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The mind can be a wonderful tool if used rightly  

• 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.  
• When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.  
• When you do not identify with thought, it becomes fruitful, not addictive.  Thinking becomes powerful when you no longer rely on it to know who you are.   
• The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.

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The problem is that for most of us, the mind has taken us over to become a tormentor  

• It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy.
• The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly —you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.  
• Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
• 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.  
• Ultimately, it’s not what happens “out there” that upsets you, it’s what happens in your mind.

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We falsely believe we are our minds  

• Why should we be addicted to thinking? Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if you stopped thinking.   
• You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.

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When you identify yourself completely with your mind and thoughts, the ego takes over  

• Ego is no more than complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with the Source.  
• Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms.
• Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become ‘I.’   
• The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.   
• Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego, which, in our Western society in particular, is out of control. It believes it is real and tries hard to maintain its supremacy. Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.  

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The ego is the mind-made image you have of yourself  

• When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self. This is the ego, a mind- made “me.” That mentally constructed self feels incomplete and precarious. That’s why fearing and wanting are its predominant emotions and motivating forces
• As soon as the mind and mind identification return; you’re no longer yourself but a mental image of yourself, and you start playing games and roles again to get your ego needs met.  

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The unconscious drive behind the ego is to strengthen the mental image of who you think you are  

• Whatever behaviour the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same: the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more. And, of course, the need to feel a sense of separation, that is to say, the need for opposition, enemies.  
• Whatever form it takes, the unconscious drive behind ego is to strengthen the image of who I think I am.  

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The ego gets its sense of self from your perceived worth in the eyes of others  

• The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself. The ego’s sense of self- worth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others. You need others to give you a sense of self…

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The ego gets its sense of worth from how much you have  

• … and if you live in a culture that to a large extent equates self- worth with how much and what you have, if you cannot look through this collective delusion, you will be condemned to chasing after things for the rest of your life in the vain hope of finding your worth and completion of your sense of self there.  
• The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am.  

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The ego is driven by an underlying fear of diminishment and annihilation  

• The underlying emotion that governs all the activity of the ego is fear. The fear of being nobody, the fear of nonexistence, the fear of death. All its activities are ultimately designed to eliminate this fear, but the most the ego can ever do is to cover it up temporarily with an intimate relationship, a new possession, or winning at this or that. Illusion will never satisfy you. Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.  
• Fear seems to have many causes.  Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the egos fear of death, of annihilation.  To the ego, death is always just around the corner.  In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.  

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The ego feels inherently incomplete and tries unsuccessfully to complete itself with external things  

• Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep- seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole…  If it is unconscious, it will only be felt directly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. People will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego- gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within.  So they strive after money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that is is bottomless.  
• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for being.
• The egoic self is always engaged in seeking. It is seeking more of this or that to add to itself, to make itself feel more complete. This explains the ego’s compulsive preoccupation with future.  

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The ego wants possessions, status, approval and recognition  

• The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.  

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The ego wants to feel superior to others  

• All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.

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The ego thrives on being right  

• There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. The ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defense.  
• If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

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The ego thrives on emphasising the otherness of others  

• The ego loves to emphasise the otherness of others so it can feel stronger in its fictitious sense of self.   
• The ego needs problems, conflict, and “enemies” to strengthen the sense of separateness on which its identity depends.  
• Anger or resentment strengthen the ego enormously by increasing the sense of separateness, emphasizing the otherness of others and creating a seemingly unassailable fortresslike mental position of ‘rightness.’  

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The ego uses relationships and people as a means to an ends; namely to enhance itself  

• As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear. In relationships, you then either want or fear something from the other person. What you want from them may be pleasure or material gain, recognition, praise or attention, or a strengthening of your sense of self through comparison and through establishing that you are, have, or know more than they. What you fear is that the opposite may be the case, and they may diminish your sense of self in some way.  
• When you make the present moment the focal point of your attention — instead of using it as a means to an end — you go beyond the ego and beyond the unconscious compulsion to use people as a means to an end, the end being self- enhancement at the cost of others.   

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The sense of completeness the ego gets from getting what it wants is always extremely short lived  

• The ego wants more and more (possessions, reputation, approval, attaining goals, even food) to gain a sense of completeness. But these are all short lived. They don’t fill the empty space. So I’m always left wanting. Completeness is never attainable this way.   
• Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.  

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The ego denies the present moment and lives exclusively through memory (past) and anticipation (future)  

• The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.   
• To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions…   
• To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it – who are you?   
• Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.  
• The ego treats the present moment in 3 ways: 1. As a means to an end. 2. As an obstacle. 3. As an enemy. The ego looks to past for identity and the future for fulfilment.

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The ego derives its sense of self from the past  

• The sense of self that is derived from our thinking—which includes all one’s memories, one’s conditioning, and one’s sense of self—is a conceptual one that is derived from the past.   
• Your sense of identity, of self, is reduced to a story you keep telling yourself in your head. “Me and my story.”   

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The ego brings stress, strain and negativity and disrupts natural well- being  

• The voice of the ego continuously disrupts the body’s natural state of well-being. Almost every human body is under a great deal of strain and stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from within the mind. The body has an ego attached to it, and it cannot but respond to all the dysfunctional thought patterns that make up the ego. Thus, a stream of negative emotion accompanies the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking.

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The ego, or identification with mind, causes suffering, dysfunction and conflict  

• Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, physically speaking.  I am talking here primarily of emotional pain, which is also the main cause of physical pain and physical disease.  Resentment, hatred, self-pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest irritation, are all forms of pain.  
• Suffering is believing in the thoughts that the mind throws up.  
• Ego is no more than complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, delusion. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs what I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create? To find the answer to this, observe how humans relate to each other, read a history book, or watch the news on television tonight.

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The ego does not need to be egotistical to be strong  

• A shy person who is afraid of the attention of others is not free of ego, but has an ambivalent ego that both wants and fears attention from others. The fear is that the attention may take the form of disapproval or criticism, that is to say, something that diminishes the sense of self rather than enhances it. So the shy person’s fear of attention is greater than his or her need of attention.

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Don’t curse the ego or take it too seriously  

• Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behaviour in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego.
• One day I will catch myself smiling at the voice in my head, as I would the antics of a small child.  This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.  

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Realise that without the ego, there would be no realisation or awakening  

• In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.  
• You cannot know yourself.  You can only know what you’re not.   
• Without the ego, there would be no enlightenment or awakening.

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Let go of the need to react to the ego of others  

• Nonreaction to the ego of others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also dissolving the collective human ego.   
• What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself.   
• Pay more attention to your reactions than the cause of the reactions.  

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Learn to watch your thoughts …  

• When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.  
• Listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.  
• Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by ‘waching the thinker,’ which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.  
• Be present as the watcher of your mind — of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also 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. Don’t make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.  
• Catch it before it can take over your thinking or behaviour. This simply means putting the spotlight of your attention on it. If it is an emotion, feel the strong energy charge behind it. Know that it is the pain- body.  At the same time, be the knowing; that is to say, be aware of your conscious presence and feel its power. Any emotion that you take your presence into will quickly subside and become transmuted.  
• Attention to a thought or emotion creates space around it.
• If thought doesn’t take you over, you become the space in which it comes and goes.  

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… and realise you are not the thinker …  

• When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.   
• The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the “thinker.”  

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… but the one who is aware of your thinking  

• When you notice that voice, you realise that who you are is not the voice—the thinker—but the one who is aware of it.   
• What a liberation to realiSe that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.  
• When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice — the thinker — but the one who is aware of it. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.   
• See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind- pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it.  

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Learn to disidenitify from your mind and become detached from your thoughts  

• Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, …  
• It is not our thoughts that cause problems, but our attachments to them.  
• Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts so seriously.  
• So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.  One day I will catch myself smiling at the voice in my head, as I would the antics of a small child.  This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.  
• The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.  
• Identification with the mind gives it more energy; observation of the mind withdraws energy from it.

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Knowing yourself as the awareness behind your thoughts is freedom  

• The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the “thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realise that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also begin to realise that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.  
• Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.
• Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.  

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Learn to create a gap in your mind stream …  

• Instead of ‘watching the thinker,’ you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.  
• Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind the light of your consciousness grows stronger.  
• You draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.   

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… and to become alert and present  

• Presence is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind- identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.  
• Presence is the cessation of thought without losing consciousness.  

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Pay complete attention to the present moment and become friendly with it  

• Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind- stuff. Your life is real.  
• Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.   
• 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.  
• This one moment — Now — the only thing you can never escape from, the one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens, no matter how much your life changes, one thing is certain: it’s always Now. Since there is no escape from the Now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it?  

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… for this moment is all you really have …  

• Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.   
• Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.
• The present moment is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not ‘this moment.’ Is this not a fact?  
• The real meditation is your life- and your life is now.   

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… and being fully present in the moment is the end of the ego  

• The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment, which is to say, aligned with life, since its very nature compels it to ignore, resist, or devalue the Now.  
• The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.  
• To let go of the ego, surrender to the now. Say yes to the form this now takes. Look deeply into the Now. The ego cannot exist in the now. It has an inner urge for the future.  

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Become present by paying attention to stillness  

• Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds.  Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence.  All you have to do is pay attention to it.   
• Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.  
• The moment you notice silence, stillness arises in you. Thoughts become depersonalised. Before, I thought they were me.  
• Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form but then, it is not really a thing and it is not of this world.   

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Becoming wrapped up in ego stops the connection  

• Ego is no more than complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, delusion. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs what I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create? To find the answer to this, observe how humans relate to each other, read a history book, or watch the news on television tonight. 

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Become present by paying attention to your breathing  

• Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be more powerfully transformative than attending all of these courses. And it’s free.
• Be aware of your breathing. Notice how this takes attention away from your thinking and creates space.  

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Become present by becoming aware of your inner body and using it as an anchor  

• As much as possible in everyday life, use awareness of the inner body to create space. When waiting, when listening to someone, when pausing to look at the sky, a tree, a flower, your partner, or child, feel the aliveness within at the same time. This means part of your attention or consciousness remains formless, and the rest is available for the outer world of form. Whenever you “inhabit” your body in this way, it serves as an anchor for staying present in the Now. It prevents you from losing yourself in thinking, in emotions, or in external situations.
• Direct your attention into the body.  Feel it from within. It is alive?  Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and feet – in your abdomen, your chest? Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and every call? Can you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a single field of energy?   
• If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You 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.
• Make it a habit to feel the inner body as often as you can. Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego.
• Please open your eyes now, but keep attention in the inner energy field of the body as you look around the room. The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it.  
• So when such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body. This need not take long, just a few seconds. But you need to do it the moment that the challenge presents itself. Any delay will allow a conditioned mental- emotional reaction to arise and take you over.  When you focus within and feel the inner body, you immediately become still and present as you are withdrawing consciousness from the mind. If a response is required in that situation, it will come up from this deeper level.   
• The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it.   
• The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body – to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform your life. The more consciousness you direct into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes.  
• To stay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply rooted within yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag you along like a wild river.   

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Become present by paying attention to your senses  

• Sense perception is closer to who you are than thought.  
• Sense perceptions are an entrance into presence. Be aware of two dimensions; that which you are perceiving (form) and that which is perceiving (formless).  
• Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look, don’t interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware of the silent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows everything to be. Listen to the sounds; don’t judge them. Listen to the silence underneath the sounds. Touch something – anything – and feel and acknowledge its Being. Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and without. Allow the “isness” of all things. Move deeply into the Now.  

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Do regular check ins to detect if you are resisting the Now in any way  

• Direct your attention inward. Have a look inside yourself. What kind of thoughts is your mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into the body. Is there any tension? Once you detect that there is a low level of unease, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding, resisting, or denying life – by denying the Now.
• Regularly ask yourself “What is my relationship right now with the present moment?”  

