"For many years I had been deeply..." - Quote by Eckhart Tolle
For many years I had been deeply identified with thinking and the painful, heavy emotions that had accumulated inside. My thought activity was mostly negative, and my sense of identity was also mostly negative, although I tried hard to prove to myself and to the world that I was good enough by working very hard academically. But even after I had achieved academic success, I was happy for two weeks or three and then the depression and anxiety came back.
More by Eckhart Tolle
“In the unawakened state you don't use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.”
“Music creates a bridge for people to move out of thinking and into presence.”
“Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger”
More on Identity
“I am what I am and that's all that I am and if I'm supposed to be somebody else, why do I look like me?”
“Work is an extension of personality. It is achievement. It is one of the ways in which a person defines himself, measures his worth, and his humanity.”
“Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.”
More on Thinking
“Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.”
“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”
“I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.”