Alex Chapman > Alex's Quotes

“Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
It is also insane.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Whenever any kind of deep loss occurs in your life — such as loss of possessions, your home, a close relationship; or loss of your reputation, job, or physical abilities — something inside you dies. You feel diminished in your sense of who you are. There may also be a certain disorientation. “Without this...who am I?” When a form that you had unconsciously identified with as part of yourself leaves you or dissolves, that can be extremely painful. It leaves a hole, so to speak, in the fabric of your existence. When this happens, don't deny or ignore the pain or the sadness that you feel. Accept that it is there. Beware of your mind's tendency to construct a story around that loss in which you are assigned the role of victim. Fear, anger, resentment, or self-pity are the emotions that go with that role. Then become aware of what lies behind those emotions as well as behind the mind-made story: that hole, that empty space. Can you face and accept that strange sense of emptiness? If you do, you may find that it is no longer a fearful place. You may be surprised to find peace emanating from it. 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 the contemplation and acceptance of death.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“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.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not "fit in" with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Don't look for peace.
Don't look for any ther state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance.

Forgive yourself for not being peace.
The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace
Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace.

This is the miracle of surrencer.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Ghandi

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

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“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

“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and 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.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“What's most important in a friendship? Tolerance and loyalty.”
― J.K. Rowling

“I don't like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.”
― Carroll Bryant

“It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.”
― Jennifer Haigh, The Condition

“It's not how many friends you can count, it's how many of those you can count on.”
― Anthony Liccione

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
― Bob Marley

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”
― Muhammad Ali

“Better to have a short life that is full of what you life doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.”
― Allan Watts