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Become present through accepting, even welcoming, the present moment exactly as it is  

• Presence is allowing whatever condition arises in this moment to be there.   
• Acceptance means accepting the conditions of the moment (e.g. there is pain), rather than the story or concept you create around it (e.g. I have a serious illness.)  
• All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.  
• Now, instead of wanting this moment to be different from the way it is, which adds more pain to the pain that is already there, is it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel right now?  
• Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.   
• If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, ‘Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable.’ The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about the situation. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.
• Let there be space around your unhappiness. That space comes when there is inner acceptance of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment.

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… through complete surrender to what is  

• Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could 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.  
• Change what can be changed, otherwise surrender to what is.
• Surrender comes when you no longer ask, “Why is this happening to me?    

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… through total non-resistance 

• Since mind and resistance are synonymous, acceptance immediately frees you from mind dominance and thus reconnects you with Being.
• Every true spiritual teaching is about entering the state of non-resistance voluntarily, that is to say consciously.
• I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus I have found peace.
• Non-resistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the is- ness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. Consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form.
• Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego. you are closed. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life.
• Resisting is obstructing the power of the universe.
• The master is totally at one with this moment. He or she does not oppose, internally, this moment. He or she offers no inner- resistance to this moment – to the isness of now – to whatever arises now. It is not resisted internally.
• The whole Universe has brought this moment about. Who am I to fight it?
• Through non-resistance, the quality of your consciousness and, therefore, the quality of whatever you are doing or creating is enhanced immeasurably. The results will then look after themselves and reflect that quality. We could call this surrendered action.
• To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad.
• Non-resistance doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. All it means is that any “doing” becomes nonreactive. Remember the deep wisdom underlying the practice of Eastern martial arts: Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to overcome.

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… without needing to label things as good or bad 

• And when you live in complete acceptance of what is –which is the only sane way to live – there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good – which includes the “bad.”
• Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep- seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.
• To be in alignment with what is means to be in a relationship of inner nonresistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be.
• If you look closely, you will find that by far the greater part of any unhappiness in you is created not by situations, but by what your mind is saying about them. It’s created by the self- talk in your head. Such dysfunctional thinking strengthens the ego, but it weakens you. How to end it? Meet situations and people without judgment. Give your fullest attention to the present moment without mentally labeling it. This is the arising of Presence, a new state of consciousness that frees your mind from its old conditioning.
• Suffering begins when you mentally label a situation as bad. That causes an emotional contraction. When you let it be, without naming it, enormous power is available to you.  The contraction cuts you off from that power, the power of life itself.  
• Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper level where your inner state as well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind’s judgments of “good” or “bad.”

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Acceptance of what is in this moment brings calm and peace 

• The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.
• True peace is found in this moment. Acceptance is the first step to inner calm.
• Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non- peace is transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.
• Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is – no matter what form it takes – you are still, you are at peace.

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Acceptance allows positive action to be taken if appropriate 

• You don’t need to accept an undesirable or unpleasant life situation. Nor do you need to deceive yourself and say that there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the mud. No. You recognize fully that you want to get out of it. You then narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labelling it in any way. This means that there is no judgement of the Now. Therefore, there is no resistance, no emotional negativity. You accept the “isness” of this moment. Then you take action and do all that you can to get out of the mud. Such action I call positive action. It is far more effective than negative action, which arises out of anger, despair, or frustration.
• 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.
• 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.
• Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

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Outer action taken from a place of inner surrender is always far more effective 

• Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation.
• Surrender is perfectly compatible with taking action, initiating change, or achieving goals. But in the surrendered state a totally different energy, a different quality, flows into your doing.  
• The action you take after surrender is always more effective than when you fight against life.
• Then, if action is possible or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole.  When the action is accomplished, the alert, spacious stillness remains.  
• In the state of surrender, you see very clearly what needs to be done, and you take action, doing one thing at a time and focusing on one thing at a time.

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Surrender doesn’t mean you can’t say “no.” 

If you resist or fight unconscious behaviour in others, you become unconscious yourself. But surrender does not mean that you allow yourself to be used by unconscious people. Not at all. It is perfectly possible to say “no” firmly and clearly to a person or to walk away from a situation and be in a state of complete inner non-resistance at the same time. When you say no to a person or a situation let it come not from reaction but from insight, from a clear realization of what is right or not right for you at that moment. Let it be a nonreactive no, a high-quality no, a no that is free from negativity and so creates no further suffering. 

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Being present leads to the sustained joy of being 

• The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event –through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you – ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.
• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfilment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.
• With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
• 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 beggars, even if they have great material wealth.

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Being present brings depth, newness and freshness to life 

• 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.

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Being present makes life flow with greater joy and ease 

• As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease.
• It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.
• When your inner dependency on form is gone, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them …

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Being present allows love, joy and peace to flourish 

• When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. The realm of Being, which has been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly a great stillness aries within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred and immeasurable, That which cannot be named.
• Love, joy and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.
• When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth.
• With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
• You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.
• How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens.
• Peace comes from being aligned with the present moment. Wherever you are , you feel that you are home– because you are home.

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Being present makes it easier to live with uncertainty 

• As the ego is no longer running your life, the psychological need for external security, which is illusory anyway, lessens. You are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it. When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.

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Being present charges your actions with spiritual power 

• The present moment is always small in the sense that it is always simple, but concealed within it lies the greatest power. Like the atom, it is one of the smallest things yet contains enormous power.
• As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.
• When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, Presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be a quality and power in it. You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.

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Being present makes you both more peaceful, aware and alive 

• Something inside you emerges. An innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself.
• Greater awareness. Abiding peace. Inner fulfilment. These are the rewards of living in alignment with the moment.
• In the moment, life is fresh and alive. The past and future lose their heaviness.
• In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind- identified state. You are fully present.  It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that give life to the physical body. 
• Some people say, the world can be so alive! It always is, you just do not know it because of the screen of your thinking. You notice it as you become more awake.

