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Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

Summary

When Tolle says "awakening," he means awakening to your consciousness - being completely in the present moment and detaching from your ego, from wanting, from possessions, being and doing simultaneously.

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Key Takeaways
  1. Become mindful and try to lessen the incessant thinking that everyone goes through
  2. Our thoughts are not who we are. Separate your identity from this stream of thinking
  3. Heaven is within you at all times. It is always in your grasp.
  4. Aim to reflect your truest and highest self onto everything around you. Do one thing at a time and do it with everything you have
  5. Sin = missing the point of human existence
  6. The most rigid structure, those most impervious to change, will be the first to collapse (extreme ideologies, thoughts, etc.)
  7. Aim to avoid labeling things, people, situations, etc. Nothing is truly good or bad. It simply is
  8. The ego desires to identify with things, possessions, your body feelings, emotions, etc. Simply being aware of this helps lessen the effect
  9. Strive to become nonreactive. Become responsive
  10. Do not complain - this is one of the ego's favorite activities and only serves to strengthen it
  11. There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position
  12. "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."
  13. "Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists."
  14. "Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think or feel us ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away."
  15. There is no possessiveness in true love and you do not want to change your lover in any way.
  16. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it
  17. "To love is to recognize yourself in another."
  18. "In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility rise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same."
  19. Those who are exceptionally good at what they do may be completely or largely free of ego while performing their work (pair with Tao Teh Ching)
  20. In order to attract success, you must welcome it wherever you see it
  21. Pain-body - old, emotional pain that you still carry with you. Aim to reduce and eliminate this unnecessary baggage. You are not your emotions. The body cannot tell the difference between an actual situation (stress from being chased by a lion) and a thought (needlessly worrying about "what if" scenarios")
  22. Simply becoming present of negative emotions within you and of your pain-body, lessens its harmful effects
  23. Feel abundance by recognizing that you already have it. It is already within you
  24. "Good" and "bad" are illusory - everything simply is, is one with no fragments
  25. Knowing yourself is one of, if not the most, worthwhile journey you can take. "Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind."
  26. Ask yourself what types of things truly upset and disturb me? Actions speak much louder than words, thoughts, beliefs
  27. "Who you think you are is also intimately connected with how you see yourself treated by others."
  28. You cannot receive what you don't give. Don't think you receive enough praise? Dole it out. Always ask yourself how you can give and help others
  29. Events are not personalized. Learn to love what happens and you will never be disappointed
  30. Bad turns into good through the power of nonresistance
  31. The ego treats the present in three different ways - a means to an end, an obstacle or as an enemy
  32. Your external reality always reflects back your inner state. Realize how when you're stressed people around you seem stressed? They're probably not and its just your internal state being reflected onto others
  33. Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe - allows you to accept whatever happens
  34. When you are completely present, any task you take on will be fulfilling in and of itself.
  35. Joy cannot come to you. It emanates from within, from consciousness itself and is therefore always a part of you, always accessible
  36. Accepting the fact that everything is transitory allows you to enjoy everything without fear or anxiety about the future
  37. The small things often aren't the small things. "Most people, in their restless search for something significant to happen to them, continuously miss the insignificant, which may not be insignificant at all."
  38. Be aware and appreciate the small things - sound of birds, sound of rain, moving clouds, etc. You must be quiet and alert inside for this to be possible
  39. "Right action is action which is appropriate to the whole."
  40. Breathing is such an integral part of meditation and calmness because it takes attention away from thinking and creates space. It is one way of generating consciousness
  41. To help eliminate any addictive or compulsive behavior, when you notice the need to perform the behavior, take three conscious breaths. This generates awareness and will help you get over the compulsive urge
  42. Your inner purpose is to awaken. Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. Awareness is conscious connection with the universal intelligence. It is presence - consciousness without thought
  43. When you eliminate the ego and time, you become a channel through which your consciousness can flow. "This means there is quality in what you do, even in the most simple action."
  44. Be true to life by being true to your inner purpose. Your primary purpose is to enable conscious flow into whatever you do. The secondary purpose is whatever you want to achieve through doing
  45. When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.
  46. You can only lose something that you have. You cannot lose something that you are
  47. The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. One of these three characteristics needs to be operating whenever you are engaged in doing anything
  48. You can enjoy any activity in which you are fully present in. It isn't the action you perform that you enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it
  49. Enthusiasm is enjoyment + a goal/vision. It never opposes and is non-confrontational. It is based on inclusion and not exclusion. Enthusiasm gives out of its own abundance
  50. You cannot manifest what you want, you can only manifest what you already have
What I got out of it
  1. While this book is certainly out there at times, I believe that following what Tolle lays out can only lead to a happier, fuller and less stressful life since the incessant self-talk is gone and we are awake to our true purpose. Very highly recommend

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