The Power of Now

• Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.
• 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 you whole life.
• I have little use for the past and rarely think about it.
• You have IT already; you just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.
• Do not make the false that is in you a personal problem, for that is how the false perpetuates itself.
• The seed of enlightenment is within; the knower in you who dwells behind the thinker, the deeper self that immediately recognizes spiritual truth, resonates with it, and gains strength from it.
• Don’t get attached to any words. They are only stepping stones to be left behind as quickly as possible.
• Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggers, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
• Do not believe you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
• The moment you start watching “the thinker”, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
• Learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.
• One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head which means you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
• 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 serious leakage of vital energy.
• To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important.
• The ego is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it- who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival.
• Self-perceived reputation is nothing but ego created in your own mind.
• The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness.
• Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
• When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power.
• You are the watcher, the observing presence. If you practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of consciousness.
• Emotion literally means “disturbance.” Love, joy, and peace are not emotions but deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being.
• Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain.
• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.
• Every pleasure or emotional high contains within itself the seed of pain: its inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.
• The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, 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 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.
• Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.
• What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is. What would be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
• The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out and its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it.
• Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light (conscious awareness), and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.
• Unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia; this kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
• Despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.
• Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictitious entity. By making this pattern conscious, by witnessing it, you disidentify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the unconscious pattern will then quickly dissolve. This is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships (power over others is weakness disguised as strength.)
• Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” – and find that there is no death.
• The mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek yourself in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life.
• Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops (no past/future); you’re left with conscious awareness with no judgment or thinking.
• To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory (past) and anticipation (future.) The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity (ego) and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
• The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.
• If not now, when?
• Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed. Notice how often your attention is in the past or future. Don’t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction.  The still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind; you become aware that you are the silent watcher.
• The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time. In other words, they continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time (past & future which is always linked to a false sense of identity)(regret of the past / anticipation of the future).
• Is fulfillment always just around the corner or confined to short-lived pleasures such as sex, food, drink, drugs, or thrills and excitement? Do you believe that if you acquire more things you will become more fulfilled, good enough, or psychologically complete? Are you waiting for a man or woman to give meaning to your life?
• Usually the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. What you perceive as future is an intrinsic part of your state of consciousness now.
• The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future- which of course can only be experienced as the Now.
• Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, and 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 non-forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.
• If all your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go.
• There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.
• You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.
• Narrow your life down to this moment.
• Find the life underneath your life situation.
• You are awakening out of the dream of time and into the present.
• There are no problems, only situations to be dealt with. Problems are mind-made and need time to survive. They cannot survive in the actuality of the Now.
• “Problem” means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now and that you are unconsciously making it part of your sense of self.
• If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others.
• As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either.
• Completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.
• Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action- just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.
• The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction- you don’t look to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results. Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.
• Loss of Now is loss of Being. To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment. It represents the most profound transformation of consciousness that you can imagine.
• Many people us alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, television, or even shopping as anesthetics in an unconscious attempt to remove the basic unease. When this happens, an activity that might be very enjoyable if used in moderation becomes imbued with a compulsive or addictive quality, and all that is ever achieved through it is extremely short-lived symptom relief.
• If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.
• Any negative inner state is contagious: unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease.
• To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim.
• “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? Are you waiting to start living? It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
• Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present.
• You can improve your life situation, but you cannot improve your life. Life is primary. Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete, and perfect.
• Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is true prosperity.Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now. As you become more deeply aware of this one step, you realize that it already contains within itself all the other steps as well as the destination. This one step then becomes transformed into an expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality. It will have taken you into Being, and the light of Being will shine through it. This is both the purpose and the fulfillment of your inner journey, the journey into yourself.
• Satori: a flash of insight, a moment of no-mind and total presence; a taste of enlightenment.
• The wider the time gap between perception and thought, the more depth there is to you as a human being, which is to say the more conscious you are.
• God said: “I AM THAT I AM.” No time here, just presence.
• You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention.
• Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease.
• A word is nothing but a signpost and all teachings are signposts pointing the way back to the Source.