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Being present allows a greater intelligence to flow 

• 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.
• Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind.
• True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.
• When you are one with what is, the universal intelligence arises to create right action.
• When you connect with stillness, you also connect with a creative intelligence that is higher than analytical thinking. Very often, the right decision then arises spontaneously.
• Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non- conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.
• A higher level of consciousness is awakened. I get in touch with the vast realm of intelligence beyond thought.
• In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
• When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love.

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Being present opens up creativity 

• When I need an answer, a solution or creative idea, I stop thinking for a moment and become focused on my inner energy field. I become aware of the stillness. In thought, I go back every few minutes between thinking and stillness. This keeps my mind fresh and creative.
• True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.
• All true artists, whether they know it or not, create form a place of no- mind, from inner stillness.
• Creative breakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude.

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Being present brings health and healing 

• The more consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the immune system becomes. It is as if every cell awakens and rejoices. It is also a potent form of self- healing.  

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Being present brings freedom from pain and suffering 

• The more you are able to honour and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.

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Being present allows you to experience more fully and see more clearly 

• To experience anything fully and see it clearly there must be a moment of presence where conceptual thinking is not interfering with your experience of that moment.
• You don’t see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.

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Being present opens you to the truth 

• When you have reached a certain stage of inner connectedness, you recognize the truth when you hear it.

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Being present allows you to let go of the need to be right 

• Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper and truer place within yourself, not from the mind.

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Being present allows you to let go of fear 

• Fear arises through identification with form, whether it be a material possession, a physical body, a social role, a self- image, a thought, or an emotion. It arises through unawareness of the formless inner dimension of consciousness or spirit, which is the essence of who you are. You are trapped in object consciousness, unaware of the dimension of inner space which alone is true freedom.
• The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
• What is there to fear in this very moment of now? Is your fear about something in the future? Then focus on being present now, and let go of the fear.
• You no longer pursue your goals with grim determination, driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone. Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure, which to the ego is loss of self. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of ‘becoming’ as a psychological need, either your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and there is freedom from fear.

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Being present puts you in the best place to determine the future 

• If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence. So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.

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Being present puts you at one with life 

• Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you.
• Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or rather what life does through you. There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One with Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer and you are the dance.

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Being present reveals beauty 

• 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 it’s essence, it’s holiness- just as they don’t know themselves, don’t feel their own essence, their own holiness.
• Beauty arises in the stillness of one’s presence.
• Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present.
• When you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence. That is why beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will.

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Being present gives you access to the true wealth within you 

• A beggar had been sitting by the side of a 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 have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.
• Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfilment, for validation, security, or love – you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
• 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 beggars, 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.
• You are like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential.

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Being present gives you access to the power of life, traditionally called “God.” 

• Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called “God.” As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.

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Being present allows consciousness to flow into the world 

• Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.
• The human brain is a highly differentiated form through which consciousness enters this dimension. It contains approximately one hundred billion nerve cells (called neurons), about the same number as there are stars in our galaxy.
• Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions of years so that it can express itself through them in the manifested.

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Being present and mentally still reveals who you are beyond words, labels or thoughts … 

• The greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness, from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified with.
• Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

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… revealing your true nature as inseparable from stillness 

• Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.  This means that is is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature.  But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it.  You can know it only when the mind is still. 
• Stillness is your essential nature.
• Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
• When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this physical and mental form called a person. You are also who you will be when the form dissolves. When you are still, you are beyond your temporal existence: consciousness- unconditional, formless, eternal.   
• Being aware of stillness means to be still. To be still is to be conscious without thought. You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.
• There is something that matters more than anything and that is finding the essence of who you are beyond that short- lived entity, that short- lived personalized sense of self.  
• When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
• The greatest miracle is this: That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be is not just out there in space — it is also within you.
• The purpose of meditation is discovering inner space and realising you are it.

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… revealing your inherent “completeness” 

• Most people’s lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.
• Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete, perfect. 
• Yet on a deeper level you are already complete, and when you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind everything you do.

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… revealing the divine essence in yourself and all beings 

• Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life- form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form. 
• We are God in deep disguise.

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… setting you free and bringing peace 

• Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.
• You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

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In this way, being present leads to spiritual awakening 

• Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.
• Spiritual awakening is being free from conceptualisation. It is awakening from identification with thoughts.  It is awakening to the aliveness and depth of this moment.  
• Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet—because it is the purpose of humanity.

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Suffering can play an important role in helping to destroy the ego and awakening you 

• Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. You would not be reading this now. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose.
• Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.
• Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego—but not until you suffer consciously.
• Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.
• Suffering is a wonderful teacher. Suffering is most people’s only spiritual teacher. Suffering deepens you, it gradually erodes the mind made sense of self, the ego. And for some people the point arrives where they realize “I have suffered enough.”
• When you can’t stand the endless cycle of suffering anymore, you begin to awaken.
• Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn’t.  They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things.  Suffering drives you deeper.  The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form.  A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego-   – but not until you suffer consciously.  
• But when the pain that the little me creates for itself becomes intense enough, the ego will self- destruct. It has a self- destruct mechanism built in, fortunately, so eventually every ego dies.

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Suffering is only necessary until you realise it is unnecessary 

• Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.
• The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

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Suffering comes from resisting what is 

• 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 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.
• You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.
• You might say, ‘What a dreadful day’, without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance.

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End suffering by accepting it completely and suffering consciously 

• True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. This inner alignment with Now is the end of suffering.
• When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suffering, there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.

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When negative emotions are not faced, they become a part of your pain body 

• Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. … This energy field of old but still very- much- alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.

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Learn to identify the common triggers that activate your pain body and become immediately present 

• Learn what the most common triggers are that activate the pain body, whether it be situations or certain things other people do or say. When those triggers occur, you will immediately see them for what they are and enter a heightened state of alertness. Within a second or two, you will also notice the emotional reaction that is the arising pain-body, but in that state of alert Presence, you won’t identify with it, which means the pain-body cannot take you over and become the voice in your head.

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Watch your pain body without resisting it or thinking about it … 

• Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyse. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.
• Just as you cannot fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
• The pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself though you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of Now.  
• Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form—it may be the awakening of the pain- body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a sombre mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state. Any delay will allow a conditioned mental- emotional reaction to arise and take you over. Make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body. 

