Stop Thinking Happiness lies beyond our thoughts and our mind - Eckhart Tolle

Most people are ill at ease and restless because they are always bewildered by the constant inflow of thoughts in their mind. They can’t stop thinking. There is no inner peace and calm. They give the impression of being haunted by something. Their emotions give rise to new thoughts and their thoughts give rise to new emotions. So they are fettered to this vicious chain of cause and effect. This is what makes them so unhappy, because they seem not to be able to let loose of their thoughts and enjoy the happiness of the Here and Now. All the time their thoughts take them adrift.

For the mind creates the past and the future. If we would have no thoughts we would be forever living in the happiness of an Eternal Now. But instead, our thoughts force us to be mesmerized by our past, both with guilt and with feelings of nostalgia, and also by the future, the outcome of which is always too uncertain and too fickle to make it worth a second thought, one would say; but nevertheless people go on thinking and worrying, which are in most cases synonymous, about the future.

© "Times of India" (dated May 8, 2005). Reprinted with permission.

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