Eckhart Tolle, famous for his books The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, is a Germany-born writer and spiritual teacher. Tolle is said to have experienced an "inner transformation" at the age of 29. He has made it his life's purpose to impart spiritually-awakening teachings to those who wish to transform their lives and experience inner peace. He beautifully highlights how the ego drives us to do things whether bad or good, and how to control it through consciously without losing oneself. The following section reveals a selective Eckhart Tolle quotes on love, ego and spirituality which will give you an idea of his philosophy. On Relationships "To love is to recognize yourself in another." "All the things that truly matter―beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace―arise from beyond the mind." "Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that block all true relationships. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is." "Meet everyone and everything through stillness rather than mental noise." "A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever." "As long as you are unable to access the power of the 'Now', every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you." "Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness." "All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no I except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted." On Ego "If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down." "Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego." "Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become I." "An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks, and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state." "Don't take the ego too seriously." "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. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting." "The content of the ego varies from person to person, bu in every ego the same structure operates." "The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist." On Spirituality "Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge." "Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment." "You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are." "The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it." "Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life―and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you." "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." "If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me." "Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." "Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living." "The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." "Accept―then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it." "When you say "yes" to the "isness" of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you that is deeply peaceful." "Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently." "You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the 'Now'." "This too, will pass." "Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you, no humility, no compassion." Whenever you feel uninspired, doubt your ability to better yourself, or just need to start your day off with an uplifting quote, you know where to turn to with these quotes by Eckhart Tolle.