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… and without identifying yourself with your pain or creating a story out of it 

• As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from them.
• As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal the pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.
• It is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain- body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness.
• The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it.

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In this way, you can transmute your pain and allow it to become fuel for consciousness 

• Bring your pain body into the light of presence. Free its energy. Allow the pain to become fuel for consciousness.
• The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the pain- body becomes fuel for consciousness. This is why many of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy pain-body.

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A heavy pain body can be a gift that induces spiritual awakening 

• People with heavy pain-bodies usually have a better chance to awaken spiritually than those with a relatively light one. Whereas some of them do remain trapped in their heavy pain- bodies, many others reach a point where they cannot live with their unhappiness any longer, and so their motivation to awaken becomes strong.

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Refrain from attempting to show off, stand out or be special 

• Another aspect of this practice is to refrain from attempting to strengthen the self by showing off, wanting to stand out, be special, make an impression, or demand attention. It may include occasionally refraining from expressing your opinion when everybody is expressing his or hers, and seeing what that feels like.
• If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave.

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Give up defining yourself – to yourself and others 

• Be comfortable not needing to define yourself through thought.
• As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from them.
• Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem.
• If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are – the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined. Give up defining yourself – to yourself and others. You won’t die.  You will come to life. 

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Learn to let go 

• Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.

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Become at ease with the state of not knowing 

• Become at ease with the state of ‘not knowing.’ This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind.
• Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth.
• Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.

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Become comfortable with uncertainty 

• If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.
• When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.

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Perceive without constant interpreting and mental labelling 

• But when we perceive without interpreting or mental labelling, which means without adding thought to our perceptions, we can actually still sense the deeper connectedness underneath our perception of seemingly separate things.
• Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.
• The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.
• When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous 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.
• You do not awaken spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming ceases, or at least you become aware of it and thus are able to observe it as it happens. It is through this constant naming that the ego remains in place as the unobserved mind.
• Can you take the thinking out of the perceiving? Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?

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Realise that words greatly reduce reality 

• Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sound or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.
• Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.

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Find the extraordinary in the ordinary through honouring the little things in the present moment 

• Discover the extraordinary in the ordinary by bringing awareness to the moment. Bring consciousness into even the most simple actions.
• 90% of life is little things. Be present in them. 
• The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.
• The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.
• To be aware of little, quiet things, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

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Let go of the need to complain  

• To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably caries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

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See any sign of negativity in you as a helpful signal to become present … 

• Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: “Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present.
• In the very moment you recognize you aren’t present, you’ve become present.

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… realising that all negativity is caused by denial of the present … 

• All negativity is caused by denial of the present. 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.

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… and that all negativity is of the ego 

• If in the midst of negativity, you are able to realize “At this moment I am creating suffering for myself.” It will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions. It will open up infinite possibilities which come to you when there is awareness—other vastly more intelligent ways of dealing with any situation. You will be free to let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it as unintelligent. Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent.

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No longer seek to enhance your sense of self through your actions and interactions 

Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self- seeking. In other words, it means to act without seeking to enhance one’s sense of self through one’s actions or one’s interactions with people. Ultimately, it means not needing the future anymore for one’s fulfillment or for one’s sense of self or being. There is no seeking through doing, seeking an enhanced, more fulfilled, or greater sense of self in the world. When that seeking isn’t there anymore, then you can be in the world but not be of the world. You are no longer seeking for anything to identify with out there.  

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No longer seek to find yourself in external things 

• How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

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Give up “waiting” as a state of mind 

• It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
• 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 non- fulfillment, don’t you agree?
• I give up “waiting” as a state of mind. I come into the present and enjoy being. I am grateful for the present and the fullness of life right now.

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Don’t identify who you are with your body 

• Equating the physical sense-perceived body that is destined to grow old, wither, and die with “I” always leads to suffering sooner or later.

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Realise in essence you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone 

• In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self- esteem and true humility arise out of that realization.

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Define success as nothing other than a successful present moment 

• Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action.
• When doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of Being, that is success. Unless Being flows into doing, unless you are present, you lose yourself in whatever you do.

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Measure your presence by the degree of peace and aliveness you feel 

• Ask yourself: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn’t, then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle.
• There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.
• If you’re actually doing it correctly, you’ll find yourself vividly present to your five senses, vividly present to your body, vividly present to your experience.

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Make life into your meditation 

• Formal meditation, however, is no substitute for bringing space consciousness into everyday life.
• The real meditation is your life – and your life is now.

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Create a space for your own transformation through the power of attention and acceptance 

• As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
• Attention is the key to transformation – and full attention also implies acceptance. Attention is like a beam of light – the focused power of your consciousness that transmutes everything into itself.

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Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is inherent in life itself … 

• People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that lies beyond what is happening or not happening. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is untouched by time.
• Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete, perfect.

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… the perfection that is inherent in this very moment 

• At this moment, you are exactly where you’re meant to be. There is nowhere else you can be.

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Life always gives you exactly what you need to evolve your consciousness … 

• Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
• Life gives you exactly what you need.

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… and the greatest adversity has the potential to bring the greatest gift of all 

• The worst thing in life can become the best thing. The very thing that awakens you.  
• Bad weather is best suited for awakening.

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Die before you die by contemplating your own mortality … 

• 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.
• One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind- forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there – the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.
• The contemplation of one’s mortality, the fleetingness of life and the impermanence of form is a deeply spiritual thing to do. It is a liberating act that makes life feel considerably less heavy.
• The life of form is so impermanent that it might be a good idea to think of yourself as dead already.

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… for death puts life greatly into perspective 

• What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
• Death is not the opposite of life. It is the opposite of birth. 
• In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless.

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Open yourself to life by learning to die daily 

• People tend to be uncomfortable with endings, because every ending is a little death. If you can learn to accept and even welcome the endings in your life, you may find that the feeling of emptiness that initially felt uncomfortable turns into a sense of inner spaciousness that is deeply peaceful. By learning to die daily in this way, you open yourself to life.

