Self Help Books

"For Tolle, "knowing self and knowing God become one and the same." The millions who've turned to Tolle might naturally conclude: I am the "I Am." Sound familiar? It should. According to the Bible, such "knowledge" springs from the oldest error of all: man's desire to be "as gods." The Bible teaches that humanly conceived "enlightenment" is actually idolatry, the worship of the human self, a creature, as the equivalent of – or in place of – God, the only Creator. Such idolatry is moral rebellion against "our Father.""

"No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have."

"The physical needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and basic comforts could be easily met for all humans on the planet, were it not for the imbalance of resources created by the insane and rapacious need for more, the greed of the ego. It finds collective expression in the economic structures of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are egoic entities that compete with each other for more. Their only blind aim is profit."

"Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them. In the meantime, just be aware of your attachment to things."

"The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison."

"The ego identifies with having, but its satisfaction in having is a relatively shallow and shortlived one. Concealed within it remains a deepseated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of “not enough.” “I don't have enough yet,” by which the ego really means, “I am not enough yet.”"

"Apart from objects, another basic form of identification is with “my” body. Firstly, the body is male or female, and so the sense of being a man or woman takes up a significant part of most people's sense of self. Gender becomes identity. Identification with gender is encouraged at an early age, and it forces you into a role, into conditioned patterns of behavior that affect all aspects of your life, not just sexuality."

"The sufferers of bulimia will often make themselves vomit so they can continue eating. Their mind is hungry, not their body. This eating disorder would become healed if the sufferers, instead of being identified with their mind, could get in touch with their body and so feel the true needs of the body rather than the pseudo needs of the egoic mind."

"“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus said, “for theirs will be the kingdom of heaven.” What does “poor in spirit” mean? No inner baggage, no identifications. Not with things, nor with any mental concepts that have a sense of self in them."

"This phenomenon must have been familiar to St. Paul, who used the expression “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.”"

"Although body identification is one of the most basic forms of ego, the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily go beyond."

"Ego arises when your sense of Beingness, of “I Am,” which is formless consciousness, gets mixed up with form. This is the meaning of identification. This is forgetfulness of Being, the primary error, the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare."

"You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That's the peace of God."

"Not everybody who experiences great loss also experiences this awakening, this dis-identification from form. Some immediately create a strong mental image or thought form in which they see themselves as a victim, whether it be of circumstances, other people, an unjust fate, or God. This thought form and the emotions it creates, such as anger, resentment, self pity, and so on, they strongly identify with, and it immediately takes the place of all the other identifications that have collapsed through the loss."

"Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in."

"When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with."

"It consists of thought and emotion, of a bundle of memories you identify with as “me and my story,” of habitual roles you play without knowing it, of collective identifications such as nationality, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance. It also contains personal identifications, not only with possessions, but also with opinions, external appearance, longstanding resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, as a success or failure."

"Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on. The central core of all your mind activity consists of certain repetitive and persistent thoughts, emotions, and reactive patterns that you identify with most strongly. This entity is the ego itself."

"Beyond the realm of simple and verifiable facts, the certainty that “I am right and you are wrong” is a dangerous thing in personal relationships as well as in interactions between nations, tribes, religions, and so on. But if the belief “I am right; you are wrong” is one of the ways in which the ego strengthens itself, if making yourself right and others wrong is a mental dysfunction that perpetuates separation and conflict between human beings..."

"Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don't have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such and ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don't know what you are doing."

"“I am the way and the truth and the life.” These words uttered by Jesus are one of the most powerful and direct pointers to the Truth, if understood correctly. If misinterpreted, however, they become a great obstacle. Jesus speaks of the innermost I Am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life form, in fact. He speaks of the life that you are. Some Christian mystics have called it the Christ within; Buddhists call it your Buddha nature; for Hindus, it is Atman, the indwelling God. When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself – and being in touch with it is your natural state, not some miraculous achievement – all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within."

"The history of Christianity is, of course, a prime example of how the belief that you are in sole possession of the truth, that is to say, right , can corrupt your actions and behavior to the point of insanity. For centuries, torturing and burning people alive if their opinion diverged even in the slightest from Church doctrine or narrow interpretations of scripture (the “Truth”) was considered right because the victims were “wrong.”"

"An ego that wants something from another – and what ego doesn't – will usually play some kind of role to get its “needs” met, be they material gain, a sense of power, superiority, or specialness, or some kind of gratification, be it physical or psychological. Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play."

"The ego thrives on others' attention, which is after all a form of psychic energy. The ego doesn't know that the source of all energy is within you, so it seeks... attention in some form, such as recognition, praise, admiration, or just to be noticed in some way, to have its existence acknowledged."

"Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are. In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless."

"This is why renouncing all possessions has been an ancient spiritual practice in both East and West. Renunciation of possessions, however, will not automatically free you of the ego. It will attempt to ensure its survival by finding something else to identify with, for example, a mental image of yourself as someone who has transcended all interest in material possessions and is therefore superior, is more spiritual than others."

"The playing of negative roles becomes particularly pronounced whenever the ego is magnified by an active painbody, that is to say, emotional pain from the past that wants to renew itself through experiencing more pain."

"A very common role is the one of victim, and the form of attention it seeks is sympathy or pity or others' interest in my problems, “me and my story.” Seeing oneself as a victim is an element in many egoic patterns, such as complaining, being offended, outraged, and so on."

"The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile... It isn’t who you are."

"In the modern world, more and more people are confused as to where they fit in, what their purpose is, and even who they are."

"Only rare beings at the time, such as the Buddha or Jesus, saw the ultimate irrelevance of caste or social class, recognized it as identification with form and saw that such identification with the conditioned and the temporal obscured the light of the unconditioned and eternal that shines in each human being."

"I'd say he's got tremendous skill in clarifying perceptions and thoughts from our internal world... It's very hard to put those perceptions into words, and he makes it all seem so simple. The ideas he's talking about have been in existence for thousands of years in both Eastern texts and with the great Western mystics, but he's able to make them understandable... (quoting) Judith Kendra, publishing director of Rider books, which has been publishing on spirituality and human rights for 100 years."

"That sense of pride, of needing to stand out, the apparent enhancement of one’s self through “more than” and diminishment through “less than” is neither right nor wrong – it is the ego."

"To “own” something – what does it really mean? What does it mean to make something “mine”?"

"If you have young children, give them help, guidance, and protection to the best f your ability, but even more important, give them space – space to be. They come into this world through you, but they are not “yours.” The belief “I know what's best for you” may be true when they are very young, but the older they get, the less true it becomes."

"Eventually, they (children) will make mistakes, and they will experience some form of suffering, as all humans do. In fact, they may be mistakes only from your perspective. What to you is a mistake may be exactly what your children need to do or experience."

"Many children harbor hidden anger and resentment toward their parents and often the cause is inauthenticity in the relationship. The child has a deep longing for the parent to be there as a human being, not as a role, no matter how conscientiously that role is being played."

"If you are in the grip of the ego, you believe that by doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough “doings” to make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. You won't. You will only lose yourself in doing. The entire civilization is losing itself in doing that is not rooted in Being and thus becomes futile. p. 64"

"The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose. Strictly speaking, you don't think; Thinking happens to you. p. 80"

"The painbody awakens from its dormancy when it gets hungry, when it is time to replenish itself. Alternatively, it may get triggered by an event at any time. The painbody that is ready to feed can use the most insignificant event as a trigger, something somebody says or does, or even a thought."

"As we shall see later, making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns, one of the main forms of unconsciousness. In other words, the content of the ego may change; the mind structure that keeps it alive does not."

"In the West, it is the physical appearance of the body that contributes greatly to the sense of who you think you are: its strength or weakness, its perceived beauty or ugliness relative to others. For many people, their sense of self worth is intimately bound up with their physical strength, good looks, fitness, and external appearance."

"The possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of the great wisdom teachings of humankind. The messengers – Buddha, Jesus, and others, not all of them known – were humanity’s early flowers... their message became largely misunderstood and often greatly distorted."

"If the balance between male and female energies had not been destroyed on our planet, the ego's growth would have been greatly curtailed. We would not have declared war on nature, and we would not be so completely alienated from our Being."

"The beginning of freedom from the painbody lies first of all in the realization that you have a painbody. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the painbody in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is \recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you."

"When you recognize your own painbody as it arises, you will also quickly learn what the most common triggers are that activate it, 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 painbody, but in that state of alert Presence, you won't identify with it, which means the painbody cannot take you over and become the voice in your head."

"A question people frequently ask is, “How long does it take to become free of the painbody?” The answer is, of course, that it depends both on the density of an individual's painbody as well as the degree or intensity of that individual's arising Presence. But it is not the painbody, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the painbody but identification with the painbody that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness."

"“How long does it take to become free of identification with the painbody?” And the answer to that question: It takes no time at all. When the painbody is activated, know that what you are feeling is the painbody in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the transmutation begins. The knowing prevents the old emotion from rising up in your head and taking over not only the internal dialogue, but also your actions as well as interactions with other people. This mean the painbody cannot use you anymore and renew itself through you."

"What those words imply is this: Before you ask any other question, first ask the most fundamental question of your life: Who am I?"

"The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part."