Eckhart Tolle on Freedom

“To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment.”

“There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.”

“Be there as the witnessing presence of your inner state. You don’t have to do anything. With the awareness comes transformation and freedom.”

“The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity.”

“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”

“True salvation is a state of freedom - from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.”

“When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice–the thinker–but the one who is aware of it. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.”

“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 are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness – who you are becomes freed form its imprisonment in form. This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. This, too, will pass. Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.”