• Through the inner body, you are forever one with God.
• Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind.
• Attention is like a beam of light- the focused power of your consciousness that transmutes everything into itself.
• In a fully functional organism, an emotion has a very short life span. It is like a momentary ripple or wave on the surface of your Being.
• Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life- to allow life to live through you.
• Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking.
• Continuous mind activity keeps you imprisoned in the world of form and becomes an opaque screen that prevents you from becoming conscious of the Unmanifested, conscious of the formless and timeless God-essence in yourself and in all things and all creatures.
• Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. If you remain in conscious connection with the Unmanifested, you value, love, and deeply respect the manifested and every life form in it as an expression of the One Life beyond form.
• Nothing could be without space, yet space is no-thing.
• If there were no illusion, there would be no enlightenment.
• Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now.
• True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.
• True salvation is a state of freedom from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging.
• You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation. You “get” there by realizing you are there already.
• Nothing that you ever did or that was done to you in the past prevents you from saying yes to what is and taking your attention deeply into the Now. You cannot do this in the future. You do it now or not at all.
• Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through (your own pain).
• To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, and enlightenment.
• The moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, and for peace.
• With acknowledgment and acceptance of the facts also comes a degree of freedom from them.
• If you react to your partner’s (anyone’s) unconsciousness, you become unconscious yourself.
• Judgment is either to confuse someone’s unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are. To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means “being the knowing” rather than “being the reaction” and the judge.
• Difference between happiness and inner peace: 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.
• Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment- allow it to be as it is- then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.
• Do what you have to do. In the meantime, accept what is. Since mind and resistance are synonymous, 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, defending or feeding the false sense of self- 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.
• When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore.
• Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present. The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, 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.
• Whenever you are not honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you are creating drama.
• When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can even have an argument with you, no matter how hard he or she tries. You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person.
• When you are fully conscious, you cease to be in conflict.
• All suffering is ego-created and is due to resistance.
• It is not true that the up cycle is good and the down cycle bad, except in the mind’s judgment. Growth is usually considered positive, but nothing can grow forever. If growth were to go on and on, it would become monstrous and destructive.
• Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure.
• Most people cannot distinguish between life and their life situation.
• The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things.
• Joy is uncaused and arises from within. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.
• Many people never realize that there can be no “salvation” in anything they do, possess, or attain.
• All negativity is resistance.
• 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? The fact is, of course, that negativity does not work. Its only “useful” function is that it strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it.
• Any changes that you make, whether they have to do with your work, your relationships, or your surroundings, are ultimately only cosmetic unless they arise out of a change in your level of consciousness.
• Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace.
• Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.
• Your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness.
• You can still enjoy the passing pleasures of this world, but there is no fear of loss anymore, so you don’t need to cling to them.
• True change happens within, not without.
• Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.
• You can accept the “isness” of this moment.
• Surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arise out of an unsurrendered state of consciousness.
• Focus not on the hundred things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. (It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now.)
• By witnessing the resistance, you will see that it serves no purpose. Resistance is always unconscious.
• You cannot be conscious and unhappy.
• You keep your unhappiness alive by giving it time. That is its lifeblood. Remove time through intense present-moment awareness and it dies. But do you want it to die? Have you truly had enough? Who would you be without it?
• If you cannot accept what is, by implication you will not be able to accept anybody the way they are.
• If you continuously make the Now into a means to an end in the future, you will also make every person you encounter or relate with into a means to an end.
• When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.
• Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to overcome.
• In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks.
• What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.
• As there are no problems in the Now, there is no illness either.
• When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.
• If you looked in the mirror and did not like what you saw, you would have to be mad to attack the image in the mirror. That is precisely what you do when you are in a state of nonacceptance.
• Anything “bad” that happens in your life- use it for enlightenment.
• It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so- your resistance is.
• God is BEING itself, not a being.
• Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time.
• The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with.
• Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.
• Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize 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.
• How will I know when I have surrendered? When you no longer need to ask the question…

Source: The Power of NOW by Eckhart Tolle