Eckhart Tolle

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.

A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivate by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either.

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.

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.  However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.  This means that is is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature.  But don't seek to grasp it with your mind.  Don't try to understand it.  You can know it only when the mind is still.

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way,  but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.

In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state.  You are fully present.  It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that give life to the physical body.

The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.  You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.  You also realize that all the things that truly matter -- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -- arise from beyond the mond.  You begin to awaken.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly.  Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.  To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly -- you usually don't use it at all.  It uses you.  This is the disease.  You believe that you are your mind.  This is the delusion.  The instrument has taken you over.

Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.