Eckhart Tolle

I found Tolle's The Power of Now one of the most profoundly practical, spiritual books I've ever read. You can read the distilled wisdom of that book in its companion Stillness Speaks. Here are just a few words, selected randomly:

'True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.'

'The human condition: lost in thought.'

'The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw you attention in completely. Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.'

'When you step into the Now, you step out of the content of your mind. The incessant stream of thinking slows down. Thoughts don't absorb all your attention anymore, don't draw you in totally. Gaps arise in between thoughts - spaciousness, stillness. You begin to realise how much vaster and deeper you are than your thoughts.'

'"Doing one thing at a time" is how one Zen Master defined the essence of Zen. Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action - empowered action.'

'You don't need to be a Christian to understand the deep universal truth that is contained in symbolic form in the image of the cross. The cross is a torture instrument. It stands for the most extreme suffering, limitation, and helplessness a human being can encounter. Then suddenly that human being surrenders, suffers willingly, consciously, expressed through the words, "Not my will, but Thy will be done." At that moment, the cross, the torture instrument, shows its hidden face: it is also a sacred symbol, a symbol for the divine.

'That which seemed to deny the existence of any transcendental dimension to life, through surrender becomes an opening into that dimension.'