Nonreaction To Ego In Others Is Most Effective

Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways of not only going beyond ego in yourself but also in dissolving the collective human ego. … By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned. At times you may have to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. This you can do without making them into enemies. Your greatest protection, however, is being conscious. Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Nonreaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for Nonreaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.
~Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
P 62-63
Published by Plume

Accept The Present Moment And Find Perfection

Unhappiness or negativity is a disease on our planet. What pollution is on the outer level is negativity on the inner. It is everywhere, not just in places where people don’t have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough. Is that surprising? No. The affluent world is even more deeply identified, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.

People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so the miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not happening, beyond form. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.

The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event--through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you--ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.

~Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
P 213-215
Published by Plume

Consciously Allow The Diminishment Of Ego

A powerful practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it [ego self-preservation] happens without attempting to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself--do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner spaciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven’t been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute nonreaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has diminished, that through becoming “less,” you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego’s perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, “ Deny yourself” or “Turn the other cheek.”

~Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
P 215
Published by Plume