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Die continually to the past for it has no power over the present moment 

• Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being.
• The past has no power over the present moment.
• The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.
• You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.
• You may think that you need more time to understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future will eventually free you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present can free you of the past.

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Realise the death of another can be an opening to presence 

• Whenever death occurs, whenever a life form dissolves, God, the formless and unmanifested, shines through the opening left by the dissolving form. That is why the most sacred thing in life is death.  That is why the peace of God can come to you through contemplation and acceptance of death.  
• …when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.
• Death is not an anomaly or the most dreadful of all events as modern culture would have you believe, but the most natural thing in the world, inseparable from and just as natural as its polarity – Remind yourself of this when you sit with a dying person.  It is a great privilege and a sacred act to be present at a person’s death as a witness and companion. 
• There is still a widespread denial of death in Western cultures. Even old people try not to speak or think about it, and dead bodies are hidden away.  A culture that denies death inevitably becomes shallow and superficial, concerned only with the external form of things.  When death is denied, life loses its depth.  The possibility of knowing who we are beyond name and form, the dimension of the transcendent, disappears from our lives because death is the opening into that dimension.  
• When you go deep enough into the formless, the dreadful is no longer dreadful, it’s sacred. Then you will experience the two levels, when somebody dies who is close to you. Yes it’s dreadful on the level of form. It’s sacred on the deeper level. Death can enable you to find that dimension in yourself. You’re helping countless other humans if you find that dimension in yourself – the sacred dimension of life. Death can help you find the sacred dimension of life – where life is indestructible.

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Become fully present in your relationships … 

• When you give your fullest attention to whoever you are interacting with, you take past and future out of the relationship, except for practical matters. When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them — your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past — and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key.

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… by making space for stillness 

• Most human interactions are confined to the exchange of words — the realm of thought. It is essential to bring some stillness, particularly into your close relationships. No relationship can thrive without the sense of spaciousness that comes with stillness. Meditate or spend silent time in nature together. When going for a walk or sitting in the car or at home, become comfortable with being in stillness together. Stillness cannot and need not be created. Just be receptive to the stillness that is already there, but is usually obscured by mental noise. If spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be dominated by the mind and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict. If stillness is there, it can contain anything.
• Most human relationships consist mainly of minds interacting with each other, not of human beings communicating, being in communion. No relationship can thrive in that way, and that is why there is so much conflict in relationships. When the mind is running your life, conflict, strife, and problems are inevitable. Being in touch with your inner body creates a clear space of no- mind within which the relationship can flower.
• To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer the Universe.

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… by practicing true listening 

• Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of listening is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than what the other person is saying.
• True listening goes far beyond auditory perception. It is the arising of alert attention, a space of presence in which the words are being received. The words now become secondary. They may be meaningful or they may not make sense. Far more important than what you are listening to is the act of listening itself, the space of conscious presence that arises as you listen. That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer “other.” In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness.
• True listening is a rare skill. Usually, the greater part of a person’s attention is taken up by their thinking. At best, they may be evaluating your words or preparing the next thing to say. Or they may not be listening at all, lost in their own thoughts.
• True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship.
• When listening to another person, don’t just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen. That takes attention away from thinking and creates a still space that enables you to truly listen without the mind interfering. You are giving the other person space – space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give.

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… by giving people your fullest attention 

• When you meet with people, at work or wherever it may be, give them your fullest attention. You are no longer there primarily as a person, but as a field of awareness, of alert Presence. The original reason for interacting with the other person—buying or selling something, requesting or giving information, and so on—now becomes secondary. The field of awareness that arises between you becomes the primary purpose for the interaction. That space of awareness becomes more important than what you may be talking about, more important than physical or thought objects. The human Being becomes more important than the things of this world. The arising of that unifying field of awareness between human beings is the most essential factor in relationships on the new earth.

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… by accepting people as they are 

• 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 ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over.
• Change in others often occurs when you no longer need them to change. When you drop demands and expectations.  

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… by letting go of the need to judge others 

• Judgement is either to confuse someone’s unconscious behaviour with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are.

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… by letting go of prejudice 

• Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.  

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Accept the purpose of relationships is to make you conscious instead of happy 

• Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. If you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer your salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.

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Realise your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you’re taking right now 

• Realise that your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. There is always only this one step, and so you give it your fullest attention. This doesn’t mean you don’t know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary. And what you encounter at your destination once you get there depends on the quality of this one step. Another way of putting it: What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.
• No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this: one step, one breath, one moment – Now.
• When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don’t forget: The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.
• Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.

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Instead of becoming excessively focused on your goal or future destination, focus on the step you’re taking right now 

• If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfilment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honoured. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to ‘make it.’ You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.
• 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 non- fulfilment, don’t you agree?
• When you live through the ego, you always reduce the present moment to a means to an end. You live for the future, and when you achieve your goals, they don’t satisfy you, at least not for long. When you give more attention to the doing than to the future result that you want to achieve through it, you break the old egoic conditioning. Your doing then becomes not only a great deal more effective, but infinitely more fulfilling and joyful.
• If your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’s inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with the future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness at this moment.

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Be total in what you do, doing one thing at a time… 

• Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action—empowered action.

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… focused on the action itself, not the fruit of the action 

• So 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.

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Your state of consciousness right now is the best way to determine the future 

• If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence. So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.

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The state of consciousness with which you do things is far more important that what you do 

• “How” is always more important than “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
• The ultimate importance is not what you do, it’s how you do it—the state of consciousness brought to the process.
• How ‘spiritual’ you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This, in turn, determines how you act in the world and interact with others.
• How is always more important that “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
• Be more interested in your inner-state in any given situation than what is happening in the outer situation. What is my inner- state at THIS moment is always primary. Dealing with external situations, the outcome of this situation or that situation or this person agrees with me or does not agree with me… all these are secondary things.
• How’ is always more important that ‘what.’ See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.

