Gary Chattem > Gary's Quotes

“To love is to recognize yourself in another.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“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. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“The past has no power over the present moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“If the infinite had not desired man to be wise, he would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of knowing.”
― Manly P. Hall

“Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments”
― Manly P Hall

“Man's status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“The true Mason is not creed-bound. He realizes with the divine illumination of his lodge that as Mason his religion must be universal: Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, the name means little, for he recognizes only the light and not the bearer. He worships at every shrine, bows before every altar, whether in temple, mosque or cathedral, realizing with his truer understanding the oneness of all spiritual truth. All true Masons know that they only are heathen who, having great ideals, do not live up to them. They know that all religions are but one story told in divers ways for peoples whose ideals differ but whose great purpose is in harmony with Masonic ideals. North, east, south and west stretch the diversities of human thought, and while the ideals of man apparently differ, when all is said and the crystallization of form with its false concepts is swept away, one basic truth remains: all existing things are Temple Builders, laboring for a single end. No true Mason can be narrow, for his Lodge is the divine expression of all broadness. There is no place for little minds in a great work.”
― Manly P. Hall

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of
ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment