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Our minds like to think. They like to be busy. They like to be occupied.

They’re creative, cunning, and clever.

They want to take up all of our attention. They will if we let them.

They want to pull is into their web of stories. They’ll obsess over anything if we let them.

Our minds will always be occupied—make us feel mentally occupied—unless we cultivate stillness, unless we create distance.

When we begin to observe our minds, when begin to watch our thoughts and how they move and the relentless nature of them, we cultivate a presence that sits outside of them. We understand that those thoughts are not us; they’re not who we are. We can see them, witness them—from a distance.

This distancing from our minds, this watching and observing, is a practice.

It’s knowing we’ll get lost in thoughts, realizing it when we see it’s happening, and then coming back to the present. It’s breathing and observing. It’s allowing. It’s watching the thoughts that are moving, noticing how even the want to resist them is an urge, an impulse that can be watched and observed.

Eckhart Tolle talks so beautifully about the present moment, about the power and purity of being in the present moment.

Here are 10 Eckhart Tolle quotes that will make you feel like you can breathe:

1. “The past has no power over the present moment.”

2. “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

3. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”

4. “Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.”

5. “All problems are illusions of the mind.”

6. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”

7. “Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.”

8.  “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

9. “All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.”

10. “What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”

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