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Action infused with being present becomes a channel for consciousness to enter the world 

• Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention. Your doing then becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world. This means there is quality in what you do, even in the most simple action, like turning the pages in the phone book or walking across the room.
• When doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of Being, that is success. Unless Being flows into doing, unless you are present, you lose yourself in whatever you do.
• When the action is accomplished, the alert, spacious stillness remains.
• The human brain is a highly differentiated form through which consciousness enters this dimension. It contains approximately one hundred billion nerve cells (called neurons), about the same number as there are stars in our galaxy.

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Allowing consciousness to flow into the world is your inner purpose in life 

• Your inner purpose is to allow consciousness to arise through being present in the moment.
• Opening yourself to the emerging consciousness and bringing its light into this world then becomes the primary purpose of your life. Not your aims or your actions are primary, but the state of consciousness out of which they come.
• Be true to life by being true to your inner purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power. At first there may be no noticeable change in what you do—only the how changes. Your primary purpose is now to enable consciousness to flow into what you do.

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Awakened doing is the alignment of what you do (your outer purpose) with this inner purpose 

• Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose—what you do—with your inner purpose—awakening and staying awake. Through awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe. Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.
• Being present does not mean you neglect whatever needs to be done on a practical level. In fact, the doing unfolds not only more easily, but more powerfully when the dimension of Being is acknowledged and so becomes primary. The outer purpose of the universe is to create form and experience the interaction of forms—the play, the dream, the drama, or whatever you choose to call it. Its inner purpose is to awaken to its formless essence. Then comes the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose: to bring that essence—consciousness—into the world of form and thereby transform the world.
• Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet—because it is the purpose of humanity.
• Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you have lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary. But why did anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. You forgot your main purpose

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Realise emotion only becomes unhappiness when you create a story out of it 

• Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.

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Emotion is a reflection of your mind in the body and has the power to amplify thoughts 

• Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.
• Emotions, especially fear, amplifies thoughts so they take us over. We believe the thoughts to be reality.  They possess us.

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Face and feel your emotions or they will come back to cause you greater pain 

• Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. … This energy field of old but still very- much- alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.
• If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom.

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Emotions, if fully felt, have a limited lifespan 

• 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.

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Feel your negative emotions by remaining present enough to watch them without letting them take you over 

• An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds —unless there is enough presence in you. If you are pulled into unconscious identification with the emotion through lack of presence, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you” … Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial undifferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form.

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Only by feeling your emotions will you ever experience authentic love, joy and peace 

• Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully conscious of your emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which lies beyond them. Emotion literally means “disturbance.

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Know that emotions will get you closer to the truth than your thoughts 

• Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking.
• If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.

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Fear and stress are caused by too much future and not enough present 

• A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivated by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either.
• All negativity is caused by denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear—are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.
• Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.
• Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.
• Past and future only exist as thoughts in your head.

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To overcome you fear, ask yourself what there is to fear right now in this moment 

• The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
• What is there to fear in this very moment of now? Is your fear about something in the future? Then focus on being present now, and let go of the fear.
• Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.

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Anger has pain and fear beneath it 

• Anger is a disguised form of fear.
• Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.

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True love is a state of Being that comes through the realisation of oneness … 

• Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.
• In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.
• Love is the realisation we are one. It is meeting another as yourself.
• Love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.
• True communication is communion―the realization of oneness, which is love.
• When you know each life form as yourself, that is called love. When you know this then you are constantly in a state of love, the love that knows the other as yourself.
• At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.

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… as opposed to “romantic love” which is often just egoic wanting and needing 

• What is commonly called “falling in love” is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.
• How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything.

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The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse 

• The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed at the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or, they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Neitzche’s famous statement “God is dead.”

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God has been reduced to a mental idol; a projection of the human mind 

• Man Made ‘God’ in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as ‘my god’ or ‘our god’.
• The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind.

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God is Being itself, not a being 

• God is Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God- realization is the most natural thing there is.

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God is the eternal one life underneath all the forms of life 

• What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that one life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.
• We are all manifestations of The One Source. God is the formless essence of all life that you are.

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You can sense this divine life essence through being present … 

• Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life- form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form. 
• We are God in deep disguise.

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… and in this way, access the power of God 

• Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called “God.” As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.

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Let your prayers be about listening to God rather than talking to God 

• Prayer can gradually become listening to God rather than talking to God. What does listening mean?  Listening means there is a field of bare, pure attention.  Listening does not mean that you are waiting for some answer, because then you are not really listening.  In listening you are not waiting for anything – there is just a field of pure attention.  That is a much deeper prayer than any words.  True prayer is where prayer also becomes meditation.  Not even wanting an answer, it’s enough to be in the silence.  Sometimes an answer comes, or the thing becomes resolved, sometimes, suddenly. Listen.  

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Instead of seeking enlightenment in the future, simply become present now … 

• Enlightenment cannot be attained if it is sought as a future goal. Give up the search.  The entry point is now, not in the future. The ego can only be transcended in the now.  In the depth of you, your essence is already complete.  You are already it.  You just need to realise it. 
• Even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfilment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present.
• Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don’t need time to be who you are.
• The present moment has always been available to spiritual seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the present moment. “Seeking” implies that you are looking to the future for some answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise.
• You find God the moment you realize that you don’t need to seek God.

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… for enlightenment is simply your natural state of felt oneness with being 

• Being can be felt, but can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling- realization” is enlightenment.
• The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.
• Being can be felt, but can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling- realization” is enlightenment.

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Religion without spirituality becomes an ideology, creating superiority, division and conflict 

• If you believe your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and creates an illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict between people.
• Religion without spirituality is an ideology.
• Religion, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them, they could make themselves “right” and others “wrong” and thus define their identity through their enemies, the “others,” the “nonbelievers” or “wrong believers” who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing.

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Ideologies and dogmas are conceptual prisons for thought can never encapsulate the truth 

• Dogmas–religious, political, scientific–arise out of erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”
• The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.
• Thoughts can at best point to the truth, but it never is the truth. That’s why the Buddhist say: The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.
• Although all spiritual teachings originate from the same Source, once they become verbalized and written down they are obviously no more than collections of words – and a word is nothing but a signpost.

