thought can encapsulate the vastness of the totality. Reality is a unified whole, but thought cuts it up into fragments. This gives rise to fundamental misperceptions, for example, that there are separate things and events, or that this is the cause of that. Every thought implies a perspective, and every perspective, by its very nature, implies limitation, which ultimately means that it is not true, at least not absolutely. Only the whole is true, but the whole cannot be spoken or thought. Seen from beyond the limitation of thinking and therefore incomprehensible to the human mind, everything is happening now. All that ever has been or will be is now, outside of time, which is a mental construct.”

RealityTimeNow
Book:A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Create image