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If you believe only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego 

• If you believe only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and creates an illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict between people. In the service of the Truth, religious teachings represent signposts or maps left behind by awakened humans to assist you in spiritual awakening, that is to say, in becoming free of identification with form.

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Joy flows into the world from deep within 

• Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.
• Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
• Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.
• Things and conditions can give you pleasure but they cannot give you joy for joy arises from within.

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Enthusiasm generates creative empowerment and energy 

• Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy- field or vibrational frequency changes. A certain degree of what we might call structural tension is now added to enjoyment, and so it turns into enthusiasm. At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. 
• Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is ‘ride the wave’.
• The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek root entheos, “having the god within.”
• Whenever there is enthusiasm, there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.

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Forgiveness is recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is 

• Forgiveness is to relinquish your grievance and so to let go of grief. It happens naturally once you realize that your grievance serves no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self. Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life – to allow life to live through you. 
• 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. 
• Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.
• Your grievance serves no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self. Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life – to allow life to live through you.

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Hope is a denial of the now 

• Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness.

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The truth is inseparable from who you are 

• The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.

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The mind loves problems … 

• Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That’s why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.
• The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.

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… but realise problems are an illusion of the mind 

• Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.
• All problems are illusions of the mind.

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Know that the source of all knowing is within you 

• The answer to every vital question is within you.
• The source of all knowing is in you.
• I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.

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Questions to ask in the moment 

• Are you always trying to get somewhere other than where you are?
• Am I here now?
• Is there aliveness in you or have your eyes glazed over in thought?
• Regularly ask yourself “What is my relationship right now with the present moment?”
• Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing?
• Instead of asking “What do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “What does life want from me?”
• The whole Universe has brought this moment about. Who am I to fight it?
• What is there to fear in this very moment of now? Is your fear about something in the future? Then focus on being present now, and let go of the fear.

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More thoughts from Eckhart Tolle 

• ‘Unconscious,’ the way I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies complete absence of the watcher.
• Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions… Don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment.  Become present.  Be there as the observer of the mind. 
• All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfilment in external things and in the future as a substitute for being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions… Don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment.  Become present.  Be there as the observer of the mind.  
• Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.
• As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.
• Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.
• Be aware of the space that allows everything to be.
• Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
• Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
• Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures.
• Consciousness is dreaming you. It likes it. But, it also wants to wake up.
• Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.
• Each person’s life – each life form, in fact – represents a world, a unique way in which the universe experiences itself.
• Every pleasure or emotional high contains within itself the seed of pain: it’s inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.
• Feel the Presence within you as the background to every experience.
• For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
• How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an inch in diameter contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1,000 books of 600 pages each?
• Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.
• If there isn’t an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment. Another indicator is how a person behaves in difficult or challenging situations or when things “go wrong.”
• If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.
• 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.
• If you can be a bridge between the form and the formless, you are a master. You will change the world.
• If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego. 
• If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within.
• In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.
• It is the stillness that will save and transform the world.
• It is through the world and ultimately through you that the Unmanifested knows itself. You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
• Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.
• Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.
• Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it, How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
• Make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.
• Nobody can tell you who you are. It would just be another concept, so it would not change you. Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require your realization since you already are who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into the world.
• Non-resistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
• Not only anxious thoughts, but also resentment, grievances, pointless complaining, guilt and regret, criticism of self and others, perpetual discontent…… are ways in which we unconsciously create suffering for ourselves. They arise in imagination (the mind). We need to recognize that these are all unnecessary baggage that brings a heaviness into our lives and strengthens a false sense of self. When you recognize their pointlessness, you can let go of them and then move through life without unnecessary baggage, enjoying the present moment, including its challenges. And so the present moment becomes your friend, and you begin to experience life as supportive, rather than hostile. This is the miracle of transformation.
• Only through staying in the present, and Being, can we be free of our mind and its misery, and access the power of Now.
• Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
• The amplification of thought as science and technology, although intrinsically neither good nor bad, has also become destructive because so often the thinking out of which it comes has no roots in awareness.
• The atoms that make up your body were once forged inside stars.
• The flower of consciousness needs the mud out of which it grows.
• The moment you realize you are not present, you are present.
• The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself.
• The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am.” He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.
• The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.
• The sense perception is the foreground and the awareness of the perceiver is the background. The background is an underlying stillness, an awareness of the “I am.”
• There are people who have renounced all possessions who have a bigger ego than some millionaires.
• Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
• Through allowing, you become what you are; vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.
• To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
• Ultimately, it’s not what happens “out there” that upsets you, it’s what happens in your mind.
• Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play. They are those roles.
• What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.
• What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself.
• What upsets is in mind
• Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
• When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life- form – – or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
• When we accept the loss of a form we identified with as part of who we were, then ego dies and essence shines through.
• When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.
• Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.
• Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now.
• Whenever you think that something really matters in this world of form, you’ve lost presence.
• Whereas mind-energy is hard and rigid, Being-energy is soft and yielding and yet infinitely more powerful than mind. The mind runs our civilization, whereas Being is in charge of all life on our planet and beyond.
• Without the ego, there would be no enlightenment or awakening.
• Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.
• You are a temporary expression of the One Eternal Life.
• You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
• You are more powerful, more effective, when you are completely yourself… Just stop adding unnecessary baggage to who you already are.
• You are the sky. The clouds are what happens, what comes and goes.
• You are the Universe expressing itself as a human for a little while.
• You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
• You cannot know yourself. You can only know what you’re not.  
• You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.
• You don’t see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.
• Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
• Your sense of identity, of self, is reduced to a story you keep telling yourself in your head. “Me and my story.”
• Trying to become a good or better human being sounds like a commendable and high-minded thing to do, yet it is an endeavour you cannot ultimately succeed in unless there is a shift in consciousness. This is because it is still part of the same dysfunction, a more subtle and rarified form of self-enhancement, of desire for more and a strengthening of one’s conceptual identity, one’s self- image. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness. 
• You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought — or the emotion or sense perception — happens. 

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